Over the past few months, I’ve been involved in a research project, exploring how digital, teaching, professional services, and IT teams work together in Further Education. The aim is to better understand what enables successful collaboration, where friction arises, and how we might support improvement across the sector.
We’re now moving into the analysis phase, but in this blog I want to share a few of my early reflections.
We have heard of great examples of collaboration. These are the kind of initiatives that get things done and genuinely improve the experience for learners. Often, this work is made possible by leadership that supports a shared digital vision across departments and supports teams to work together with clarity and purpose.
Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash
At the same time, I can see how, even with the best intentions, collaboration can be slowed or strained. What’s already clear to me is that successful collaboration relies not just on goodwill, but on building mutual understanding between teams with different priorities, pressures, and ways of working.
Here are a few imagined scenarios, based on recurring themes and my own experience of working in the sector. With each scenario, I’ve included questions I’ve been mulling over from the perspective of digital leadership which might prove useful prompts for your own reflection. My hope is that these scenarios offer a chance to pause and reflect on where things sometimes get stuck and how we might work together to move them forward.
The IT manager dealing with shadow systems and unmet training gaps
An IT manager is juggling cybersecurity threats, data compliance, and a growing list of unapproved applications quietly adopted by staff exploring ways to engage their learners. Meanwhile, tickets are coming in for issues that are a result of a lack of training, not technical issues. The team is caught in a cycle of fixing, firefighting, and fending off risk, without the capacity to step back and plan.
Where does IT’s role end and digital development begin? Who else is needed at the table?
The ESOL lecturer left out of the loop
An hourly paid English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) lecturer isn’t invited to attend training events at the end of the year. They don’t know where to look for the available online training and don’t know where announcements are made on the intranet. When Multi-Factor Authentication is introduced with little warning, some of their learners are unable to access the college systems and the lecturer feels powerless to help.
How can we avoid unintentionally excluding the very people we’re meant to serve?
The IT Technician caught between process and immediacy
Every day, an IT technician is stopped in the corridor by lecturers needing ad hoc urgent help with logins, broken projectors, or equipment that’s failing just before class. These issues aren’t logged with the ticketing system, but if the technician doesn’t step in, the lessons won’t work.
How can we recognise both the formal and informal work our staff are doing?
The learning technologist reliant on goodwill
An immersive learning room is being introduced, a project with huge potential for teaching and student engagement. The learning technologist leading the rollout needs input from IT, estates, curriculum staff and other stakeholders. None of these teams report to them or have been formally assigned to the project.
How might we structure shared responsibility for cross-cutting projects across specialisms?
Looking ahead
These aren’t failures, but moments where good work meets structural tension, or where collaboration relies more on personal relationships than shared processes.
What we’ve seen so far suggests that successful collaboration isn’t just about tools or policies. It’s about understanding the pressures others are working under, building empathy between teams, and creating the right conditions for people to join up their efforts more easily.
Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing the full findings from our research, including examples of promising practice and insights into where improvements can be made. We hope this will offer practical support for those working to strengthen collaboration in their own settings.
In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you. Do any of these scenarios resonate with your own experience? What’s working well in your context and what more could help?
