Week Seven - Tony

Develop ideas of where you could incorporate Scenario Planning in your organisation.

I will look at a scenario that would impact my workplace this week. But first I want to look at the Ogilvy and Schwartz approach to successful scenario planning. They state that a successful scenario will:

1. Stay focused  
2. Keep it simple
3. Keep it interactive
4. Plan to plan and allow enough time
5. Don't settle for a simple high, medium and low
6. Avoid probabilities or 'most likely' plots
7. Avoid drafting too many scenarios
8. Invent catchy names for the scenarios
9. Make the decision makers own the scenarios
10. Budget sufficient resources for communicating the scenarios

(from "Plotting your Scenarios")

With this approach in mind I'd like to examine how the scenario of a changing demographic would impact my school's ICT activities.

To do this I'll use the JISC's suggest scenario planning process. A guide that is an amalgam of other scenario planning approaches. An appropriate choice as the JISC is a formal body that assists education in relation to digital technologies.

Scoping:

How will a change in school demographics impact ICT use and roll out in the school? How will it effect school budgeting and student-borne technology costs?

Trend Analysis:

 At the moment the economy of Hong Kong seems strong with good fourth quarter growth last year. Our parent body have also reduced their opposition to technology useage, and associated costs, as they are beginning to see that IT is of increasing importance ans a literacy and education is vital in an increasingly competitive jobs market.

Factors that may impact this would be another SARS tyope epidemin in Hong Kong or Southern China, or one in a close trading partner. Additionally, the staged workd economic recovery is still not fully involved and European recalcitrance in dealing with the complexities of the Union and regulating national fiscal and monetary policy is a worrying sign for Chinese growth. Any impact of China will have negative knock-on effects in HK. A reversal of US economic growth in the last 6 months will likewise negatively impact HK and the region. Given so many of our parents are exposed to international companies a small shift in overseas situations can result in a magnified effect for the school population.

Building Scenarios:

For simplicity sake I'll look at only one scenario, although dozens could be extrapolated from the scope.

Decrease in wealth of our population puts extra pressure on the school to provide more in house IT hardware while maintaining spending in other areas.

Generate options:

I'll diverge from the JISC model here as I think it is far more appropriate to use a SWOT analysis before ideas are generated. This is useful here in assessing the school's readiness for this scenario. 

Strengths: Good teaching staff that have strong pedagogical knowledge. A solid school IT foundation that can continue excellent education at it's current level of technology.

Weaknesses: Independent school with parents that can 'vote with their feet' If we did not somehow seem to be keeping up with other school's we'd lose students and reputation. A downward spiral may result.

Opportunities: New innovative ways of teaching with IT could be found. New partnerships owth business may be formed to assist in IT acquisition. A shift in pedagogy that allowed to more students to use less IT in the classroom may also lead to positive innovations.

Threats: Our school governance is complex and not always in agreement. Overarching governmental expectation based on our subvention are also subject to public pressure and the ESF is a large organisation with a shaky reputation in the eyes of local people.

From this we could do a number of things.

1. Ignore parental requests and maintain the high financial burned of IT use. We would take a hit in student numbers but our waiting list is long and may be able to fill places from that.

2. Acquiesce to parental demands and change the way we do things. try to innovate so that the educational standards of the school are maintained and all students still become digitally literate.

3. Seek outside assistance to ensure the continued supply of high quality IT into the school environment either through government grants or business deals.

4. Increase our spending and dip into the ESF war chest. Hopefully the time will be short and we can look to recover costs when the economy turns again.

Test Options:

Each of the above options have positive and negative outcomes. The foundation's public profile, the strength of parental lobbying (considered in a wider societal financial crisis) and the financial state of the foundation all impact the ultimate decision that would be made at the time.

Action Plan:

The school should continue to develop and strong IT base. It should be mindful of the ephemeral nature of IT purchasing and look to establish good practises that are sustainable over a medium term. Technology should be cycled on a regular basis when finances are good with a view of provision of service and hardware to large number of students from  the school's finances. Student provision should be limited to laptops and school policy must be flexible and realistic in terms of type and capacity of the student borne cost.  After all, most laptop use is internet surfing and word processing. More specialist computing requirements should be still provided by the school.