Month: November 2010

Schools, systems and change done to me

On November 29, 2010

If you read, listen or watch to a certain sub-section of the media around schools and the education system more broadly it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that schools are broken and need to be changed. A couple of recent posts from the feeds I track have got me thinking. George Siemens recently described his belief that it is so broken that it needs to be changed from the outside, probably by entrepreneurs. George Couros, speaking from within the systems, has generated some discussion with a post reflecting on whether or not and why people don’t like change. He summarises some of the comments in this post.

The type of change that is being talked about within the education systems are, to me, examples of a wicked design problem. This is mostly because educational systems are human systems. As such they are not simple, ordered systems. Education systems are complex adaptive systems. Which, when you simplify it (potentially a bit too far), means that there is not one single answer. So, while the following questions some existing perspectives or approaches to change, I’m not claiming to have the single answer.

The deficit model of changees

This is one of my bugbears. It is one I heard again and again and again within a university context from people who were trying to change the system. It’s the practice of blaming the changees. That is, the reason why our wonderful plan for radically improving education failed because the people who had to change weren’t good enough.

It’s a common experience. Eric Johnson made the following as a comment on the Couros post

The ‘agents’ of change are usually outside of the classroom and if a teacher raises concerns they are slapped with a tag such as rigid or resistant.

The problem isn’t with the change. The problem is the deficiencies of the people who have to change.

Change done to me, not with me

There was a common observation at the place I used to work that the staff were, after many years of change, change weary. This observation was made in one of two situations. First, as a pre-cursor to the rationale for another change project. Second, as part of the post-mortem involved in examining why the last change project failed.

As someone who had been on both sides of the change process, I always felt that such comments showed a lack of understanding of the context and experience of the staff. From my perspective, it wasn’t change that the staff were weary of. They were weary of change being done to them. Rather than being involved in identifying requirements for change or helping develop options for change, staff were being put through change management processes designed to ensure that they appropriately implemented the change designed by someone else.

Problems with external change

In terms of the problems with change in systems being designed by someone else, Eric’s comment from above makes another important point.

The ‘agents’ of change are usually outside of the classroom

The people deciding on what change is to be done and how that change is to be implemented are increasingly from outside the system. Within the organisation I have the most recent experience, major changes in teaching policies, processes and systems are being implemented and made by people who have little or no recent experience of teaching within the system. This is a problem on a couple of fronts which are illustrated by a couple of quotes from a recent keynote from Dave Snowden (the quotes are foundations to his work, so appear quite often)

First, is the implications of the characteristics of a complex adaptive system on how you can change it.

You only understand a complex system….by engagement with the system. You can’t study it in abstract and decide what the right thing is to do. There are many different things. All of which could be right. Therefore you have to actually start to work within the system to see what is possible.

The fact that so much change is being identified and implemented by folk from outside systems, and perhaps more importantly outside individual schools (an individual school is, I think, a complex adaptive system), is the reason that so many people feel that change is being done to them. The external people driving this change do not have good tacit knowledge of the particular system so that their change tends to create a sense of disconnect from people who do have good tacit knowledge of the specific context.

Another quote from the same Snowden keynote about what he had to go through in order to be apart of the general manager track at an organisation.

I wasn’t even allowed to enter the general management program until I’d done a year in sales, a year in support, a year in production and earned my bonus in each of those years. Because until I’d lived the life of a salesman, until I’d lived the life of a support person, I wasn’t in a fit state to make judgements about their capability. Because my knowledge was explicit, not tacit.

Kathy Mann gets close to this idea with the following comment on the Couros post

They need someone who has been in the trenches, slogged it out, and can share the good, the bad, the ugly about where they’re going. Too often they get someone who’s just done the research or the book learnin’. There’s no credibility there. They need to hear the war stories.

It is in the war stories that folk can identify the shared tacit knowledge. The difference remains that some of the war stories from one school will not translate to another, there will be some differences.

Defining future outcomes

Underpinning much of what is talked about around change in organisations and societies is a set of techno-rational assumptions which lead to beliefs about the ability to engineer change and organisations. Snowden again

All of these methods are focused on defining a future outcome. Remember the 3-year plan, the 5-year plan, quarter….the assumption is that we’re dealing with a machine that we can engineer. Engineering is the dominant idea. So we define an ideal future state and we try and close the gap.

Which brings up the problems with outcomes-based measures, Snowden

Outcome-based measures. These days in the UK and the US. Teachers, and Australia as well, who actually inspire students get no reward. Teaches who fill out learning plans get rewarded.

The success of such teleological processes require conditions that simply do not exist within most human systems.

Change from within?

So, it looks like I’m arguing that change may be possible from within these systems. Maybe.

What I am thinking about is that the majority of the problems with the education system arises from that system not being designed to enable and encourage its participants to see change as natural. After all, what could be natural than an education system that is always changing through learning. The problem is that the current educational systems (at least those I’m familiar with) are too teleological and are unable to learn. They are unable to change.

This inability is what makes change so hard and a topic for conversation.

The biggest change from within I’d be pushing for is a change that frees schools and education systems from the constraints of techno-rational, teleological thinking. I don’t think that’s the type of change that entrepreneurs are going to make. They are going to create different systems and contexts. The best of these will be designed to learn and change.

Charity begins at home, doesn't it?

By admin

On November 28, 2010

In journey, teaching, Uncategorized

In the first few years of teaching information technology at university I met a number of mature age students who were returning to study to get degrees. These were amongst the most enjoyable students to teach, not to mention simply being the best students. One of those students struggled with aspects of the technology, but stuck at it and did well. So well, she ended up completing her PhD years and years before I even looked like completing mine. She even ended up being the head of the school teaching IT.

Not long after that she did a funny thing. At least it seemed a funny thing to me. She gave it up and got into doing volunteer work overseas. At that stage I couldn’t understand why she’d leave the safety and challenge of an academic job to do such a thing. These days I have a much better idea of why that might be attractive. But increasingly, the main reason I didn’t get it is captured by the phrase “charity begins at home”. Sure there are a lot of people in some really horrible situations overseas and they need all the help they can get. But the same can be said of situations closer to home.

Closer to home

This has been reinforced to me over the last 5 or so years. The small town closest to our home has a reputation for being rough. As far back as 30+ years ago when I was in primary school my friends in the rugby league team spoke with just a touch of fear of having to play the team from this small town. They were tougher and rougher than most and even at, or perhaps because of, that age it was assumed because they did it harder than us. And that was from kids who were in one of the other less well off areas. Observations of this small town over the last 5 years or so has reinforced this impression.

I was wondering if this impression is an ill-informed prejudice. So I went looking for some statistics. The Australian Bureau of Statistics maintains a socio-economic index for areas. From that list it is possible to identify 158 local government areas in the list. Ranked from most disadvantage to least, the small town I’m talking about comes in at 35. Perhaps not so bad. But then from my quick look, the majority of areas worse off are indigenous communities. What is happening in those communities is perhaps Australia’s greatest shame. That the local small town is ranked close to these communities suggests (within the limits of such statistics) that my impression has some foundation.

This then brings up the link between poverty and performance. As here and in related resources, “the strongest predictor of academic underperformance is poverty.” A finding that doesn’t bode well for the children of the local small town. The school’s 2009 annual report provides some support for this. On the year 9 NAPLAN tests the school’s average in all areas is less than the Australian average. Only 58.3% of Year 10 students at the school complete Year 10. In 2004, ABS figures suggest that between 1994 and 2004 average completion rates ranges from 60%-64% for males and 71%-75% for females. In the six years since 2004 the state government has been pushing for increased completion rates, so not great.

Where to teach?

As part of my studies next year I have to teach for periods of time in two local schools. We get to nominate our top 3 selections. For some student teachers, the schools they teach at during their training end up offering them positions. So, what sort of schools do I want to gain experience in? What sort of schools do I want to teach in? If charity begins at home, then surely I should be aiming to teach at the high school in the local small town? I think I will be a reasonable, if not good, high school teacher and there is a lot of research supporting claims that good teachers can make a difference.

Or, should I go with the local private school. A school that is currently turning students away and subsequently has a student cohort drawn from a much higher socio-economic group? I’ve been told I’d be attractive to such a school as I’ll have a PhD but still be on the salary of a first year teacher. i.e. I’m cheap and help tick some prestige boxes.

Isn’t it time to give something back?

The constraints of the systems

George Siemens has recently suggested that in his experience innovation within the systems of formal education such as k12 “is not producing the impact it should”. This resonates with my experience of the university sector and much of the experiences I’ve been hearing about within k12 recently. The nature of the formal education systems is getting in the way of change.

I spent much of my 20 years in universities fighting the system. Do I really want to spend the next phase of my working life fighting another system? I’m thinking I could probably make some difference working within the constraints of the system, but would it be enough? Could I be happy with that? Isn’t making do with the constraints of the system one of the contributing factors to the stability of the system?

All these and more will be answered for me personally over the coming years as I get into the process. Wondering what others who are going or have been through this process think?

8 stupidest management fads of all time

By admin

On November 21, 2010

In thesis, Uncategorized

Increasingly I think most of management is driven by fads. Even if the “fad” has some good underlying principles, or is perhaps simply a bit better than previous options. It is still implemented by management as a fad. As if we only implement this successfully, we will have the silver bullet that solves all our problems. Within higher education I have previously argued that open source learning management systems are one of the more recent fads.

Aside: and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. e.g. moving to an open source LMS needs senior management buy in. Which means the implementation of the open source LMS must be seen as a success. So, even if the implementation fails miserably (e.g. first term of go live the new LMS doesn’t play well with the chosen database and falls over if more than 5 people login resulting in a need to pay more for an external consultant to fix the problem) the implementation team will receive an organisational award, because it has to be seen as a success.

