Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

ACTION RESEARCH IN A PARTNERSHIP 137
We were also engaged in sorting out final fee structures (confirmed by
the registrar’s office on 8 September), negotiating with consortium
members and making visits to our partner companies to meet potential
students. A major problem in recruitment was that we had not had time to
develop a procedure for accrediting students’ prior learning in advance of
their enrolment. APL (accreditation of prior learning from courses) and
APEL (accreditation of prior experiential learning) were always intended to
be key components of the COMEX programmes, but the machinations of
negotiating our way through university regulations and committees had
meant that we had no time to develop this strand of COMEX work. This
was a major discouragement for some who were reluctant to enrol as a
student without a significant amount of APL/APEL credit to shorten the
period of study. Another major problem was that we had not had time to
develop and deliver an induction programme for workplace tutors prior to
the commencement of teaching. Since these people were in nearly every
case not the same as the company’s Consortium Group member, they took
on this new role without any real idea of what it entailed. A third problem
was that recruitment in this first year was limited to COMEX partner companies
and the delays in sorting out the exact fees to be paid to the university
made it difficult for the company representatives to decide on the
number of students they could support. Unfortunately, it was only at the
stage when we had gained approval ‘in principle’ for the courses that we
were able to begin our negotiations with the registrar’s office over fees; and
the general shortage of funds across the whole university made the registrar
keen to set the level as high as possible, while we were keen to set it as
low as possible in order to reach our recruitment targets. To complicate
matters further the question of overheads on the COMEX budget was raised
by an acting manager in EDU, which got us into a minefield on how that
budget broke down into research and development component parts. The
decision on the name of the degrees (BA and MA in professional development)
was not made until the COMEX steering group meeting on 28
September, but was ratified on the same day by the chair of the Teaching
Committee who was present at the meeting.
The fourth stage of COMEX, from October 1994, was the commencement
of the teaching programme with two cohorts of students, at masters
and undergraduate level. Each course began with a three-day residential
teaching block in which:
• We focused on the key principles and practices of action research
methodology and methods, and supported students in planning
their first action-oriented research in their company.
• We engaged students in discussions of interpersonal relations and
ethics and they drafted codes of practice to negotiate with
company colleagues.