The project is moving quickly. The platform has been chosen, and both the timeline and design approach have been mapped out. Academic staff are invited to review the plan. But instead of enthusiasm, the response is hesitation.
Your instinct may be to see that hesitation as resistance, and to instill measures to overcome that resistance. A better response is to understand it.
Academic hesitation is rarely evidence that people simply oppose change. More often, it signals unresolved concerns about legacy, workload, autonomy, academic quality or a process in which the most important decisions were made before academic staff were meaningfully involved.
That is the central tension explored in Collaborative Design, the second pillar of Leading with SCALE: A framework for resilient digital higher education. The full guide presents five interconnected pillars for building sustainable digital capability: Strategy First, Collaborative Design, Agile Execution, Learner-Centric Quality and Evergreen Innovation.
Strategy establishes the direction and Collaborative Design brings the people responsible for academic quality into the work of making it real.
Buy-in cannot be added at the end
The SCALE Guide was built on more than 15 years of working with higher education institutions globally, and in that time we have seen clear patterns emerge. Institutions often ask academic staff to take ownership of digital learning after the parameters of the project have already been set. Academic staff are only invited to contribute once the process has already taken shape.
This may technically qualify as consultation, but it is unlikely to create genuine ownership.
The SCALE guide makes a clear distinction between involving academic staff as contributors and engaging them as co-creators. When collaboration begins early, or is introduced as a systemic routine, institutions are better able to surface practical constraints and preserve subject-level nuance. And this builds confidence in how academic expertise will translate into the online environment.
“Academic buy-in is not something that can be secured once the direction of travel has already been decided,” says Arlene Stewart, Director of Academics and Operation at OES UK. “It grows when people understand the purpose of the work, can influence the process and see that their expertise is shaping the outcome.”
What resistance may really be telling you
The Collaborative Design chapter of SCALE identifies several factors that commonly sit beneath academic hesitation. One of the most significant is time. Academic staff may already be balancing teaching, research, student support and institutional responsibilities, so course development can feel like an additional burden when expectations, timelines and support structures have not been made clear.
Resistance may also be signalling concern about autonomy. Shared frameworks and templates can improve consistency for learners, but if their purpose is not explained properly, they may be interpreted as attempts to standardise teaching or reduce subject-level nuance. What looks like reluctance may actually be a request for reassurance that academic judgement will still shape the learning experience.
A third issue is confidence. Subject expertise does not automatically translate into confidence with online pedagogy, multimedia course design or unfamiliar digital tools. When academic staff are asked to work in new formats without structured onboarding, examples or design support, the process can feel exposing rather than empowering.
The research featured in the guide reinforces this. While 64% of UK teaching staff rate their digital teaching environment positively, confidence declines when workload, support and design processes are considered. More than half report recurring friction with systems, access or workflows.
Viewed in this light, resistance is information about where the transformation process may be placing too much risk or responsibility on the people it depends upon. The guide explores other signals leaders should pay attention to, including unclear governance, late consultation and the absence of practical tools that help academic staff move from reluctant participation to shared ownership.
“Leaders should be curious when academic staff hesitate,” says Andrea Burrows, Managing Director of OES UK. “Rather than asking how to overcome resistance, they should ask what it reveals. That curiosity can turn a point of friction into a better path forward.”
Case study: Collaborative design in practice
The guide illustrates Collaborative Design through a university project involving the redesign of an entire degree programme for online delivery.
At the outset, some academic staff are concerned about losing autonomy, while others feel overwhelmed by the expected workload. Rather than treating this as a barrier to the timetable, the OES Learning Solutions team introduces a co-design process.
Academic staff participate in early discovery workshops where they can raise concerns and define their teaching goals. Pilot course assets are developed quickly, allowing them to see how their content might translate into engaging digital formats. Early adopters are then given opportunities to demonstrate to colleagues that online design could preserve academic rigour while expanding access.
By the end of the project, some of the people who had initially been most cautious become its strongest advocates.
The bridge between strategy and delivery
Now imagine the project starting differently. Academic staff are not brought in once the plan has already been decided. They are invited into early discovery, asked to define what quality should look like in their discipline and shown prototypes while there is still time to shape the outcome. Concerns about workload, autonomy and academic rigour are not treated as resistance to be overcome, but as design intelligence that strengthens the work.
The result is a different kind of momentum. Academic expertise becomes visible in the learning experience. Design decisions are better informed. Teams have a clearer route through complexity. And the people responsible for academic quality can see their contribution reflected in what is built.
Collaborative Design is one pillar of a wider operating model. Strategy may establish what an institution wants to achieve, but collaboration ensures that this direction is informed by the people who understand the curriculum and the learners. In turn, that shared ownership creates stronger foundations for agile delivery, consistent quality and innovation that can be sustained.
For institutions seeking to transform digital learning, the objective should not be to eliminate challenge or disagreement. It should be to create a process capable of learning from both.
Download the full Leading with SCALE guide to explore the Collaborative Design chapter, use the readiness checklist to assess your current approach and discover how all five pillars work together to build digital capability that is rigorous, resilient and ready to evolve.