Which brings me to this article on “The 8 Stupidest management fads of all time”. I thought it would be fun to reflect on whether I’ve seen them in higher education.

1. Six Sigma

Yep, an adjunct business academic at a commercial partner of the institution I worked for thought that six sigma would be a good idea for application to teaching. Actually, just did a quick search of my email archives.

It was 2007, there were problems with assignment and exam marking and review of grades. The application of six sigma would improve these problems. What was really scary was that the folk in charge at the time could of, with the right campaign, been convinced of the need to do this. Especially given that there was a recognisable fad of business faculties teaching six stigma.

Six sigma was attractive to management because it gives the impression of them being disciplined and rational. They are getting someone (with a black belt) to look at the processes and re-design them based on statistics and formula. Obviously a good thing, it will make the processes more efficient. Of course, this type of techno-rational thinking thinks that people are just cogs in the wheels of the great machinery of the university and will follow such re-designs to the letter. It also assumes that the systems of the institution are ordered systems. That an external person can come in, analyse the system and prescribe effective changes.

At the time, I did a quick literature search and found the following quote (Goh 2002)

In fact, administratively, conformance is required in Six Sigma not just with respect to process output but in terms of employee participation as well. Regimentation via a hierarchy of ‘Master Black Belts’, ‘Black Belts’, and so on would go against the very culture in a community of academics and researchers, even students. The bottom line approach taken in Six Sigma cannot be the driving factor in the pursuit of academic excellence. Cynicism, well before anything else, would be the first reaction if the leadership of a university is to tell everyone ‘Take Six Sigma— or this organization is not for you’, a proclamation made famous by Jack Welch as CEO of General Electric. It is little wonder that to date, nothing is heard about any university proclaiming itself a Six Sigma institution.

Funnily enough, at least 5 years earlier I had been involved in projects that were making effective interventions into these problems. But these interventions were done in a contextual way, responding to real problems experienced by those involved and trying to help them based on the deep understanding of the system provided by being a part of the system. Not being an external analyst with no historical connection or understanding of the context.

2. Business process re-engineering

Sadly, and for my sins. I was briefly part of a team of young academics who thought BPR was the bees knees. The other two were IS/Business academics, just graduated and full of conviction for what they had learned. I was a programmer, big on techno-rational. If we only designed the system/processes properly, everything would be alright. We even got a grant, but we never did anything with it. Thank god.

3. Matrix Management

Yep, saw this one. One of the Deans of a new re-structured faculty about 5 or 6 years ago thought matrix management was all the go. It was as successful as the description. Complexity, got in the way of real work. Especially bad because none of the other faculties adopted this management structure. So if you were meant to work with the faculties, you had to figure out which management structure each had and who you should talk to.

4. Management by consensus

It was never known as this, but self-managed teams/groups was essentially this. Implemented around 1996, apparently to break the power of a single administrative staff member and empower other administrative staff. As outlined, important decisions were avoided (but then that wasn’t really new for universities) and I’m sure there were people who knew the advice offered to keep the minutes.

5. Core competency

I haven’t seen this one. But then that’s because universities are meant to traditionally perform at least three tasks: teaching, research, and community service. i.e. rather than do one thing well, we do three badly. Of course, the unofficial core competency is research, but bugger all academics actually do research.

6. Management by objectives

Yep, strategic plans, management plans etc. All management by objectives. Get a group of smart people to identify the objectives, ignore the realities and then be surprised when the world is different. It’s great for those folk who game the system. Those who prove their worth by ticking the objective boxes while concurrently ignoring the real needs of the organisation.

7. The search for excellence

Haven’t really seen this one. Have heard of it.

8. Management by god

Thank god I haven’t seen this one. Can’t imagine it even being considered within a secular organisation within Australia.

References

T Goh (2002), A Strategic assessment of six sigma, Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 18(5): 403-410

Changing times and connectivism

By admin

On November 21, 2010

In quotes, teaching, Uncategorized

This is a simple holding place for some ideas and quotes from George Siemens’ recent Connectivism: Changing times talk.

Fundamental task of education

Translating this into high school teaching within formal settings raises some interesting questions

…the fundamental task of education is to enculturate youth into this knowledge-creating civilization and to help them find a place in it….traditional educational practices – with its emphasis on knowledge transmission – as well as newer constructivist methods both appear to be limited in scope if not entirely missing the point. (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 2006)

This is the challenge Siemens mentions later

Challenge to repurpose education on explicit system-wide connections and connectedness model

Challenging at the best time of times, but aiming for system-wide, that will be hard.

Knowledge == learning

Siemens

In networks, knowledge and learning are the same thing: one is the product and the other the process

How?

Siemens starts his suggestions with

Complexity, emergence, self-organisation

Which reinforces my beliefs/prejudices and hence is good. However, it also reinforces how had achieving anything system-wide will be when techno-rational management practices is the standard in formal education, especially public education.

Then comes

Social and knowledge connections

I have some ideas about how an individual teacher might enable some of this. Though building on it within a school would be also beneficial. Making the practice common for a cohort would perhaps be the first step.

Then

Knowledge-building (growing)

My interpretation is that this is the ultimate goal. You want to model this for the students and then hope that they develop the practice/skill to continue this. Definitely looks like signing up and working at CCK 2011 should be a priority.

Segue into analytics

Towards the end there is the connection to analytics. Had wondered what got Siemens interested in this.

Complete (or nearly) connectedness requires emphasis to shift to data analysis, visualization

This has been one of the questions I’ve been asking of myself. One of the best known guidelines for teaching is that you have to start with what the learner knows. If they can’t easily make the connection to what you’re trying to teach, they won’t make the connection, the won’t learn. How do you know what a class of 20 to 30 kids know? How do you know what an individual student knows? How can you create environments that enable them to find the connections?

How and what “analytics” can you implement/harness within a school setting? Must admit that analytics as a term turns me off, reminds me of business intelligence folks and feeding management.

Interesting times ahead

By admin

On November 20, 2010

In journey, teaching, Uncategorized

As described earlier the next couple of years probably has me becoming a high school teacher. A transition I am planning to blog about, perhaps eventually to do some research about. This comment by Scott Aldred suggests that this might be an interesting experience. Scott’s point is that various constraints and factors arising from the nature of public education and its organisation within Australia and Queensland are such that reflective blogging is not as straight forward as you might hope. Given that I’m generally somewhat cynical/critical, this might become problematic.

It is ironic that Scott’s comment is made on an article by Dean Shareski arguing/stating that having teachers blog is a great way to make them better teachers. It shall be interesting if I see evidence of the constraints Scott has seen.

He should know as he’s been a teacher educator at the University I’m returning to as a student. And if you look at the list of followers on his blog you can see quite a list of current/previous students from that university. Most of which appear to be keeping blogs about their journey as student teachers. Mostly as a requirement for their studies. Interesting times.

Installing and starting with Moodle 2.0

By admin

On November 18, 2010

In bim, Uncategorized

As a first step to BIM v2.0 I’m installing and starting to play with Moodle 2.0 (RC2). The following is a summary/reflection of the experience. One of the aims of this is to investigate how Moodle 2.0 handles its integration with external blogs and see what lessons/insights I can learn for BIM v2.0.

Warning: This is a little incomplete, I’m posting early for testing purposes.

Registering external feeds

Okay, this is a surprise. To register an external blog (see image below, click on it for larger version), you need to provide the actual feed url. This is somewhat surprising for two reasons:

most students/staff don’t really know about feeds; and,
This raises the question of whether ease of use is more important, or educating them about the new medium is more important.
it’s not needed.
Simplepie, which I believe is the PHP library used to retrieve the blog feeds, can do auto-detect.

For BIM, the presence of auto-detect in Simplepie meant it was possible to make it easier for the students/staff. The initial use of BIM was focused on getting the students to reflect etc, it was felt requiring them to grasp what a feed was and figuring out how to find their feed was not central to the outcome.

Having a look at the Moodle 2.0 code, it does use simplepie, or at least a “moodleised” version
[code language=”lang=”]
require_once($CFG->libdir . ‘/simplepie/moodle_simplepie.php’);
[/code]

I wonder what the reasons were for not adopting auto-detect?

What’s been done to moodle_simplepie.php

At the very least, it is a OO wrapper around simplepie. Apparently simplepie is untouched. Going by initial comments, the OO class aims mainly to connect Simplepie with various Moodle configuration variables and settings.

Mmm, I haven’t looked at this sufficiently. But it appears that the method used to retrieve the blog avoids using Simplepie’s support for auto-detect. It even calls curl directly before passing over to Simplepie. With BIM I assume Simplepie will handle all that. I’m assuming this is due to a performance issue or similar that I’m not aware of.

Actually, it appears that I modified the internals of simplepie to use the Moodle curl configuration variables (mostly proxy from memory). Putting the mods in the wrapper is the more correct approach, however, it does appear to remove the ability to use Simplepie’s auto-detect. Disclaimer: I haven’t checked this thoroughly and thus could be entirely wrong. Which I suspect I am, given that the auto-discovery stuff in Simplepie is known.

Mmm, I probably need to spend more time on this as it would be good if BIM v2.0 would simply use the Moodle wrapper for Simplepie.

What does Moodle store about external blogs

First, have to view the entries from my registered blog. There they are, but only the first couple of lines. Can’t see any option on this view to allow me to see the complete posts. Is the complete post actually stored?

Looks like posts (from lots of sources) is stored in the post table.
[code lang=”sql”]
id bigint(10) unsigned
module varchar(20)
userid bigint(10) unsigned
courseid bigint(10) unsigned
groupid bigint(10) unsigned
moduleid bigint(10) unsigned
coursemoduleid bigint(10) unsigned
subject varchar(128)
summary longtext
content longtext
uniquehash varchar(128)
rating bigint(10) unsigned
format bigint(10) unsigned
summaryformat tinyint(2) unsigned
attachment varchar(100)
publishstate varchar(20)
lastmodified bigint(10) unsigned
created bigint(10) unsigned
usermodified bigint(10) unsigned
[/code]

Looks like the display code for the blogs is using the summary field, hence the summary. Looks like the content field for an external blog contains the ID for the blog in the table blog_external. Suggesting that the entire content for an external blog is not stored internally by Moodle.

