Communication Plan For The Implementation Of Holoportation In University Of South Australia

Using a university template (provided) as guidance, prepare a communication plan that will announce the deal to an internal audience within UniSA at the same time as the external stakeholders are advised.

In addition to the information above, you are permitted to make assumptions regarding any further information you may need to fulfil this task (for example, fictitious names of individuals, university/company structures, dates, technology).The template may be amended where necessary and is provided as a guide for the content only.You will need to identify the items that need to be included in the budget, but the actual costs/amounts do not need to be accurate and can be estimated.

Revision History

This is a communication plan to communicate and support the implementation of holoportation in the University of South Australia. The implementation will be done by collaboratively working with Maverick Technology Pty. Ltd. The University of South Australia will purchase the product from MavTech that has an in-built in it the holoportation technology to further its teaching standards and patterns. Since, this is a significant change and would be realized widely across the university campus, this requires a valued contribution of its stakeholders to make this happen. Hence, the first and foremost step towards seeking a significant contribution of stakeholders is to construct a plan that informs the stakeholders on the technology.

An effective communication from the senior management team will be needed to let the professionals at different levels in management know the concept. Until and unless the management team and staffs are not informed on the technology, they will not be able to support the implementation and will actually become the possible barriers. Hence, the main purpose is to prepare an effective communication plan, so that, the partnering collaboration between MavTech and the University of South Australia is known to public and to stakeholders of the university.

2. Revision History

MavTech and the University of South Australia have been working together for the last six months. The project team from the university those that are working with MavTech comprises of teachers, IT team and administration officers. MavTech is a technology company that develops products based on advanced technologies. The company is already known for its virtual conferencing technology.

The company recently has developed a product enabled with “holoportation” technology, which introduces a 3D capture technology. The technology offers HoloLens, which allows remote participants in 3D to see each other as if they are actually present. The University of South Australia has seen some prospects in the technology especially in terms of enhancing the learning experience: Few of applications of the technology in the University are:

• Guest-lecturers can be seen live into an on-campus class while being in another location
• Projecting lecturers into one of the campus sites in the country such as a UniSA Whyalla
• Projecting a lecturer into the home location of online students in real-time
• Enabling small group tutorials comprising of students at different locations

Since, MavTech and the UniSA is planning to announce their partnership publically on 12^th December 2018, the UniSA has thought of preparing communication plan to be able to make people understand the concept.  

Revision History in Tabular Form

Table 1: Revision History

(Source:)

3. Approvals

Table 2: Communication Plan Approvals

(Source:)

Table 3: Distribution

(Source: created by author)

5. Content 

This communication plan will have a number of contents. These are:

• Plan Overview
• Revision History
• Approvals
• Distribution
• Content
• Situation Analysis
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Objectives
• Key Messages
• Strategies and Tactics
• Implementation
• Evaluation
• Appendix A: Stakeholder Analysis
• 6. Situation Analysis 

Statement of the opportunity:-

Holoportation is a growing concept for a wide array of industry across the globe. The technology can be applied to a number of real situation that were never thought before. Restricting the discussion just to the case study university, one can observe some real opportunity in this technology. With this technology, guest lecturers will be made available to staffs and students in the UniSA without inviting them to the university premise. Guest lecturers are generally packed with busy schedules. Hence, there are high chances of a gap between needing a guest lecturer and the possibility of turning out to the call.

Approvals

Instead, the guest lecturer might have some other engagement at around the same time. This problem can be resolved by not waiting for the availability and simply creating an environment where both the guest lecturer and the university can work at their convenience. The option is exactly in-line with one of the applications of “holoportation”.

There are many other opportunities like transforming the experience of an online teaching. With the application of “holoportation”, online students will be able to see online tutors from the UniSA at their homes in real-time. Nevertheless, there are a very few universities to offer the similar learning transformation to online students as compared to UniSA. Therefore, UniSA will have some real opportunity to further its business provided that the university performs well like in terms of attracting local and foreign students.  

Justification for the plan: - There are a few reasons why a communication plan is needed. Those facts will also justify the need of a communication plan to the UniSA. These are:

Clarify the Purpose: It is a necessity to identify the viewpoints of professionals and students for the proposed implementation.

Identify the Audience: A communication plan helps to identify the audience whom the plan needs to be discussed with.

Alignment of stakeholders: It is a complete waste to invest in a plan while few of stakeholders are not sure of the plan and fail to correlate their practices with that of the plan.

Use of Resources: A limited or no knowledge of the available resources is like wasting money and time for not so solid strategies and tactics.

A Strategy for measuring the success: Organizations carefully watch their budgets and look for metrics to effectively measure the performance. However, if the ultimate goal is unclear to a few or many, it is definitely challenging to measure the success.

7. Stakeholder Analysis 

8. Objectives 

The primary purpose of this plan is to ensure that its participants are engaged in effective communication and are mindful of policies and their responsibilities in the implementation plan of “holoportation”. Objectives are:

• Drive awareness for the initiative and its expected impact on the UniSA specifically on the learning environment
• Establish more supports than barriers to pave the way for a progressive and uninterrupted implementation
• Create an awareness for the initiative in between key stakeholders
• Keep generating excitement for the project by celebrating achievements of each and every milestone
• Reinforce or realign the project with the strategic goals of UniSA
• Provide update information to let everyone know why the project is in place and what educational milestones will be achieved with it
• Ensure a committed support of leaders of UniSA
• Drive visibility to gain recognition for the project
• Create forums to brainstorm ideas
• Inform project timeline
• Motivate staffs by communicating the importance of their involvement in the plan
• Build a community of people and ideas to expect a positive project outcome
• Promote an open communication between those that are involved in and are affected from the project  

9. Key Messages 

Table 4: Key Messages

(Source:)

10. Strategies and tactics 

Strategies and tactics will be commenced in four possible ways. These are:

Step 1: Identify Stakeholders

These are:

• Students and Families
• Deans Council
• Operational Team Leaders
• Operational Champions
• Database Administrators
• Subject  Matter Experts
• Process Owners
• Technology Vendors (MavTech)

Step 2: Create Messages of Communication

Table 5: Messages of Communication

(Source:)

Step 3: Select Best and Relevant Channels for Communication

External Communications

• About the Technology
• The Team
• Areas to be covered in Implementation
• Information regarding Contacts
• Latest  updates about the program

PowerPoint

A very detailed information about the technology and its application relate plan

Project Scorecards

• Upcoming milestones
• Reflects the progress
• Risks
• Budget vs. actual

Program Scorecards

• Risks
• Attainment of goals
• Reflects the program-level budget

Project Plans

Due dates, schedules with roles and responsibilities

Financial Summaries

Financial classifications, earned value, actual vs. budget plan, and performing the program cost

Meetings or Meeting Minutes

Open issues, key decisions, and project status

Risk Logs

This will include the current status and risks those were raised.

Action Logs

To show the status and project a wide list of specific deliverables.

Step 4: Evaluation

(Find this in 12. Evaluation)

11. Implementation 

11.1 Timings/Schedule 

(See Appendix B)

11.2 Roles and Responsibilities 

(See: 10. Strategies and tactics - Step 2: Create Messages of Communication)

11.3 Budget 

(See Appendix C)

12. Evaluation 

Feedback and measurement are critical factors to evaluate the communication plan. The focus will be to validate a few things. It includes timeliness, communication channels, credibility and relevancy, team spirit and morale, and comprehension.

By evaluating the feedback, a continuous improvement process could be implemented. This will enable the communication team to effectively fulfill the needs of stakeholders and the audience. There will be events like face-to-face communication that will create opportunities for stakeholders to provide direct feedback. Face-to-face communications will be in several forms like workshops, focus groups, review sessions etc. Some other channels of generating feedbacks and doing the evaluation will include physical feedback forms.

Students and staffs in the UniSA will be able to use their official E-mail portal to ask questions and share their feedbacks. Any further concerns regarding the information as outlined in this plan should be directed to the communication program executive for the university. This can be done by either using the email address of the communication program executive or by calling to the person or whichever be the mode is feasible to the university.

Communication channels and Feedback Formats:-

Website: This would be used to place random surveys and track the visits to the site. This will also be used to submit questions and comments.

Meet and Greets; Workshops: It will be utilized for doing surveys, tracking the attendance and encouraging the face-to-face comment format.

Surveys and Focus Groups: These things will be especially designed around issues or anything related with communications.

Ongoing Communications and Project Updates: This will include information about the contact and will promote the email box.

References 

Binder, Jean. Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. Routledge, 2016.

Conforto, Edivandro C., Fabian Salum, Daniel C. Amaral, Sérgio Luis da Silva, and Luís Fernando Magazine de Almeida. "Can agile project management be adopted by industries other than software development?." Project Management Journal 45, no. 3 (2014): 21-34.

Harrison, Frederick, and Dennis Lock. Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge, 2017.

Kaiser, Michael G., Fedi El Arbi, and Frederik Ahlemann. "Successful project portfolio management beyond project selection techniques: Understanding the role of structural alignment." International Journal of Project Management 33, no. 1 (2015): 126-139.

Lock, Dennis. The essentials of project management. Routledge, 2017.

Marcelino-Sádaba, Sara, Amaya Pérez-Ezcurdia, Angel M. Echeverría Lazcano, and Pedro Villanueva. "Project risk management methodology for small firms." International journal of project management 32, no. 2 (2014): 327-340.

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Nicholas, John M., and Herman Steyn. Project management for engineering, business and technology. Routledge, 2017.

Serra, Carlos Eduardo Martins, and Martin Kunc. "Benefits realisation management and its influence on project success and on the execution of business strategies." International Journal of Project Management 33, no. 1 (2015): 53-66.