Arena of Change and maybe a mind-map

I've been watching videos and doing reading about the 'arena of change'. This is a theoretical model showing the wide range of influences that interact on a particular activity or action conducted by a teacher in a classroom. I have had to modify the thinking slightly as I do not have a classroom or a teacher in my research topic. However, the idea that the area of research is behaving in a stable way until the introduction of the change with digital technology is still completely true. The idea that there are nested influences acting with particular strength on the key species in the ecosystem is also fine with my question. So, the question wording remains the same as last week:

When two groups of staff in a New Zealand tertiary educational institution with differing perspectives and philosophies on the relative amounts of use of face to face and digital modes  in educational support provision are brought together structurally as a team, do changes ensue in use of and attitude to the balance of f2f and digital in the combined team? If so, in what areas does change occur?

The strongest players here are the people in the Learning, Teaching and Research team, who are influencing each other around changes in use of digital technologies. The relative strengths of that influence wax and wane depending on the areas where the technology is being applied. I think they/we are the keystone species. Everyone brought their own philosophy of teaching and beliefs around the merits of digital use, and each of the groups that were combined also had its own identity, which included policies and procedures around how to communicate and work with staff and students. Some is codified and some is past practice. This is where the change is happening. Our relative levels of experience of different technologies drive our engagement. E.g. in the LMS, Website, Repositories, digital identity/persona issues, curriculum development etc.

Next most influential is the professional corner of the arena. As a mixed team, we are related to and influenced by a vast array of professional organisations. These are all at slightly different levels of engagement, but they are where we draw the basis for our philosophical approaches, and to reflect on directions. In no particular order and not at all comprehensively, they include: academic staff and other wider university colleagues, HERDSA, LIANZA, ATLAANZ, TEU, ACODE, CTA, Core Education, Ako Aotearoa, EDUCAUSE, professional blogs and reading such as the LinkedIn fora, other conferences such as HETL...

Whether Commercial/IT is more influential than bureaucratic has caused me some issues. One the one hand, they are our other professional colleagues and sort of fit in the category above, but then there are the vendors like Catalyst or NZ Micrographics, and our other database and software vendors, and the communities around them, like the Moodle community. These people all provide additional support and influence direction, either because a system change dictates an alternative approach or because of the wider commercial environment that they introduce us to.

In the bureaucratic corner lives the impetus that brought the team together in the first place, (institutional requirements based on a number of factors, including financial) as well as the university policies and procedures, university strategies, and university expectations e.g. those defined in our change proposal. In this corner, the Tertiary Education Commission, CUAP, Universities New Zealand also come to bear as the small institution is expected by government to still offer the same range of services and level of student achievement and to operate at surplus.

Less influential factors that are definitely present are political (e.g. Universities Act, Copyright Act, Public Records Act), our relationship with the runanga (Taumutu), ongoing drivers from government in relation to co-operation within the Canterbury Tertiary Alliance since the earthquakes, the pressures of global competition, relationship with the Lincoln township and other community groups etc.


I'm still busy constructing the mind map. I was using MindMeister on my iPad, as this was one of the tools that I investigated during first semester last year in EDEM627. However, having spent some time working with the map, it kept having errors and saving new versions. Clearly, I needed to keep practicing with it, and, well, I haven't. Don't want to give up on a technological solution, though I do love getting down with the paper and the felt tips. Will try using Word or Powerpoint and see where that gets me. Will edit this post once it is done.
OK, here's the mindmap...

 Have now also read Niki's reply to forum posts, including mine, but guess that has confused me more, as I think she is saying that the arena model does not apply unless there are learners who are separate from the influential species i.e. that the two cannot be the same.However, I am going with this as it stands, at least for this week. Will amend as I understand more.
The video below is actually relevant to the week and to my research topic, but it is also very cool in its own right...

Cannot find the original citation details of "Herding Cats" but this version comes from YouTube where it is searchable and several versions are there.