Okay, the “mirror” process for external blogs is done by the blog_sync_external_entries function. It appears that it deletes all entries for an external blog each time. Then it retrieves them. It uses the description element in the XML for each item as the content, rather than the content element. Description, I believe, is the summary while content contains the full content.

I’m a bit worried about this deleting of all entries before adding all the posts again. Mainly because not all posts remain in the RSS feed. As people post you are going to lose posts to the external blog. At least if I’m right about the deleting.

If this is the correct interpretation, then when I publish this post the current last entry in my external blog should disappear from my test Moodle. Time to try that out. Of course, there is going to be a delay until the synchronise process is run at some stage. Going by the config option, this is every 24 hours (by default). Time to reduce that, post this and check again in a little while. Interesting, only allows me to reduce it to 12 hours.

Confirmed. Based on my testing it appears confirmed that the external blog integration with Moodle only includes the current contents of the external blog’s feed in Moodle. Most blogs only keep a limited number of recent posts in their feed. This means that external blog posts are not a permanent member of the Moodle blog. They will disappear as the owner makes more posts.

Funny characters

The biggest problem I’ve faced with BIM has been dealing with the “funny” characters inserted into blog feeds when people copy and paste content from Word. Wanted to try this out with the external blog functionality in Moodle 2.0 and see if it remains a problem (i.e. did I miss something simple).

So, I have a known problem feed. Time to register it as an external blog and see what happens. Ok, it registered fine. Do the special characters appear? Will only work if the special characters are at the start of the post, due to Moodle only storying the description, not the whole content. Yep, the problem feed does have the special characters in the description. And yes, they do appear in Moodle. See the image below, see the black diamonds containing question marks? Those are the special characters.

I haven’t had a problem with special characters in this situation on MySQL. The problem has arisen when using Postgres, at least at one institution.

Other core/plugins using Simplepie

Seems that the rss block is the only other part of the core using it. Seems to be basic stuff. Uses moodle_simplepie to construct object and uses mostly straight Simplepie member functions to perform tasks.

It does, however, appear to be using auto-detect. This is looking good for use in BIM 2.0. Though I do wonder why the external blog stuff doesn’t use it. Performance?

[code lang=”php”]
$rss = new moodle_simplepie();
$rss->set_feed_url($url);
$rss->set_autodiscovery_level(SIMPLEPIE_LOCATOR_ALL);
// When autodiscovering an RSS feed, simplepie will try lots of
// rss links on a page, so set the timeout high
$rss->set_timeout(20);
$rss->init();

if($rss->error()){
return $url;
}

return $rss->subscribe_url();
[/code]

It is interesting that the display feed functionality is done by hard coded table tags, rather than the Moodle table API/classes.

Testing

One of the other tasks for BIM 2.0 is to start a testing regime. The external blog support apparently comes with some tests, hoping to borrow the approach.

Seems to be some Moodle standard for unit tests with a class UnitTestCaseUsingDatabase, which sounds like one of potentially many. Now I see that there was something available as way back as 1.7 based on SimpleTest. And here’s the stuff for 2.0.

Outstanding tasks

Special characters are there. ~~Implement a test with special characters in blogs…will have to be in the summary.~~
Will need to test further whether or not the moodle_simplepie class can use the SimplePie auto-detect.
Yes it does. ~~Check to see if the Moodle external blog implementation will actually start losing posts.~~
~~Check out other Moodle plugins using the moodle_simplepie class.~~
Talk with folk involved with Moodle/Simplepie about the “issues” identified above.
Seems they already know of this stuff.

Understanding EduFeedr and contrast with BIM

By admin

On November 17, 2010

In bim, Uncategorized

The following is an attempt to summarise an attempt to understanding EduFeedr a bit more. Especially to compare and contrast it with BIM. I’m particularly interested in seeing what lessons can be learned from EduFeedr, not to mention what code and ideas can be borrowed.

What

EduFeedr is an educationally enhanced feed reader, designed specifically for courses that take place in a distributed learning environment where all students use their personal blogs and other social software.

i.e. EduFeedr is aimed at open courses. The need for it arose out of experiences with such courses and the workload involved in tracking contributions.

EduFeedr offers four main tasks

setting up the course;
Each course has a “site”. Each site has six sections: (1) course feed, (2) course info, (3) participants, (4) assignments, (5) progress, and (6) social network.
BIM: is a Moodle activity. Each Moodle course can have multiple BIM activities.
enrolling to the course,
Done via a simple form with name, email and blog url
BIM: students have to be enrolled in the Moodle course containing the BIM activity.
aggregating blog posts and comments, and
BIM: only aggregates posts
visualizing the progress and social network between the learners.
Displayed on EduFeedr and also able to be downloaded. Information can be downloaded in various formats, including: OPML file containing all post and comment feeds; a vCard for email addresses of participants; HTML blogroll.
BIM: student details are available via various Moodle sources. BIM does provide an OPML file for teaching staff containing the URLs for their students’ feeds.

Implementation

EduFeedr is implemented on top of Elgg and uses Simplepie, JSViz.

Actually, the retrieval of the feeds is done by a companion utility called EduSuckr. EduSuckr is run hourly. BIM: mirroring also run via cron, but time is controlled via the Moodle configuration interface. Mirroring of an individual student blog is also done when a student attempts to view their details.

EduFeedr and EduSuckr appear to communicate via WSDL/SOAP.

Lessons

No standard way to locate comments feed.
BIM: doesn’t look at comments, but I assumed this might be a problem.
Linking posts to assignments.
Appear that they expect students to link to the description of the assignment for the post.
BIM: tries to compare the title and content of the student blog post with the title/content of the assignment question using simple similarity comparison. Teaching staff can also allocate a student post to a particular assignment question….future plan is to allow the students to do this as well.
Linking comments with participants.
Again lack of standards with identifying authors of comments, makes this difficult.
BIM: doesn’t look at comments, so not a problem.
Only recent items in feeds.
This is a problem with BIM as well. EduSuckr uses the same solution as BIM. It keeps a local archive of all posts. The teacher can specify a period when to archive posts. BIM has the option for mirroring to be turned off.

EduFeedr is live. BIM for open blog courses

By admin

On November 16, 2010

In thesis, Uncategorized

Via Scott Leslie’s free and learning composition comes the news that EduFeedr is up and going.

EduFeedr is somewhat related to BIM in that it aggregates blogs posts from participants in a course and allows tracking of posts against set assignments.

The difference is that EduFeedr, unlike BIM, breaks free from the LMS. Which is arguably both, depending on context, a good and a bad thing. It does perhaps go close to some of what Leigh Blackall was looking for. Some more references here. The author’s blog appears to give more of the background. Including the explanation that EduFeedr is more designed to support open blog courses, i.e. those not using an LMS.

After a quick look, there are also some features and ideas that could help improve BIM and inform the design of BIM 2.0. e.g. visualisation of connections between posts.

In terms of the downsides to EduFeedr, Han’s post about recent talks on EduFeedr provides some indications. e.g the inability to autenticate participants. On the plus side, you don’t need the LMS.

Amplify’d from www.edufeedr.net

EduFeedr is a feed reader for online courses where each participant is using his/her personal blog to publish thoughts on course readings, answers to assignments and other course related postsRead more at www.edufeedr.net

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/fblg

Additional thoughts

EduFeedr relies on a component called EduSuckr to grab the blog posts and comments. It relies on SimplePie, as does BIM. WIll be interesting to see if there is some capacity to reuse some fo the code. Already from looking at the code, there are some ideas to improve BIM.

Getting back into maths – it is not linear

By admin

On November 15, 2010

In math, teaching, Uncategorized

As mentioned last week, I’m slowly commencing the process of becoming a high school teacher in information technology and mathematics. As part of that process I’m trying to get back into maths – its almost 25 years since I did my undergrad math courses – and build up a network of folk and ideas.

So, via the well known @coursa, I find @katierosenkranz (a pre-service teacher with a math minor) and her mention of a “prezi” – Math is not linear. Not only does the content of this presentation resonate, the number of additional connections being added to my baby math network is rapidly increasing. Including @pvnotp author of the presentation. Though I do admit a need to connect with some more Australian folk.

Math is not linear

The presentation essentially argues that the simple linear presentation of math topics within schools has some problems. Problems that can be addressed and learning improved by drawing on an understanding of the connections between the different math topics.

In part this gets at the whole idea of teaching as a logical, sequential process where the expert builds the foundations for student learning. It’s the assumption that guides most teaching of computer skills to students. You have to have them in a lab with an expert watching what they are doing helping correct mistakes and misunderstandings. Compare that with the approach taken by the Hole in the wall project.

This idea is also connected with the TEDxNY presentation from Dan Meyer

The topic areas

Alison’s prezi includes a slide that contains a list of math topic areas. I’m simply going to treat the following as an initial bit of revision of mine. Actually, in many cases, I’m not sure I ever could have described what these topic areas were about and how they connected to the real world. Even though I was good at maths, I think I was better at playing the high school math game, rather than gaining deep understanding. This is itself one of the problems I’m hoping to avoid in my teaching.

