TAHR – The Operating Procedure for building ICT supported services in educational organisations

If your task is to implement ICT based services for knowledge management, eLearning or ePublishing and to manage authors, teaching professionals or knowledge workers then you must have been waiting for an Operating Procedure that provides you with a systemic approach to change management and empowers you with the tools and processes to optimize your knowledge business.

The TAHR^TM Operating Procedure has been developed within a number of recent service enabling projects and can now support you to get to sustainable results while cutting down project costs significantly and achieve your goals faster than ever before.

In capacity building projects the TAHR^TM Operating Procedure shortens the transfer phase from newly acquired knowledge to its successful application

Hoffmann&Reif has been engaged in many regional and international ICT projects in which Operating Procedures became an essential part for process rationalization and sustainability of results. These procedures are now consolidated and form the TAHR^TM Operating Procedures. They allow a systemic approach towards change processes crucial for the deployment of ICTs.

The TAHR^TM illustration below illustrates how stakeholders become enabled to offer knowlege building services.

The TAHR^TM Operating Procedure enables stakeholders to rapidly offer ICT based knowledge services

The TAHR^TM Operating Procedures have been applied to small, medium sized and also large scale projects in the public and private sector in recent years. They imply:

to engage stakeholders through a set of proven frameworks and solutions
to start incrementally and to deliver fast results at an early project stage
to allow consensus building within the organisation right from the beginning of the project
to continually assess the project team according to the portfolio assessment model (e-portfolios)
to focus on workplace relevant activities (action learning)
to further develop and apply Standard Operating Procedures
to apply an easy to understand modularization strategy for instructional content based on three models: WebQuest model, SCORM reference model and CISCO RLO strategy
to design ePublishing workflows based on the SNTL consulting approach and the ZMS publishing model
to apply the collaboration methodology of shared workspaces within or across organizational boundaries (Basic Support for Cooperative Work, BSCW)
to document intensively and make processes, criteria and results transparently available on the web
to debrief teams soon after any relevant activity or operation through After Action Reviews (see Draft After Action Review Toolkit, see also The US Army´s After Action Review: Excerpt, Leader's Guide to After-Action Reviews, 1993)

TAHR^TM has been developed in recent years in order to take into account the specific needs of ICT projects deploying Open Source technology. The Operating Procedures unleashes the power of Open Source ICT for education and knowledge delivery services. They help to start the organisation’s change processes right from the beginning of the project - and not when products and technical solutions are finally in place.

How do the operating procedures work in practice ?

The following illustration is an example how the Operating Procedure helps to design and implement a stakeholder enabling approach. It shows an enabling implementation process for a medium sized learning content management project (between 5.000 - 10.000 web pages). The application service is set up within a few days so that the authors, producers and the system manager can work efficiently while receiving on the job coaching (action learning approach). The technology system itself serves as a coaching workbench and is extended according to the coaching results. The development is done by those who are in charge of management and customization. This is an important requirement. In the past very often products and solutions have been delivered which could not easily become customized afterwards by those in charge. The TAHR^TM procedure requires stakeholders to get involved intensively in the development process right from the beginning.

TAHR™ technology deployment procedure for Open Source based educational portals

Through this enabling procedure the financial investment goes into the development of human capacities mainly. The average costs are less than 60% of comparable projects since the technical set up plays a less relevant role. This is possible because the ZMS ePublishing procedure requires little customization and server technology is licence cost free. The stakeholders develop ownership at an early project stage and get familiar with all processes and the technology environment rapidly.