The challenge of managing staff in the workplace: exploring the affordances and opportunities of machinima for supporting managers in higher education Authors Claudia Igbrude Pauline Rooney Phil Kenna Maura O’Toole Address for correspondence Dublin Institute of Technology, 14 Upper Mount Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. claudia.igbrude@dit.ie l pauline.rooney@dit.ie l phil.kenna@dit.ie Facilitrain, Ardee, Co. Louth, Ireland maura@facilitrain.com The challenge of managing staff in the workplace: exploring the affordances and opportunities of machinima for supporting managers in higher education In any organisation, a key role of management involves handling staff grievances and maintaining discipline in a fair and consistent manner (Hook et al. 1996). In order to do this, it is generally recognised (in accordance with the principles of industrial relations) that fair procedures are in place and observed (Industrial Relations Act 1990). To this end, it is important that managers are familiar with such procedures and able to follow them appropriately and fairly. To date, the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) has provided all managers with relevant training in this area through regular, mandatory face-to-face workshops. Covering a wide range of areas including gross misconduct, individual grievance, academic misconduct and poor performance, these sessions are run at regular intervals throughout the year and attendance is mandatory. However, while this conventional training strategy has proved effective in disseminating relevant information and guidelines to managers, weaknesses have been identified in its failing to provide timely ongoing support as disciplinary issues arise. To remediate this support gap, a cross-disciplinary team in the DIT — encompassing professional trainer/subject matter expert, higher education managers, elearning developers and audio-visual experts — are exploring the affordances of virtual technologies by developing an online resource which supports managers in their handling of disciplinary and grievance issues. Drawing from a series of realistic scenarios which were subsequently developed into “screenplays”, multiple technologies are currently being used in the implementation of this tool including Articulate Studio 9.0, and Microsoft PowerPoint. To enhance the interactivity, immersion and realism of this scenario-based tool, embedded machinima are being developed using the virtual world Second Life (www.secondlife.com). (See figure 1.) Figure 1. A screen grab of the online resource, developed using Second Life. This e-poster will describe the rationale for developing this resource — with particular reference to theme 4 of the conference and the challenges facing higher education organisations today at the human resource level — and underpinning design strategies and technologies. Lessons learned to date and future work on the project will also be outlined. References Hook, C.M., D.J. Rollinson, M. Foot, J. Handley. 1996. Supervisor and manager styles in handling discipline and grievance. Part one — comparing styles in handling discipline and grievance. Personnel Review, 25 (3): 20-34. Industrial Relations Act, 1990 (Code of Practice on Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures) (Declaration) Order, 2000, Ireland. http://www.lrc.ie/viewdoc.asp?docid=88.