Higher Education Change Management for Academic Transformation Training Course
| Course code | SD-CM-038 |
|---|---|
| Duration | 5 days |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Category | Change Management |
| Delivery | Classroom or live online |
| Language | English |
| Certificate | Certificate of completion |
Course overview
Universities and colleges are managing overlapping transformation agendas: curriculum redesign, student-system implementation, assessment reform, faculty workload changes, mergers, new operating models, and changing regulatory expectations. These initiatives often stall when leaders treat change as a communications exercise rather than a structured transition affecting academic autonomy, governance, professional services, unions, students, and external partners. This course equips participants to move academic transformation from approved strategy to sustained adoption.
Participants learn to diagnose change readiness, map institutional stakeholders, assess academic and operational impacts, and build practical change plans for complex higher education environments. The course applies Prosci ADKAR and Kotter-based change methods to faculty engagement, senate and committee governance, curriculum approvals, learning technology adoption, and service redesign. Participants practise creating sponsor roadmaps, stakeholder maps, change-impact assessments, resistance-response plans, communications calendars, and adoption measures that distinguish activity from genuine behavioural change.
Instructor-led workshops use realistic university cases, including a new student information system, hybrid-learning policy rollout, and school-level curriculum transformation. Participants work with templates in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, Miro, and Power BI to analyse stakeholders, sequence interventions, and report adoption risks to senior sponsors. By the end of the week, each participant leaves with an Academic Transformation Change Playbook: a structured, workplace-ready plan for one live or proposed institutional change initiative.
The course is designed for leaders and transformation practitioners who already work in higher education and need a disciplined method for delivering change across academic and professional-service boundaries. It is particularly valuable where institutional decisions require consultation, evidence, governance approval, and sustained engagement rather than a simple top-down rollout.
Course objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Diagnose organisational readiness for an academic transformation using a structured change-readiness assessment
- Map faculty, student, professional-service, governance, and external stakeholders using influence-impact analysis
- Conduct a change-impact assessment covering roles, workflows, academic practice, systems, and policy requirements
- Build an ADKAR-based adoption plan for a higher education change initiative
- Create a sponsor roadmap that defines executive, dean, head-of-school, and programme-leader responsibilities
- Design a segmented communications and engagement plan for academic and professional-service audiences
- Develop resistance-management actions for concerns relating to autonomy, workload, assessment, and technology adoption
- Produce an Academic Transformation Change Playbook with measures, milestones, risks, and governance actions
Benefits of attending
For you
- Gain a repeatable method for leading change where academic autonomy and institutional priorities must be balanced
- Build credibility with senior leaders by presenting adoption risks, stakeholder evidence, and mitigation actions clearly
- Improve capability to engage faculty and professional services without relying on one-size-fits-all communications
- Create a portfolio-ready Academic Transformation Change Playbook based on a real institutional initiative
- Prepare for transformation, PMO, academic leadership, and organisational development roles within higher education
For your organisation
- Reduce implementation delays caused by late faculty engagement, unclear local ownership, or unmanaged resistance
- Improve consistency of change planning across schools, faculties, central services, and transformation programmes
- Provide senior sponsors with clearer evidence of readiness, adoption risk, and required intervention
- Increase uptake of curriculum, policy, digital-learning, and student-service changes through targeted support plans
- Create reusable stakeholder, impact-assessment, communications, and adoption-measurement templates for future initiatives
Target competencies
Who should attend
- Academic Transformation Managers — who coordinate institution-wide change across faculties, schools, and professional services
- Heads of School and Department Chairs — who must translate institutional decisions into workable local academic practice
- Programme Directors — who lead curriculum, assessment, or student-experience changes affecting teaching teams
- PMO and Project Managers — who need to integrate adoption work with higher education project delivery controls
- Learning and Teaching Leaders — who sponsor changes to pedagogy, digital learning, or quality-assurance practice
- Professional Services Directors — who redesign student, registry, finance, HR, or support services alongside academic stakeholders
Requirements and prerequisites
Participants should have experience working in a university, college, faculty, school, or higher education support function and should understand how committees, academic leadership, and professional services interact. Familiarity with a current or planned change initiative, such as a system implementation, curriculum review, service redesign, or policy rollout, will make the exercises more valuable. Participants should be comfortable reading project plans and using basic spreadsheets. Prior formal training in Prosci, Kotter, Agile, PRINCE2, or organisational development is not required, and no advanced data analysis or software configuration skills are assumed.
