MIT90s

Summary

The MIT90s framework was used by the University of Strathclyde (one of the 12 institutions in the Higher Education Academy Benchmarking Pilot) as the basis for structuring its approach to benchmarking e-learning (however, some complementary approaches were also used).

It was used by four universities in Phase 1. It is not being used in Phase 2.

History

The MIT90s framework was developed by Michael S Scott Morton as part of the work of the "MIT90s" initiative which flourished at MIT in the early 1990s. (Michael S Scott Morton is now Professor Emeritus at MIT in the Sloan School of Management.) The work is cited under various names: it is correctly entitled The Corporation of the 1990s: Information Technology and Organizational Transformation.

There has been some confusion over the correct name of the initiative and the framework. Readers will find "MIT 90s", "MIT90" and even "MITs 90" in various references.

The MIT90s framework has been central to a number of JISC and related studies (including from DfES) on adoption and maturity. In UK post-16 e-learning terms, probably the most successful use of this is in the RAIIE study led by David Nicol of the University of Strathclyde, funded by JISC during the period April 2003 to May 2004, which produced a final report A Framework for Managing the Risks of e-Learning Investment. There is also a substantial strand of work in Australia associated with the names of Philip Yetton, Anne Forster, Sandra Wills and others, some of it funded by DETYA. (Details below.) This also used the concept of strategic aligment described below.

The MIT90s initiative developed several companion pieces of work of which two are from Venkatraman: transformation levels and strategic alignment. Professor N Venkat Venkatrama is now Professor of Management at Boston University School of Management (and also a visiting professor at London Business School) but was at the Sloan School of Management at MIT during the period of relevance. His work on IT-Induced business reconfiguration is Chapter 5 (pages 122-158) of the main book referred to above.

The Venkatraman thesis is that business use of IT passes through five levels, differing in both the degree of business transformation and in the range (and amount) of potential benefits. The levels are:

• Localised exploitation
• Internal integration
• Business process redesign
• Business network redesign
• Business scope redefinition
.

Levels 1 and 2 are called evolutionary levels – levels 3, 4, and 5 are called revolutionary levels.

This notion of levels has been applied to educational systems, especially in the schools sector, by Becta and DfES. (In passing, it is interesting that this is one of the first situations where a 5-point scale has been used in a situation akin to benchmarking.) Such 5-point scales are now used by many (but not all) benchmarking methodologies - ELTI and Pick&Mix are the scale-based ones currently most relevant to the UK - but the idea of specific levels of transformation is often rather muted and sometimes disputed.

For more details of history and relevance, see the report The relevance of the MIT 90s framework to benchmarking e-learning. (Correction: in that report it incorrectly places Phil Yetton at the University of South Australia - he is in fact at the Australian Graduate School of Management, a faculty of both the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney with its own Academic Board.)

Wider relevance

The MIT90s framework could have wider relevance to e-benchmarking frameworks. In particular, the latest version (2.0) of the Pick & Mix methodology uses the MIT90s framework for tagging its criteria in the Pick&Mix 2.0 release of which a beta description is now available.

For information on the global relevance of the MIT90s framework see the Wikipedia entry.

Phase 1

In Phase 1, MIT90s was used by four institutions:

• University of Bradford
• University of Brighton
• University of Glamorgan
• Thames Valley University

Relevant literature

In addition to the work from the University of Strathclyde - see their benchmarking blog for details - there are four main papers/reports that Phase 1 institutions were advised to read:

1. Wills, Sandra, "Strategic Planning for Blended eLearning", paper presented to the IEE conference ITHET06, Sydney, July 2006, available at http://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/36/. This is a succinct description of an application of the MIT90s approach in a university.
2. Yetton, Philip et al., Managing the Introduction of Technology in the Delivery and Administration of Higher Education, DEETYA, available at http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/eippubs/eip9703/front.htm. If you have time just to read just one longer report, read this one. One aspect only briefly mentioned has been developed in later Australian work - this is the difference between but interpenetration of the "machine bureaucracy" (management/administration) and the "professional bureaucracy" (committee structure) in a university. It has been suggested by Anne Forster that this means that the MIT90s methodology should be run twice over an institution, one for each bureaucracy "slice".
3. Uys, Philip, Towards the Virtual Class: key management issues in tertiary education, PhD dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 2000, available at http://www.globe-online.com/philip.uys/phdthesis. See in particular chapters 2 and 10. This dissertation describes the value of the MIT90s framework in structuring and analysing a large implementation action research programme – and the heuristics derived. It is, along with the work of Wills, one of the few examples of serious feedback into the MIT90s framework.
4. Segrave, Stephen, Holt, Dale and Farmer, James, “The power of the 6three model for enhancing academic teachers’ capacities for effective online teaching and learning: Benefits, initiatives and future directions”, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) 21(1), 2005, available at http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet21/segrave.html. This is a good read useful as a modern confirmation of the relevance of the MIT90s framework.