If I’m going to break this linearity, I’m going to have to develop the knowledge. It won’t be complete and it is basic, but it’s a start. The topics are:

Algebra;
So, part of pure maths along with geometry, analysis, topology, combinatorics and number theory. And what’s generally taught in high school is elementary algebra. Ahh, personal connection, Rob’s work in ring theory is abstract algebra.
Geometry;
AKA earth measuring. Hadn’t made the connection with the name. Am sure there could be some interesting connections made with kids through that name. One of the oldest forms of math.
Set theory;
The study of collections of objects, of sets. What’s interesting is how the Wikipedia description of when various topics in set theory are introduced in formal schooling seemingly illustrates Alison’s point. Some basic stuff in primary school, and then the more advanced stuff in undergrad. It’s also somewhat symptomatic that I can understand what it is from the Wikipedia description, but I’d be hard pressed to explain practical relevance to a 13 year old.
Number theory;
Okay, either the Wikipedia article introductions are getting worse or I’m tiring, I’m finding it harder to explain/understand number theory. Of course, that’s probably because I’m trying to think of practical examples, and to some extent that’s not what number theory is about. Though there are some important practical applications of number theory findings (e.g. cryptography), practicality is not the immediate aim of a number theorist. It’s on the properties of numbers etc. that they are focused.
Calculus;
Interesting that wikipedia uses a “study of” description for calculus (study of change), geometry (study of shape) and algebra (study of operations and their application to solving equations) on the calculus page, but not on the others.

An example of the perils of top-down de-composition? The loss of the whole that arises from dividing a description of mathematics on Wikipedia into separate pages written by different authors?

Calculus focuses on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals and infinite series. 🙂 They like their terminology, don’t they. Perhaps that is a big part of the problem. Mathematics really is a language and we’re teaching the language by dividing it up and teaching it separately. e.g. we’ll teach you French by dividing words up into topic areas such as politics, economics, the arts etc. No wonder learners find it hard.

Interesting, this Wikipedia page attempts to connect to the practical applications.
Statistics;
Ohh, it’s the “science of the collection, organisation and interpretation of data”. Closely related to probability theory. Or it’s a branch of math dealing with the collection and interpretation of data..differences of opinion.
Statistics starts with a population of objects. Objects which have properties, information about these properties are gathered. Rather than study the information about all objects, a sample is taken. Statistics analysis then either describes the data gathered or draws inferences from that data.
Probability theory;
Concerned with the analysis of random phenomena. The mathematical foundation for statistics.
Combinatorics.
The study of finite or countable discrete structures. An interesting comment in connection with Alison’s posts “Combinatorial problems arise in many areas of pure mathematics, notably in algebra, probability theory, topology, and geometry”. i.e. it connects with many of the topic areas.

Interestingly, this list does not include arithmetic, which is what most people think math is.

While, the above process has been useful in refreshing some basic ideas. It’s also revealed just how much work I do have to do. Some of which will come back quickly, e.g. observing some of the mathematical equations in the above I found myself remembering aspects of them from 25+ years ago.

I also found it interesting, but not that surprising, that the Wikipedia pages aren’t that easy to learn from. I’m wondering if there aren’t online resources that do a better job of explaining these for non-mathematicians. Which in itself raises an interesting question, in a few years will I claim to be a mathematician or simply a maths teacher? What implications will my answer to that question have about my teaching?

Delving into institutional information systems

By admin

On November 12, 2010

In journey, teaching, Uncategorized

As recently noted, I’m about to return to university study. Have decided that I’m going to keep a journal of the entire experience. Perhaps with some intent later on to use this as data for research around the student experience. This may be of some interest as I will be studying at the institution I worked for as an academic for 20 years.

Completing enrolment

My current task is to complete the enrolment process. This means I have to use the dreaded institutional ERP system. In the dim dark past this system did not have a good reputation, I’m wondering if it has improved?

Starting with downloading the guide

The first recommend step is to download the user guide. I don’t remember Amazon or similar online commerce sites requiring a user guide to be downloaded. Why should completing an enrolment process for a university be any different?

Oh dear, not only should I download the guide, I should also print it out. So, this not only suggests a somewhat less than usable system, it’s also not particularly sustainable.

Mmm, this is what is shown on the page to download the guide

please download and print the XXXX Student User Guide. This guide can be found here or by clicking on the words ‘XXXX Student User Guide‘ throughout this webpage

The underlined text represents links. Given that I am being advised to download and print this guide, I’m assuming I’ll get a PDF when I click on the link. Ahhh, no.

Instead I get taken to another page titled “Student user guides” which offers me a choice of three separate student guides. One for enrolment, one for Moodle and one for assessment. Each of these guides have their own sections on the page. The enrolment section contains exactly the same text as I’ve included above. Only this time when I click on the link I get the PDF.

At this stage, I have to remember to use the back arrow on the browser to return to the enrolment system. Ahh, no. That was just a web page with a list. You have to login elsewhere to get to the actual enrolment system.

The lovely portal

And you have to love this. The pages don’t give me the link directly to the system in which I have to complete my enrolment. I actually have to go to the student portal first, and then see the link to the enrolment system.

Usernames and passwords

Okay, they haven’t fixed this year. Student numbers at this institution come in three flavours, each starting with a different letter. The pre-peoplesoft student numbers have the letter followed by 8 digits. The post-peoplesoft student numbers have a letter followed by 7 digits. The pre-peoplesoft students have to remember to remove the last digit from their student number in order for the authentication system to work.

That’s right, all the documentation has to tell students to use different approaches depending on their student number. Why not just make the system accept both? Sounds like a perfect example of misplaced PEBKAC.

Now, new students are supposed be given a default initial password that lets them in. I’m thinking I might have some problems as I was enrolled as a Masters/PhD student at this institution a good 10 years ago. So I am guessing that my student number doesn’t have the default password.

It failed the first time, but this seems to have been user error. I tried again, very carefully and it seems to have worked. So I know have a very non-institutionally branded page from the SUN access manager to set options.

Ahh, restrictive password rules. Minimum 8 characters, must have 3 of 4….making passwords so difficult to create and remember that people have to write them down.

Ok, no its telling me that the current paswword I entered wasn’t correct. Which is interesting, as I was very careful to enter what I thought was correct. No, that didn’t work a second time……Ok, very carefully now. Caps lock is off. Nope, that didn’t work.

So, ignore that and see what else I can do. Change password reset options, that seemed to work. Not real well, but it worked. What about change my email address, I’d prefer it to go to my gmail account. Ahh, I get the error “mail-User does not have sufficient access”, but the changed value is there.

Ok, so what do I do know? I was trying to login to the enrolment system. Let’s click on “Help”….Ahh no, a 404 error.

Moving on

Regardless of the above, I am able to get into the portal and the enrolment system. So, let’s press on while it works. After all the aim here is complete my enrolment, not diagnose intermittent problems with institutional authentication systems.

Oh dear, the start page of the enrolment system is littered with “important” notes all in bold and centered. Making it difficult to read. Oh wait, there’s another link to the student guide. Of course, all of the important stuff has no connection to me at all. Why doesn’t the enrolment system know that I’m currently trying to complete my enrolment? Why isn’t the first thing I see when I login to this system direct guidance on completing my enrolment?

Oh, and I’m being a naughty boy using Chrome. Best viewed with IE7, IE8 and Firefox. The addition of Firefox is a step up from previous advice.

So, I’m past the important information and into “David’s Student Centre”. I’m here to accept my offer. Surely there has to be a prominent link on this page to help me do this? Ahh, there it is. Down the bottom. Ahh, a popup which Chrome rejected, thought it accepted it from another institutional page.

Ahh, it’s an acceptance wizard. Only 13 steps. First step was click accept. No I have a page and a bit of text with HTML elements mixed in with content, perhaps due to using Chrome. But come on, it’s just a page of text. How can you do that in a non-standard format?

Page 3 doesn’t have any bad formatting, but page 4 does. And page 3 had various form elements….not even consistent? And now onto the “HEC form” and the problems are horrendous, see the image.

So, I have to login with Firefox. Don’t want to go through the portal, so type in the direct URL. Ahh, just the host name doesn’t work, click on “Peoplesoft login”, ahh, redirected to authentication system. Logging in again. The default password seems to be working.

The system knows that I haven’t completed the form. So it asks me straight away to complete it. Why didn’t it use this before?

Okay, so the pages are displayed fine with Firefox. Gees, it’s just text and a couple of check boxes. That’s done.

So now I have to select a specific plan for secondary. I thought I’d already done this, but apparently have to do it again. Okay done.

“Tacit” knowledge

I’m just thinking what this process must be like for someone with no experience of this institution. There’s a lot of knowledge I’ve built up over the years that makes navigating all this much easier. I’m finding simply navigating the system a little challenging. If I had the extra cognitive load of not knowing the terminology….

Adding courses

Oh, this is interesting. When I’m selecting specific courses to enrol with, I can see that

Your enrolment shopping cart is empty

The student as customer message is being established early.

Okay, to add a course, I have to search for it. Course codes are the traditional peopelsoft XXXXYYYYY, where XXXX is a subject code (e.g. EDED), and YYYYY is the catalog nbr (e.g. 20491). The trouble is that only peoplesoft and folk who feed it really care about this distinction. For everyone else a course code is EDED20491.

This is important because the “search” form for courses requires that you know that EDED is subject code and that the number is a different part. Even though all the printed docs accepting me don’t make this distinction. In addition, the search form by default has “Course Career” set to non award. The system knows that I am studying a postgraduate program, but it hasn’t set this properly. So I have to know how to change this.

All this is increasing the cognitive load of the student. I can imagine students without knowledge of the institution having to waste time looking up the guides, looking for that bit of information that helps get them past each little step.

At least the search form has remembered the settings I created from the first search. It shows it can be made easier.

Of course, this program has a fixed set of courses. I have no choice. I have to complete the courses that are set. So why should I have to actively choose the courses via the system, why aren’t the courses already set?

A hold on your record

So I select the courses and go to finish the process. Only to find out that there is a hold on my record. So I can’t enrol until that is removed. I wonder what it is?

