Bringing e-learning home: An experiment in embedding e-learning using departmental e-learning advocates

This paper provides an overview of an innovative project currently being undertaken in English departments in the United Kingdom. The project explores the effectiveness of a departmental or other subject-based unit approach to support for the embedding of e-learning in Higher Education. It seeks to provide answers to the question of how effective and sustainable e-learning practice can be encouraged in a departmental teaching community with a departmental e-learning advocate. Their role is to act as both a catalyst for change within a department and a source of practical help and advice for those wishing to make greater use of e-learning. Six departments, representing a range of contexts and modes of 'advocacy', have been selected for the 2006-7 academic year. The project aims to investigate whether we can be smarter about the integration of new technologies at subject level, while at the same time asking questions about the cultures within which academic and teaching communities understand, and come to terms with, the need to change their practice.