Leading from within: Distributing leadership to enhance eLearning at ACU

Research on academic leaders of Australian and international higher education institutions has shown how “the broader societal change forces that have unfolded over the past quarter century have generated a set of higher education specific pressures on universities to change, which, in turn, are testing the extent to which these institutions and their leaders are ‘change capable’” (Scott, Coates and Anderson, 2008, p. xiii). Australian Catholic University (ACU) which has six campuses across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, is responding to these change forces in accord with its mission to provide quality teaching, research and service. ACU has focussed on the development of policy, procedures and strategic initiatives related to eLearning. This paper reports on embedding of an initial Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project designed “to develop distributed leadership capacity in the pedagogical and evaluative dimensions of online teaching and learning” in which six academic staff members were funded for a new role as Online Advisers (OAs). The paper highlights the leadership learning which has occurred for the OAs, identifies ongoing challenges in terms of distributing leadership in a sustainable way for the enhancement of online teaching and learning (OTL) and offers eight insights and challenges into how such projects can be implemented by like institutions.