Making innovation sustainable
In episode 51 of the Tales of Teaching Online podcast Associate Professor Chie Adachi speaks to Professor Margaret Bearman about her research into sustainable innovation in teaching and learning.
Margaret highlights that while innovation has always been important to teaching and learning, sustainability can also be a barrier to innovation. Margaret explains how in her own practice she has learnt some hard lessons, with resources dating very quickly since the integration of technology into teaching and learning.
So how do we make innovation sustainable? Margaret’s research looks at innovation projects in higher education that have been successfully sustained over time. She talks about what sustained these projects across the following three areas:
- Resources
- Teaching practice
- Structural changes
There is a need to ensure these areas are integrated into existing systems and processes. This can present challenges to sustainable innovation, since some systems are built on assumptions and practices that have been around for many years. Sustainable innovation requires us to rethink how we are facilitating and supporting changes to pre-existing systems.
Listen to episode 51 of the Tales of Teaching Online podcast for the full conversation.