There is a “Fix Errors” button which when pushed takes me back to the start of the add courses process. This is not going to do anything about the hold. At least, my understanding suggests that.

I saw another part of the home page mentioning holds. If I go back and look at that it is apparent that the Division of Financial Services at the institution thinks I owe it almost $5000. That’s interesting.

Also interesting that in processing my application and accepting me into the program, there was no mention of the holds. Seems I’m destined not to complete my enrolment today. Time to email the debtors address.

Student email

Actually, I’m wondering if my student email account has any insights to share on this. The student email system was purposely modified not to allow students to forward official email to their personal email accounts. And I haven’t ever checked it. Maybe there is something there.

Oh, my session has timed out. Okay, log back in. Oh dear, no there is a 404 error on the portal. What’s more, it’s for that absolutely essential resource – dtfavicon.ico – the little icon for the browser to show!

Ignore that, back to another page, into web mail. No, nothing there.

A turning point

By admin

On November 12, 2010

In journey, teaching, Uncategorized

I am unsure whether or not I believe in specific turning points. Perhaps life is a bit more complex. The metaphor of life as a road with specific forks which mark the turning points, seems a bit simplistic. But today does feel like a turning point due to two events:

reaching closure on the PhD; and
I’ve just sent off a complete draft of the thesis to ANU for a couple of folk to reading and the provision of pre-submission feedback. The thesis is no longer some Sword of Damocles hanging over my head, demanding attention and effort. Instead, I sit back, have a life, enjoy the family and think about what I might do (hence this post).
acceptance as a University student.
Today I received acceptance into the Graduate Diploma of Learning and Teaching at CQUniversity.

Changes in the blog and my PLN?

This turning point also marks, I think, a turning point in this blog. It’s going to take on a more educational/high school focus. The IT side of things will remain, but there will also be an increase in mathematics since I’ll be a math/IT teacher, probably. You are warned.

I’m also wondering how this will and should influence my PLN. I’m already feeling that some of the uni folk I follow are becoming slightly less relevant to my learning needs. Though they do remain interesting and insightful. I’m beginning to wonder if I prune and what I’d miss if I did.

Ideas and suggestions

You may want to skip the whinging diatribe about university L&T and jump to the more future looking perspective. This is where I outline what I’m doing to prepare for the future and would love some ideas and suggestions about “what should a novice high school teacher be thinking about?”.

Turning away?

To some extent I am turning away from being a part of the technologists alliance as described by Geoghegan (1994)

The last decade has seen the formation of an alliance between “technologist” populations concerned with instructional computing. Those involved include faculty innovators and early adopters, campus IT support organizations, and information technology vendors with products for the instructional market. Ironically, while this alliance has fostered development of many instructional applications that clearly illustrate the benefits that technology can bring to teaching and learning, it has also unknowingly worked to prevent the dissemination of these benefits into the much larger mainstream population.

In particularly, I was part of a group within a university charged with helping improve the quality of teaching. Increasingly, most universities have such a group or groups.

I am incredibly happy to be leaving this type of group. Not that there aren’t some great people (not to mention some silly and downright dishonest and hurtful) doing some great work. But the technologists alliance within universities, as a whole, is going the wrong way and most of the senior leaders of this alliance are actively enabling that trend. They seem to be actively creating systems that don’t value teaching. What’s worse, I see a system that is increasingly hurting the members of the alliance that work at the coal face. The type of frustration reported by Mike Bogle is more prevalent than those in leadership positions understand.

The fundamental problem here, at least for me, is the insidious growth of techno-rational approaches to “leadership” within universities. An approach that assumes that the leaders can identify what is required and then tell their staff to implement those solutions. This can never work because Universities and teaching and learning are much more complex than simple solutions. The trouble is that when those solutions fail, it’s never because the leadership identified the wrong solutions. It because their staff didn’t implement it well enough. The staff carry the can.

To make matters worse, by this time a new VC or other leadership have arrived at the institution. Leadership on a short-term contract determined to make a mark so that they can receive another short-term contract, preferably one step up the ladder. To make their mark, they need to argue for radical change. They need to hold up prior work as somehow flawed, identify some scape goats, identify some new solutions and implement them, preferably minus the scape goats who were suposed to implement the previous solutions.

I suggest that you can see some evidence of this process in the summary of the report of an ALTC project. This project was titled “Strategic Leadership for Institutional Teaching and Learning Centres: Developing a Model for the 21st Century”. The report looks at the findings from a survey of 31 of the 38 Directors of Teaching and Learning Centres at Australian universities. It’s first finding was that the average centre “would have been restructured sometime in the previous one to three years”.

The triumph of the techno-rational approaches to leadership has resulted in a university sector that is increasingly trying to improve the quality of learning and teaching by fiat. By telling academics you will do X, complete GradCert Y, use LMS Z, be guided by principles L. And at the same time ignoring the context within which academics operate and what those academics already know and are doing.

A few months ago I was interviewed for a position as the head of a group of educational developers. We were asked to provide a vision of the enhancement of learning and teaching. I provided one that focused on creating an environment that helped academics (and the broader institution) reflect on what was happening and struggling to improve. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear.

Based on the questions I was asked, both before and during the interview, the strong message was that they wanted someone who would manage the group as a service provider. I have some qualms about the impact of using the client/server metaphor, but lets leave those aside. The impression I received was not that the client in this relationship was not the teaching academics. The client was the Dean of the faculty. The service to be provided, was whatever the Dean thought was appropriate. See above points.

Needless to say, I am incredibly happy not to have gotten the job.

Turning toward?

Looking forward. In the short term, it looks like I’ll be a Math and Information Technology high school teacher. At least that is what I’ll be studying next year. I’ve already started reading and listening to more high school related resources. I’m increasingly interested in being more directly responsible for teaching and being able to experiment with all the insights, tools and practices which I think are important. At the same time, I’m also realistic enough to know that the school system has its own problems. It too has been invaded by techno-rationalist approaches to management. There are bugger all resources. Aspects of the system are as buggered, if not more so, than the university sector. But importantly, I’m hoping that there will be possibilities for taking some control of what I do in the classroom and subsequently what is inflicted upon students.

In preparation, I’ve been

listening more to the Future of Education podcasts and looking for more of the same;
purchased a bunch of books on mathematics in order to (re-)discover my inner math nerd;
joined the AAMT mailing list;
And in a few days have already discovered that I have far to go before being a math nerd.
begun collecting online resources and sources related to teaching; and
beginning to reflect upon my thoughts on teaching and learning.
George Siemens recent post is an interesting spring board, as is much of the above.

Either way, it’s a damn good feeling to be finally completing one chapter and moving onto another.

If you have ideas or suggestions that can help me be better prepared for this next chapter, fire away.

Initial plans for BIM 2.0

By admin

On November 9, 2010

In bim, Uncategorized

I’m slowly getting out from under the thesis, which means I am starting to have some time to think about the next version of BIM. The following is an attempt to lay out some of the ideas I have for the next version of BIM. Beyond helping me gather my thoughts, I’m hoping it will generate some comments and ideas from others. I doubt I will be able to implement all of the suggestions, so I’m hoping to get a sense for what others think is most important.

Currently, I can think of the following categories of potential BIM improvements:

Work with Moodle 2.0;
This is the main driver for an upgrade. Moodle 2.0 will be out real soon now, and BIM will have to be modified to work with Moodle 2.0.
Maintaining BIM 1.0;
Not sure that everyone will be moving directly to Moodle 2.0. Suggests a need to maintain BIM 1.0 for a bit.
Get BIM into CONTRIB;
Good practice would see BIM in the Moodle contrib area.
Miscellaneous improvements;
Various ideas for how BIM can be improved have arisen from use of the current version. Would be good to action some of these.
Improving the code design; and
I’m shocked by just how spaghetti like the procedural code used in some of the Moodle modules (including BIM). It’s so inflexible, gets in the way of reuse, and just basically ugly and error prone. Surely there are nicer ways to code a Moodle module. A MVC framework?
Scaffolding conglomerations.
This is perhaps where my main research interest resides. The interest comes from the thesis and the idea that e-learning systems need to improve. One suggestion for how this might be done is scaffolding conglomerations. Borrowing ideas from distributed cognition to move these systems from simple configuration interfaces into scaffolding that helps teachers and students teach/learn.

Work with Moodle 2.0

Moodle 2.0 brings with it numerous changes to the various APIs which BIM relies upon. According to release notes, looks like the changes that will need to happen include: database queries, file handling, and perhaps some display code.

There are also other sections of Moodle that BIM does (or could) rely upon which have also undergone changes. This may also suggest a need for updates. Possible areas of interest include:

Plagiarism prevention;
Adding this support is one of the existing issues for BIM and it appears that Moodle 2.0 might provide this service.
Backup and restore;
Apparently there is an entirely new format, improved interface etc. Suggests a need to update.
blogs;
Now includes support for external blog feeds. From scuttlebutt it sounds like this is done with SimplePie, which means BIM 2.0 probably won’t need to include it. For some this native support within Moodle raises questions about the requirement for BIM. The difference is (I think) what BIM does with the feeds in terms of management and marking support. Something I don’t think is done with Moodle 2.0, but should check.
Comments;
Am wondering if this might offer an opportunity for students to comment within Moodle on other blog posts. Alternatively, as a way for staff to comment (mark) student blog posts, rather than BIM maintain its own record. This is probably the most questionable idea so far.

Installing and playing with Moodle 2.0

Much of the above is based on a skim of the Moodle 2.0 release notes. I’m sure to have missed important changes/additions and/or misunderstood the implications of other additions. Feel free to point out implications I’ve missed or misunderstood.

To remedy this I need to install Moodle 2.0 and start playing. Seems I already meet the system requirements. One less thing to do.

