Building Momentum

Building momentum around possibilities

Building momentum around shared vision, well-planned actions, collaboration and involvement of stakeholders and leaders at all levels -- while being innovative, flexible, open and outcome-oriented -- can significantly increase success of a project. Momentum can attract new partners and keep everyone engaged and energized through the process. Therefore, it is very beneficial to prepare a plan on how to build and keep momentum in an early stage of a project.

Building Momentum

Drivers for change

Universities and veterinary schools exist within political, cultural and social contexts that shape their policy and practice (Hammond, 2003). That context shapes three main drivers:

Economic and social development,
Beliefs and expectations of the role of education in our ever-changing society,
Development of educational technologies that have the potential to enable us to achieve these objectives.

Mobilizing Global Network

The global network provides significantly more options than a regional network. Niall Sclater, director of Learning Innovation at the Open University concluded (Bierhals, 2009): “It wouldn't make sense to restrict [partnerships] to the UK or Europe. You're not getting all the expertise that's around.”

Power of Global Network. If we mobilize all veterinary faculty experienced with Moodle course development, we will see that we have a huge number of experienced e-learning professionals and a significant number of interactive online courses. Just to name a few:

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

Building collaborative teams is a challenging task in any environment. That is why it is important to have a framework that provides the possibility of ‘absolute independence’ if a member institution wants. It can be a helpful tool for braking initial resistance and long-lasting success.
In the long run, development of collaborative teams is an essential task. Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson wrote “Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams” in the Harvard Business Review (Gratton, Erickson, 2007). They noted that: