Change in higher education: the psychological experience of facilitators and co-ordinators in a resource-based learning course

English: Higher Education in South Africa is currently being characterised by massification, globalisation, more non-traditional students entering the system, striving towards quality and cost-effective educational programmes, as well as a paradigm shift from lecture-based to resource-based learning (RBL) education (which is a learning methodology where the learning content is made accessible to students and the emphasis is shifted to the facilitator as the manager of knowledge and not the main source of knowledge). During the transformation of the South African higher education system, the ministry as well as various policy documents propose RBL as an appropriate delivery mode and a key principle to meet challenges (e.g. the expectations of the learners, the realities of the work place, and to maintain high standard graduates) posed to the university system. A profound understanding of the dynamics of a nation's higher educational change process is only possible when taking international developments into account. The evaluation of the experience of change is difficult, due to the complexity and pace of change in most higher education institutions. Change is affecting all facets of human experience. In this study attention is focused on the psychological experiences of facilitators and co-ordinators due to higher educational change in a RBL course. A quantitative and qualitative investigation was done to identify the presence of as well as the differences between the specific psychological experiences by facilitators and coordinators due to higher educational change (e.g. the paradigm shift to the RBL methodology). In this comparative study facilitators seem to be more concerned about the awareness, informational, personal, consequence and refocusing stages of concern, while the coordinators are more concerned about the management and collaboration stages of concern. These results correlate with the respective job descriptions of the facilitators and co-ordinators. In this study it is evident that both facilitators and co-ordinators have limited RBL knowledge and skills, due to their short involvement period in this delivery mode. The latter may be one of the reasons to clarify the presence of negative experiences of the self as regard coping with RBL by facilitators and co-ordinators. The facilitators' and co-ordinators' involvement in RBL was due to an obliged change, because they were nominated instead of volunteering. Therefore, this may implicate that the shift to RBL implies hard and difficult work for the developers, in order to equip staff with the necessary knowledge and skills of RBL. The majority of facilitators indicated that they are in favour of workshops. Only half of the co-ordinators were positive towards workshops, which indicates an important concern, if one takes into account that co-ordinators have to be subject experts who are responsible for the training and orientation of the facilitators and therefore need workshops/training opportunities to keep up with the latest developments regarding RBL. Both facilitators and co-ordinators demonstrated an increase in motivation, competency, and confidence levels, because they experience RBL as positive and effective. After six months there appears to be a difference between facilitators whose excitement levels were decreasing, while co-ordinators' excitement levels remained equal. The latter could be due to the fact that facilitators are more directly confronted with the RBL practice. There is also the tendency of high frustration levels amongst facilitators and co-ordinators which appear to be caused by the prominent problems in the South African context and the complexity of the Western culture of the students. A unique factor that complicates the implementation of RBL in the Resource-based Learning Career Preparation Programme is that staff are presenting and students are receiving education through a second-language medium. The above-mentioned perspectives and insights gained from the comparative study could guide both the developers and managers of the Resource-based Learning Career Preparation Programme to improve directly the psychological functioning of staff, and indirectly to improve the whole programme.