Maintaining BIM 1.0

I’m guessing that at least some universities will be a bit slow in moving to 2.0. The final release of Moodle 2.0 is not yet out, it’s supposed to be any day now. At least in Australia, that means most IT departments won’t seriously consider it until March or April next year since most Australian Universities essentially shut down for summer and then rush to get the first term going. Which suggests for some, it will be June/July before any decision about running a Moodle 2.0 trial, perhaps over summer term 2011. So it is likely to be 2012 before some move to Moodle 2.0.

Which suggests a need to maintain and evolve BIM v1.0. Actually, this is somewhat connected to improving the code design. If done well, an improved BIM code design could make it much less effort to maintain the two different versions. But it still means extra work.

At the moment, I’m leaning towards minimising updates to BIM 1.0 and focusing development on v2.0. If you think otherwise, let me know.

Get BIM into CONTRIB

All the best Moodle plugins are in contrib. For various reasons I haven’t followed through on getting BIM into contrib. This needs to change.

However, I’m going to lean towards producing code first. i.e. I plan to use the BIM github area for development, work on getting v2.0 out, and along the way start the process of moving BIM into contrib.

Are there negative implications of not being in CONTRIB that I’m unaware of? Should I push this a little harder?

Miscellaneous improvements

There are currently 13 open issues (there is a 14th one which is migrate BIM to Moodle 2.0) associated with BIM v1.0. Most of these are ideas for improvement from folk using BIM or solutions to problems experienced. The following is a quick and dirty attempt at ranking/grouping those issues. Feel free to express dismay at the mis-categorisation of your favourite issue.

Not required;
The simplepie issue should not be required as I understand Moodle 2.0 includes Simplepie.
Unimportant;
I just can’t get excited about the perceived need to open student blog posts in a new window.
Nice and might happen;
- Copy detection – as mentioned above Moodle 2.0 support for copy detection might enable this.
Important improvements; and
- Support for “deleting” student posts from BIM’s consideration.
- Better integration with the “Moodle way” – e.g. support for grade scales, better integration with the gradebook, and support for groupings
- Misc. additional BIM improvements: associate a due date with a question; and, recording who released a post
Important interface improvements.
- Re-design and expand the student interface
- Improve the marker allocation interface, including showing missing allocations
- Improve the marking interface

Improving the code design

The BIM code is ugly. This is partially (mostly?) due to me learning both PHP and “Moodle coding” during the implementation of BIM. But it is also due to the primitive procedural coding approach used by most Moodle plugins. Even for someone coming from using a somewhat limited, home-grown MVC framework, it was depressing and frustrating to have to step back to what I now see as the dark ages. Surely there has to be a better way?

It looks like it has been talked about briefly and not always well within the Moodle community. I recognise the difficulty of adopting such a radically different approach for Moodle as a whole. But I am wondering if anyone has done this within a plugin. I played around with this earlier on and it seems to go okay. I guess performance would be one issue.

Will have to look at this further, but am likely to use an MVC approach within BIM v2.0. Is this a good idea? A bad one? What have I missed in the Moodle community?

Scaffolding conglomerations

If I had to be doing more research, this is the area in which I’d be doing it. Just finished another blog post trying to re-explain the ideas behind scaffolding conglomerations. I’d really like to try and incorporate these ideas into BIM v2.0. What follows are some concrete ideas. Sadly, they are still early ideas and need to be thought through a bit more.

Making BIM help collaborative

One of the principles for scaffolding conglomerations is

Embed opportunities for collaboration and interaction into conglomerations

In the context of BIM, this doesn’t mean what BIM already does in terms of blog posts etc. It has to do with how academics and students access help around using BIM.

BIM v1.0, like most Moodle plugins, includes some canned help pages. There are links to these pages in the BIM interface. Essentially these pages provide definitions/explanations (written by me) of basic BIM constructs and operations. These are not very good since I often write them as an after-thought and also because my familiarity with BIM (since I am its designer) almost certainly means that I see BIM very differently from other people. Nor do these help files enable any form of collaboration. They don’t leverage the collection of people using BIM.

I’d like to expand/extend the help pages into some sort of collection of services that enables the complete collection of BIM users to collaborate. And by complete, I don’t mean just within a Moodle instance. I mean across all Moodle instances that are using BIM.

Some possible examples:

Replace help pages with external wiki/blog;
A wiki would allow anyone to edit the help pages or perhaps add comments. For some, going external might be seen as a problem. Might also confuse some people who are used to the standard process of using the institutional helpdesk.
Integrate the issues page from github;
Provide some visible connection within the BIM interface to the BIM issues list. There’s a problem here of balancing local institutional problem solving and assistance (being directed to an institutional helpdesk service) with the global BIM community.
Supplement help pages with RSS feeds;
Rather than replace the institutional/Moodle help processes, supplement them with the addition of feeds from more global collaboration areas.
Sharing designs; and
I wonder if it would be possible to implement an approach were BIM designs could be shared. Currently, this would be limited to just the questions. But later versions could include other configuration options. Not sure how useful this would be.
Incorporate related literature.
There’s a growing body of literature around the use of blogs in higher education. Would be useful to include links to this literature and reflections upon it within BIM. However, rather than hard-code this and make it something only I or some other technician can change. It would be more appropriate for it to be something people could collaborate around. Perhaps using functionality from Mendeley or del.icio.us.

So, not easy. More thought given. What other strategies are there for making the BIM help services more collaborative.

Pro-active help

An existing BIM issue gives a concrete example. There are times when not all students using a BIM activity have been allocated a marker. BIM doesn’t highlight this at the moment. If BIM were more pro-active, it would raise a warning or show a summary of the total number of students and the number that are allocated markers. This could be done via email or via the web interface. There are numerous other examples of similar common problems, including: students who haven’t registered their blog, or posted a required post, or Markers who haven’t used BIM yet.

A more complete approach might involve some type of Moodle wizard. A step by step process that guides the designer of the BIM activity through the decisions and trade-offs they have to make when setting up the activity.

Analytics

It looks like analytics (of some description) will play an increasing part in e-learning, especially in large classes. Analytics could form the basis for some form of scaffolding in BIM and not just for teachers. For example, some form of analytics that shows how the student is going with the BIM activity compared with other students. Potentially as some form of encouragement. e.g. the progress bar block.

Conglomerations and conglomerations

This raises the question of how much should BIM do itself? Short answer is that BIM shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. Where possible it should integrate with existing tools, like the progress bar. And this brings up the other aspect of conglomerations. A conglomeration is not meant to be just something like BIM. It’s conceptualised as a combination of different services that are designed to act together.

So, someone who decides to use BIM, may not be aware of the progress bar block. BIM should perhaps actively inform them of that block (or other useful tools) and be able to work both with and without the progress bar block. Which raises the question of how/if BIM might use services provided by the progress bar block to provide scaffolding.

I think this is getting close to a problem I have with stepwise refinement and which somewhat arises from the modular design of Moodle. If I focus too much on BIM, I miss the overall whole of Moodle. I miss the opportunities to work with the progress bar block.

However, it’s more than me being aware of the whole of Moodle. It’s the assumptions within the APIs etc of Moodle and the mindsets of the other plugin developers. If they are focused too much on stepwise refinement, they focus too much on what their module does. Not on what might be possible by enabling different plugins to leverage off each other.

This is an idea that needs further thought.

Scaffolding, context-sensitive conglomerations – v2.0

By admin

On November 9, 2010

In design theory, elearning, phd, thesis, Uncategorized

This is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of the thesis. It’s a re-do of an earlier post, I’m a bit happier with it than v1.0. I’m posting it here because it connects with some work I’m doing preparing to work on BIM v2.0 and also because it summarises what I think may areas of further research in e-learning would be, if I were to do any.

First, there is a definition of what I mean by scaffolding conglomerations, then there is some brief justificatory knowledge on which this very early, rough idea is based.

The last sentence in the following, summarises why I think this idea has some value. To put it another way, I’d probably argue the following:

The vast majority of university e-learning is not very good.
The common response is based on a deficit model of the academic.
i.e. the academic doesn’t know enough about learning and teaching, so let’s force them to do a formal education qualification and all will be good. Alternatively, lets send them on some LMS training or require them to complete checklists. At best, let’s employ educational developers to work with the academics to design their courses and course sites.
This type of approach fails to connect with academics and their intrinsic motivation and subsequently is very unlikely to work.
This type of approach fails to recognise that much of the deficit in the university e-learning system arises not from the academic, but from the information systems used to implement it and the general university environment.
The proposition is that adding well-designed scaffolding, context-sensitive conglomerations addresses the limitations in the information systems and improves the level of knowledge within the system in a way that may be more effective.
However, adding the conglomerations is only one step. Fixing the limitations in the university environment (e.g. research is more important than teaching; bad management robbing academics of their passion etc.) is also required.

What are scaffolding conglomerations?

The design of e-learning in universities requires the combination of skills from a variety of different professions (e.g. instructional design, web design etc), and yet is often most performed by academics with limited knowledge of any of these professions. This limited knowledge creates significant workload for the academics and contributes to the limited quality of much e-learning. Adding experts in these fields to help course design is expensive and somewhat counter to the traditional practice of learning and teaching within universities. This suggests that e-learning in universities has a need for approaches that allow the effective capture and re-use of expertise in a form that can be re-used by non-experts without repeated direct interaction with experts. Such an approach could aim to reduce perceived workload and increase the quality of e-learning.