Training methodology
The course combines focused instructor-led teaching with higher education transformation cases, facilitated peer discussion, and template-based workshops. Participants analyse governance structures, stakeholder groups, and change impacts drawn from university scenarios before applying the same methods to their own initiative. Small-group exercises test engagement choices for faculty, students, unions, and professional services. Participants use Miro, Excel, Project, and Power BI examples to build practical artefacts, receive instructor feedback, and finish with an implementation plan for their Academic Transformation Change Playbook.
Course outline
Day 1: Understanding change in higher education institutions
- Characteristics of academic transformation and institutional change
- Academic governance, delegated authority, and committee decision routes
- Faculty autonomy, professional identity, and change response
- The relationship between strategy, portfolio delivery, and adoption
- Prosci ADKAR model applied to university change
- Kotter change principles for multi-stakeholder institutions
- Change-readiness assessment dimensions and evidence sources
Workshop: Participants assess the readiness of a university-wide curriculum transformation and produce a prioritised readiness-risk profile.
Day 2: Stakeholders, impacts, and sponsorship
- Stakeholder segmentation across academic and professional-service groups
- Influence-impact stakeholder mapping in Miro
- Student voice, union consultation, and external partner engagement
- Change-impact assessment for roles, processes, systems, and policy
- Faculty workload and capability implications of transformation
- Sponsor coalition design for executive and academic leaders
- RACI and decision-rights mapping for change activities
Workshop: Participants build a stakeholder map, impact assessment, and sponsor RACI for a student information system implementation.
Day 3: Engagement, communication, and resistance management
- Audience-specific engagement strategies for faculty and staff
- Listening channels, consultation design, and feedback-loop closure
- Communications planning by change phase and stakeholder need
- Message architecture for academic purpose, evidence, and local impact
- Resistance diagnosis using ADKAR barrier analysis
- Response planning for workload, autonomy, technology, and quality concerns
- Manager briefing packs and change-conversation guides
Workshop: Participants create a segmented communications calendar and resistance-response plan for a hybrid-learning policy rollout.
Day 4: Implementation planning and adoption measurement
- Integrated change and project planning in Microsoft Project
- Change milestone sequencing around academic calendars and approval cycles
- Training, performance support, and local champion networks
- Adoption metrics versus delivery metrics
- Pulse surveys, focus groups, and behavioural adoption indicators
- Change dashboards and risk reporting in Microsoft Power BI
- Benefits-realisation links for academic transformation programmes
Workshop: Participants develop an adoption measurement dashboard specification and integrated change milestone plan for a service redesign.
Day 5: Building the Academic Transformation Change Playbook
- Playbook structure for institution-level and faculty-level change
- Translating readiness findings into intervention priorities
- Governance reporting and escalation of adoption risks
- Resource planning for change leads, champions, and local support
- Ethical engagement and equitable participation in institutional change
- Sustaining change after launch through reinforcement mechanisms
- Executive presentation of the change case and action plan
Workshop: Participants complete and present their Academic Transformation Change Playbook, receiving peer and instructor feedback on implementation priorities.
Tools & standards covered
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Power BI, Miro
A typical training day
| 08:30 – 10:30 | First session |
| 10:30 – 10:45 | Refreshment break |
| 10:45 – 12:30 | Second session |
| 12:30 – 13:30 | Lunch and networking |
| 13:30 – 15:00 | Third session |
| 15:00 – 15:15 | Refreshment break |
| 15:15 – 16:30 | Workshop and daily review |
Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.
What the fee includes
- Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
- Full course workbook and materials
- Exercise files, templates and case studies
- Certificate of completion
- Refreshments and lunch (classroom deliveries)
- Post-course application plan
- Facilitator follow-up on request
- Group rates from five participants
How you can take this course
Classroom
Scheduled sessions in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kigali, Dar es Salaam, Dubai and Cape Town.
Live online
The same facilitator and materials, delivered live for distributed teams and individuals.
In-house
Delivered privately for your team, at your offices or a venue of your choice, tailored to your context. Request a proposal.
Certification
Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.
Frequently asked questions
Upcoming sessions
New dates are being scheduled. Ask us about the next session or an in-house delivery for your team.
Ask about datesGroup of 5+?
Request in-house delivery or group rates →Related courses in Change Management
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