The original MIT90s book is:

• Scott Morton, Michael S. (ed), The Corporation of the 1990s: Information Technology and Organizational Transformation, Oxford University Press, 1991, ISBN: 0195063589. It is still an excellent and quite fast read.

To fill in further details readers were also referred to:

• Pennell, Russ, and Wills, Sandra, “Changing horses in mid-stream: a new LMS plus improved teaching”, Ausweb06, available at http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw06/papers/refereed/pennell/paper.html.
• Venkatraman, N. and Henderson, J. C. "Strategic alignment: Leveraging information technology for transforming organizations", IBM Systems Journal Vol. 32, No. 1, 1993, available at http://domino.watson.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/600cc5649e2871db852568150060213c/b0d32b9975af5a2e85256bfa00685ca0?OpenDocument.

A book of great interest for those interested in seeing a comprehensive framework based on MIT90s is:

• Ford, Peter, et al., Managing Change in Higher Education: A Learning Environment Architecture, Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, Buckingham, 1996, ISBN 0 335 19792 2 (hardback). This describes the OPENframework, developed by ICL in part based on MIT90s thinking, and its application to IT-driven change management. It was popular in JISC circles, in particular the MLE Steering Group, but there is virtually no information on the web about its actual use in specific universities.

Those interested in seeing a Change Management approach based on MIT90s considerations are referred to:

• the MBA dissertation by Paul Filmore, Promoting Readiness For Change In A Higher Education Academic (Engineering) Department, MBA dissertation, Plymouth Business School, University of Plymouth, June 1998 - see especially Chapter 3. (Paul would also like to draw readers' attention to his more recent web site on promoting organisational change, specifically in the areas of challenging mindsets using a number of techniques including TRIZ and disruptive innovation thinking.)

Creation of criteria

As noted in the work of Wills, Uys and others, the MIT90s strategic framework does not generate benchmarking criteria automatically. There are various ways of creating criteria, including using other frameworks to provide a kind of cross-correlation. One fruitful source of other frameworks is the frameworks used by other benchmarking schemes. The paper Pick&Mix mapping into MIT90s, available at http://elearning.heacademy.ac.uk/weblogs/benchmarking/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/PicknMix-MIT90s-20060925.doc, gives some idea of how this works.

A general paper on criteria creation is now available. This recommends looking to the Criterion Bank when inspiration fails - and in particular to systems such as Pick&Mix and E-xcellence which are now reasonably stable - and for those interested in IT, the ACODE system is recommended.

The categories of ELTI are also interesting to consider - as a report describes. (It is believed that the revised soon-to-be released version of ELTI will not substantially change its underlying approach.) And finally, although it is not widely known that OBHE has criteria or that they can be scored, the dissemination material released by Oxford Brookes provides an additional angle on the issue, as described in another report - which also considers the issue of how to turn a set of criteria scores into a coherent narrative. The fictional University of Rother Bridge is used to illustrate this.

Other approaches to creating criteria have been used from outside the benchmarking domain. For example, Strathclyde made some use of the TLT Group's "Portfolio of Strategies for Collaborative Change", available at http://www.tltgroup.org/gilbert/strategiesbase.htm. Yet others (not publicly) have used the ACTIONS framework from Managing Technological Change (Tony Bates, Jossey Bass) - see the IRRODL review. Interestingly the ACTIONS approach has been used in earlier days in JISC projects such as CNL under the JOS programme (formerly JCALT).

Finally, those interested in moving down from the institutional to a department or even more pedagogic level may find some value in the CHIRON approach - although a recent Concordance Report on this counsels caution.

Phase 2

In Phase 2, MIT90s is not being used. However, the four MIT90s institutions from Phase 1 are continuing to collaborate, and the three English MIT90s institutions have been put in the same Pathfinder cluster (the "Amoeba" cluster) along with Greenwich University (who used OBHE). The next MIT90s cohort meeting, doubling as the first Amoeba cluster meeting, was on June 28 at the University of Glamorgan.

Aspects of MIT90s continue since it is an accepted grouping approach for Pick&Mix criteria and is likely to figure at least implicitly in the change management aspects of a number of Benchmarking and Pathfinder sites.

There are some interesting aspects of the extent to which MIT90s institutions should align criteria with each other. See the Glossary for entries on loosely coupled, moderately coupled, tightly coupled and strictly coupled.

Since 2007

MIT90s has not been used for benchmarking but still informs some theoretical results and research papers.

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