An emergent university e-learning information system should:

Provide the ability to easily develop, including end user development, larger conglomerations of packaged services.
A conglomeration is not simply an e-learning service such as a discussion forum. Instead it provides additional scaffolding around such services, possibly combining multiple services, to achieve a higher-level task. The scaffolding should generally embody and provide easy access to forms of expert knowledge that help encourage and enable effective use of the service. On the other hand, while many conglomerations would be expert designed and developed, offering support for end-user development would increase system flexibility and serve to embody and enable the re-use of contextual knowledge. The Webfuse default course site approach (Section 5.3.5) is one example of a conglomeration. A default course site combines a number of separate page types (services), specific graphical and instructional designs, and existing institutional content into a course website with a minimum of human input. Another form of conglomeration that developed with Webfuse was Staff MyCQU. This “portal” grew to become a conglomeration of integrated Wf applications designed to package a range of services academics required for learning and teaching.
Design conglomerations to provide a range of scaffolding to aid users, increase adoption and increase quality.
There is likely to be some distance between the knowledge of the user and that required to effectively use e-learning services. Scaffolding provided by the conglomerations should seek to bridge this distance, encourage good practice, and help the user develop additional skills. For example, over time an “outstanding tasks” element was added to Staff MyCQU to remind staff of unfinished work in a range of Wf applications. The BAM Wf application was designed to support the workload involved in tracking and marking individual student reflective journals (Jones & Luck, 2009). A more recent example focused more on instructional design is the instructional design wizard included in the new version of the Desire2Learn LMS. This wizard guides academics through course creation via course objectives.
Embed opportunities for collaboration and interaction into conglomerations.
An essential aim of scaffolding conglomerations is enabling and encouraging academics to learn more about how to effectively use e-learning. While the importance of community and social interaction to learning is widely recognised, most professional development opportunities occur in isolation (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Conglomerations should aim to provide opportunities for academics to observe, question and discuss use of the technology. Examples from Webfuse are limited to the ability to observe. For example, all Webfuse course sites were, by default, open for all to see. The CourseHistory Wf application allowed staff to see the grade breakdown for all offerings of any course. A better example would have been if the CourseHistory application encouraged and enabled discussions about grade breakdowns.
Encourage and support conglomerations that are context-sensitive.
Effective integration with the specific institutional context enables conglomerations to leverage existing resources and reduce cognitive dissonance. For example, the Webfuse default course site conglomeration was integrated with a range of CQU specific systems, processes and resources. The Webfuse online assignment submission system evolved a number of CQU specific features that significantly increased perceptions of usefulness and ease-of-use (Behrens et al., 2005).

Some justificatory knowledge

The concept of constructive templates (Catlin, Garret, & Launhardt, 1991; Nanard et al., 1998) was developed in response to the difficulty faced by content providers in developing hypermedia structures that followed the known principles of interface and hypermedia design. Constructive templates helped content experts to create well designed hypermedia (Catlin et al., 1991). The “conglomeration” principles build on the constructive template idea through insights from distributed cognition and related ideas. Amongst other important aspects, Hollan et al (2000) describe how distributed cognition expands what is considered cognitive beyond an individual to encompass interactions between people, their environment and the tools therein. Boland et al (1994, p. 459) define a distributed cognition system as one that “supports interpretation and dialogue among a set of inquirers by providing richer forms of self-reflection and communication”. Scaffolding, context-sensitive conglomerations aim to improve or increase the quality and quantity of cognition within an e-learning system and support self-reflection and communication.

References

Behrens, S., Jamieson, K., Jones, D., & Cranston, M. (2005). Predicting system success using the Technology Acceptance Model: A case study. Paper presented at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems’2005, Sydney.

Boland, R., Ramkrishnan, V., & Te’eni, D. (1994). Designing information technology to support distributed cognition. Organization Science, 5(3), 456-475.

Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (2000). How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Catlin, K., Garret, L. N., & Launhardt, J. (1991). Hypermedia Templates: An Author’s Tool. Paper presented at the Proceedings of Hypertext’91.

Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., & Kirsh, D. (2000). Distributed cognition: Toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7(2), 174-196.

Jones, D., & Luck, J. (2009). Blog Aggregation Management: Reducing the Aggravation of Managing Student Blogging. Paper presented at the World Conference on Education Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2009. from http://www.editlib.org/p/31530.

Nanard, M., Nanard, J., & Kahn, P. (1998). Pushing Reuse in Hypermedia Design: Golden Rules, Design Patterns and Constructive Templates. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia.

A story of the power of intrinsic motivation

By admin

On November 7, 2010

In thesis, Uncategorized

This weekend provided a wonderful story of the power of intrinsic motivation, and a perfect example of what I think is increasingly wrong with Australian higher education, especially its use of technology.

The story

My two sons (5 and 3) have been going to swimming lessons for the best part of the year. We’ve found a wonderful swimming teacher. A locally-based university student from Poland who takes the boys for solo 30 minute lessons one after the other. A great learning environment. What’s more, due to the time we go, the pool is almost deserted. A much better space to learn how to swim than some alternatives.

And yet, for last 6 weeks at least, the oldest boy’s improvements had plateaued. He can swim up and down with the kickboard at a great rate of knots. Had even got the hang of the arm motion, while kicking and looking down with his face under water. But a psychological gap had formed around swimming by himself. The idea of swimming away from his instructor for the side of the pool, just a metre or two away, reduced him to hysterics.

In recent weeks, we’ve plied him with bribes, gentle threats and just about every other tactic we could think of. None worked. The hysterics might reduce in volume, but were still present. At times evidence of his fear would arise when getting ready to go to swimming. He was saying he hated swimming. That all changed this weekend.

For some reason and from somewhere, he’s developed the idea that he wants to be a diver when he grows up. He wants to swim under the ocean with tanks on his back and fix things. The first I heard of this was when we were getting ready to go to swimming. The first thing he did when he got to swimming was to tell his instructor about his new career goal.

Obviously this was something we could build on. We’d already laid the ground work with comments about the importance of being able to swim to the career prospects of a diver. The instructor picked up on this and worked it into the lesson. Even to the extent of changing the routine a little to build on this interest.

The change was phenomenal. There was no crying or other signs of hysterics. The task of getting him to go under water, touch the bottom, wait and then surface was easy. Swimming solo not a hassle. He probably swam solo more times in this one lesson, than in all his previous lessons. On the way home, the future diver was saying things like “I love swimming” and “Daddy, do you know how many days a week I want to go swimming? Everyday.”. The eagerness was palpable in his voice.

The intrinsic motivation provided by the desire to be a diver, combined with a great environment and an instructor that leveraged that intrinsic motivation has made a huge difference.

The relationship with educational technology

A while ago I blogged about an interview given by Alan Kay. He used the analogy of computers being like musical instruments. The entire discussion around technology has (almost) entirely focused on the instruments and not on helping the teachers become musicians. The aim isn’t to give every teacher a piano, we have to give them a love for music.

I took Kay’s argument in a direction that supports my pet peeve. i.e. I think the environment Australian (this may apply more broadly – countries, schools etc – but I’ll limit my claim to my where I’ve had experience) universities create around technology actively prevents academics from becoming musicians, from engaging more heavily with educational technology. Tom Haymes pulls my “Kay post” into a broader discussion, and wants to make another point about why educational technology has failed.

I have faculty who are almost physically phobic about computers and technology.

I’ve seen this same sort of phobia from academics. However, I’d like to argue that the presence of this phobia is most likely due to the limitations of how educational technology is being implemented in the university environment. In particular, the inability of existing methods to engage with, or perhaps even discover the intrinsic motivation of the phobic academics.

The deficit model of the academic

While I’ve seen academics who are phobic about using technology, or at least profess to be when having to learn the new LMS – or some even sillier, badly designed local institutional information systems. I’ve seen some of those same academics talk about how they were using Skype, Facebook, or some other technology to talk with their kids, grandkids, parents over the weekend.

Don’t take my word for it, Xu and Meyer (2007) report on a 1998 – yea, that’s right, 1998, 12 years ago – survey reporting that 70% of academics had computers at home. Jones (not me) and Johnson-Yale (2005) report on a survey of over 2000 academics that finds that academics have long-term exposure to the Internet and computer use. Duderstadt et al (2002) suggest that academics make extensive use of technology in research and scholarship. Use that in many cases drives the evolution of the technology to meet their needs.

The “blame the academic” excuse that is used typifies a deficit model. A deficit model that does not help address the problem. For me, at least in the specific examples I have seen (and perhaps more broadly), the deficit model is a symptom of what is wrong with how universities are implementing educational technology. To be somewhat more provocative, it’s a symptom of the folk responsible for educational technology planning within universities trying to find someone to blame, rather than accept that they’ve gotten it wrong.

An example: “enforce the checklists”

Here’s perhaps an extreme example, but one I heard of recently. An institution I’m aware of has, over the last couple of years, instigated a range of checklists for tasks. The idea is that as academics create a course synopsis, a course site, moderate assignments etc, the tick boxes off on a checklist. In the last little while they even implemented an information system so that the checklists were computer-based, not paper-based.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the checklists have become for the vast majority of academics. Yep, that’s right. Surprise, surprise, most academics simply tick all the boxes as quickly as they can. Regardless of whether they have complete all the tasks. It gets worse.

Recently, there was a problem in a course (or perhaps a few) that finally revealed that the academics weren’t perhaps treating the checklists as seriously as expected. Do you know what one of the “leaders” seriously suggested as a solution? “This time we have to enforce the checklists”.

How’s that for engaging with intrinsic motivation?

The weaknesses of current approaches

Tom Haynes gets at the crux of the weaknesses with this

Are we but ghosts in the machine or are we its masters? This tension comes out most clearly in the administrative vs. teaching divide. How many technologies are inflicted on us with little or no forethought as to how they will impact the frontline user? And how many of us simply accept that?

