Mid Sweden University

Organizational learning, and how to become a learning organization, has been in focus for a long time in higher education (e.g. Senge, 2000; Bak, 2012; Ali, 2012). According to Garvin (1993) a learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights. Organizational learning is often associated with the organization as a learning unit, where individual learning is stored outside individuals, as an organizational memory, that is continuously updated and functions as a basis for conducting work tasks and further learning (Örtenblad, 2018). 

However, there are different interests related to organizational learning between different stakeholder groups in higher education. While University managers are likely to view organizational learning as a method to improve institutional effectiveness and efficiency, academics might associate organizational learning with opportunities to pursue new ideas and experiment with innovative practices (Dee and Leisyte, 2017).

Several studies have pointed out that knowledge exchange is limited between boundaries when it comes to higher education (e.g. Dill, 1999; Trelevean et al., 2012). According to Dee and Leisyte (2017) barriers in the flow of organizational knowledge, that hinder individuals or groups to learn for the organization in its entirety, is one of the largest challenges of organizational learning in higher education institutions. 

Hence, to bridge barriers it is of importance to support knowledge exchange so that organizational learning can occur. In higher education a cross-disciplinary organizational learning can be supported by creating the best possible prerequisites for continuous educational exchange. To include the different perspectives of organizational learning when it comes to teaching and course development in higher education both skills related to educational exchange and skills related to effectiveness, such as an effective teacher-centered support for course administration, are required. 

This paper presents and discusses a tool that has been developed to support cross-sectional organizational learning related to course development in higher education. The tool is a result of a project carried out at Mid Sweden University between 2019 and 2021. The project team included university teachers from different fields, sharing a vision to improve current conditions for course development. The tool was aimed to provide information and inspiration about course development from the teacher's perspective, in a more systemized and simple manner.

The project started out with a benchmarking study of Swedish universities to find out how course development in higher education can be supported. A survey was sent out to all teachers within Mid Sweden University to collect information about teachers' needs of support for course development. Presentations and workshops were conducted to get interactive feedback from teachers and study directors. Moreover was an implementation plan for the tool created.

The tool, named “the Course Wheel”, was developed in EPI-server and presented on the staff’s webpage at Mid Sweden University. With focus both on educational exchange and course administration the tool may be used to support organizational learning related to inspiration (what is possible to do?) and course administration (what is to be done?).

A pilot test was performed. The tool was open to try out for all teachers within the university for a period of three months. During the pilot test feedback and suggestions for improvements was collected. 

Results indicate that the tool could be used as a hands-on support for the teacher looking for inspiration in teaching or guidance in course administration. It may also simplify the introduction to new teachers in higher education, providing a system view of teaching and course development. 

Suggestions for improvement for future work is to include more interactivity and course-dependent information.