Traditional institutional educational technology within universities today can be characterised as:

A “rational” processes results in the “objective” selection of a single, integrated information system (the LMS) for the entire institution.
The information system is only recently starting to provide some of the functionality people have been using for years, but most of it still sucks.
A project team is set up with the aim of ensuring that all staff and students know how to and do use the system.
An on-going support team is set up, typically using the cheapest people available and who are then responsible for showing people how to use the system (and nothing else).
When someone asks to do something innovative, it is explained either that
1. If you follow this 134 step process (the students have a 532 step process) you can get something that sort of looks like what you want to do, but not really.
2. Computer says now i.e. the LMS can’t do that.

It goes on, but the point is that nothing about this process is designed to engage with the intrinsic motivation of the academics. It’s not even designed to engage and build upon what the academics know. It’s designed entirely to get the academics to use the selected system, because that is efficient.

And then they wonder why the vast majority of academics don’t produce brilliant examples of e-learning! And that’s before we get into other environmental issues like the relative value of teaching and research, the increasing percentage of sessional (adjunct) teaching staff, or the underpinning over-emphasis on the product, rather than people or process.

Learning the violin

Returning to Alan Kay’s analogy with musical instruments. The LMS approach to educational technology is a bit like someone deciding that all the kids in a school have to take up the violin. Even those that would have like to learn the guitar or the saxophone. You know the idea, it doesn’t matter what instrument they learn, as long as they are learning music.

Sorry, but intrinsic motivation plays a part.

Using educational technology is a learning process

When an institutional introduces a new LMS, the academics have to learn how to use the system. If the institution wants academics to improve their teaching, then the academics have to learn new methods, strategies etc. For me, teaching is fundamentally a learning process. It never stops.

For me, this means that the implementation of educational technology within universities should be thought of as “teaching”, i.e. helping others learn. So, what do we know about learning?

How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School is a book produced by the National Research Council from the US. It’s a book that “synthesizes the scientific basis of learning”. By understanding what is known about learning, the book suggests implications for teaching. The first implication for teaching is

Teachers must draw out and work with the preexisting understandings that their students bring with them.

The major problem I have with institutional attempts at implementing educational technology, is that they effectively forget or ignore what we know about learning and teaching. I suggest, that if you want high quality use of educational technology, then how the institution implements educational technology has to engage what people know, what they want, what they are having problems with. If possible, it has to identify the intrinsic motivation of the academics and respond to it.

Postscript

I came across this post in my RSS feeds after finishing the above. It gives another great perspective on the deficit model mentioned above.

References

Duderstadt, J., Atkins, D., & Houweling”, D. V. (2002). Higher education in the digital age: Technology issues and strategies for American colleges and universities. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers.

Jones, S., & Johnson-Yale, C. (2005). Professors online: The Internet’s impact on college faculty. First Monday, 10(9).

Xu, Y., & Meyer, K. (2007). Factors explaining faculty technology use and productivity. Internet and Higher Education, 10(2), 41-52.

Crisis in higher education and limitations that prevent change

By admin

On November 1, 2010

In thesis, Uncategorized

Over the last few days I’ve been catching up on some writing (first last week Leigh Blackall and this morning from Richard Hall) that, at least for me, seems to be trying to find ways that the current crisis in higher ed can be used as a spring board for something better. I certainly think there is an opportunity there. Dave Snowden has argued

The best chance any organisation has to do things differently is during a crisis. During such a time people’s willingness to do things differently, to be open to working with people who they normally avoid is higher than in normal circumstances.

My problem is that when it comes to universities – especially those Australian universities that I’m familiar with – I’m not confident that anything can/will be done.

In this case, my natural cynicism has been enhanced by a couple of years of experience within one institution into a possibly unhealthy contempt. On the other hand it is also being challenged by a colleague’s observation that

you’d be the perfect person to carve out a space in the brave new world of open education.

The following is perhaps the first step in trying to reconcile the unhealthy contempt into something that might be productive. It’s an early step, and a quick one as I need to finish the thesis. So don’t be looking for answers, yet.

The failure of the PLEs@CQUni project

I was really taken with this quote from Richard Hall’s post

Can institutions afford to be stereotypical when it comes to engaging with those students’ and their identities/individuality? This doesn’t mean leaving those students to create their own outsourced personal learning environments. But it might mean an activist role for institutions in building frameworks that are open enough to make sense to the variety of students in their own contexts. The reality and medium-term effectiveness of centralisation or outsourcing of homogenised services is therefore a major issue, in light of the need for institutional uniqueness.

It captures brilliantly what was the vision behind the failed PLEs@CQUni project.

What surprised me more was that Richard also quoted and linked to a recent post of mine. The quote he included was this line

It’s the focus on the product that has led university leaders to place less emphasis on the process and the people.

In the original post, what I meant by product was degrees, not tools. The focus of management had become on we have to develop new product/degrees or improve the current ones without any thought to the people and the process that we’re using to product the product. let alone any thought about whether the product/degree is what is actually needed. The entire way of thinking within the institution is focused on that product/degree. Not surprising, because senior management on short-term contracts are being measured by the number of consumers purchasing the product/degree.

But that’s an aside. The point here is that the focus on product also underpinned the failure of the PLEs@CQUni project. A fundamental argument in my thesis is that when it comes to e-learning (and universities in general) teleological or plan-driven processes have become dominant. Not only that, I argue that for the type of activity and context in which e-learning operates, plan-driven processes are completely inappropriate. To such an extent that university folk either aren’t even aware that there are alternatives. Or, if they are aware of the alternatives, then they either disparage them as undisciplined, or have faddishly adopted the perception of using the alternatives, without really understanding or implementing them properly.

The same pressures that created the neo-liberal university Richard talks about also encourages, perhaps even requires, the adoption of techno-rational, plan-driven processes. That is, senior, knowledgable people identify the solution and then employ project boards and other folk to ensure that the entire organisation implements that solution. Senior people aren’t able to say, “We don’t know what the best solution is, we’re going to explore”. That would be seen as ignorant (the leader must have the answer) and inefficient. If you decide you don’t want to adopt the solution, you are seen as inefficient or not a team player. And eventually when the inevitable problems arise (because they really didn’t know what would be needed now, let alone in a couple of years) it’s not the senior management folk or the process that gets the blame. No, it was poor implementation. If only we had better people doing the implementation…

It is in this environment that a project like the PLEs@CQUni project was always going to fail. The PLE idea was, and still is very new, for most senior managers. It also sounds inefficient, “You mean each student gets to choose their own set of tools and we have to support them? Won’t that be expensive?”. In the words of Humphrey Appleby, any senior manager pushing PLEs would be making a “brave decision”. Especially when the project was described as an exploration into what can be done, you can’t waste resources on exploration. This is particularly troubling for the teleological, techno-rational, clueless senior manager when everyone knows that an LMS, preferably an open-source LMS, is what every university needs.

And then there is the influence of the innovation prevention departments most often created by the traditional hierarchical organisational structure that arises from the application of traditional decomposition. A structure that means in-depth knowledge of technology, learning and teaching, and actual learning and teaching are separated into disparate fiefdoms that can only communicate through self-serving senior managers.

Did I mention that my perspective had probably been elevated to a unhealthy level of contempt?

The problem facing responses to the existing crisis

I tend to think that these barriers will continue to exist. I’ve been waiting for senior management at universities to seriously engage in Snowden’s clarion call to think anew and avoid “The dogmas of the quiet past”. However, I think the constraints of techno-rational approaches are so embedded in the neo-liberal pressures within government/society and the thinking of senior management that I can’t see this changing anytime soon.

For example, one of the steps Leigh is suggesting is

Offer all the universities in the world your service, outlining the cost benefit analysis you’ve done for them (like Google Docs did). All you need from them is assurance they will give your graduates the rubber stamp on your assessed and moderated say so.

If a big international publishing company offered this argument, then there is a chance that some universities would adopt. Well, let’s face it. When it comes to many large classes, they already have. However, if it were a network of hippy, wiki former academics….

Then there is the increasing pressure to standardisation and accreditation being heralded within Australia by TEQSA. This pressure arises from the same techno-rational place underpinning all of the above. In that environment, I think it would be a “brave university senior manager” who would adopt such an approach. At least without the hippy, wiki former academics demonstrating how their “course” met the standard learning outcomes identified by TEQSA.

Which tends to go against everything they hippy, wiki former academics would be trying to achieve. Are the two approaches increasingly incompatible?

A way forward?

That’s a question for myself. A personal question. Do I see a way forward that might allow me to contribute? I’ve already left the institution, but am I still part of the academy? Do I want to be? What do I want?

Month: November 2010

The deficit model of changees

Change done to me, not with me

Problems with external change

Defining future outcomes

Change from within?

Closer to home

Where to teach?

The constraints of the systems

References

Fundamental task of education

Knowledge == learning

How?

Segue into analytics

Registering external feeds

What’s been done to moodle_simplepie.php

More problems

What does Moodle store about external blogs

Funny characters

Other core/plugins using Simplepie

Testing

Outstanding tasks

What

Implementation

Lessons

Additional thoughts

Math is not linear

The topic areas

Completing enrolment

Starting with downloading the guide

The lovely portal

Usernames and passwords

Moving on

“Tacit” knowledge

Adding courses

A hold on your record

Student email

Changes in the blog and my PLN?

Ideas and suggestions

Turning away?

Turning toward?

Work with Moodle 2.0

Installing and playing with Moodle 2.0

Maintaining BIM 1.0

Get BIM into CONTRIB

Miscellaneous improvements

Improving the code design

Scaffolding conglomerations

Making BIM help collaborative

Pro-active help

Analytics

Conglomerations and conglomerations

What are scaffolding conglomerations?

Some justificatory knowledge

References

The story

The relationship with educational technology

The deficit model of the academic

An example: “enforce the checklists”

The weaknesses of current approaches

Learning the violin

Using educational technology is a learning process

Postscript

References

The failure of the PLEs@CQUni project

The problem facing responses to the existing crisis

A way forward?