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This is the second in the fortnightly reports of what I've been doing in my current position/ - here's the first. These posts are made just before the meeting with my supervisor. Due to a change in date for the last meeting, this doesn't report on a full fortnight....more...
The following completes the "alternate models" section of the Product component started in a previous post. It's a bit rough and ready, but hopefully good enough....more...
And here's the next bit of the Products component for chapter 2 of my thesis. The aim of this section is basically two argue that the LMS approach to e-learning embodies one view of how to procure software and one software model. I eventually aim to argue that both of these predominant models are essentially bad matches for the nature of e-learning within a university. The following is intended more to identify that there are alternatives than argue for the inappropriateness. That's for later. But I doubt I've stopped it coming through....more...
Back to the PhD today, probably will do a couple of summaries of papers I'm reading. The focus is on the product models and procurement strategies used by Universities to solve the technical problem of e-learning. I start with a paper with the title "Learning Tools in Higher Education: Products, Characteristics, Procurement" (Wild and Sobernig, 2007)...more...
Some colleagues and I are putting the finishing touches on a paper that has arisen out of the indicators project. The paper is an exploratory paper, seeking to find interesting patterns that might indicate good or bad things about the use of LMS (learning management systems, aka course management systems, virtual learning environments etc) that might help improve decision-making by all participants (students through management). I hope to post the paper in coming days....more...
The last week has seen only one day spent on the PhD. Mainly due to working on a conference paper. The good news is that the paper is connected to the PhD. It looks at mining LMS usage logs to generate indicators of patterns which may be interesting. The paper includes a comparison of LMS feature adoption between Blackboard (CQU's existing institutional LMS) and Webfuse - the topic of the PhD. Webfuse comes out favourably from a couple of perspectives. More on this later....more...
BAM is a little project of mine playing at the edges of post-industrial e-learning. Since 2006 it's been relying on students creating and using blogs provided by external service provides - mostly Wordpress.com....more...
Over recent weeks I have ignored Twitter, it was consuming too much time and I have to focus on writing the PhD. There is a cost involved to doing this, you miss out on some good insights....more...
As part of the thesis I've been engaging with some of the literature around LMS feature usage to evaluate usage of Webfuse. A good first stab of this was reported in an earlier post. There were a number of limitations of that work, it's time to expand a bit on it. To some extent for the PhD and to some extent because of a paper....more...
The following is the next short, and still somewhat questionable, section of the Product component. A previous post discussesd the limitations of an LMS, this section talks briefly about the other types of systems necessary for learning and teaching. The next section will talk about more abstract alternatives to those most commonly associated with the LMS....more...
This post follows on from previous posts and contributes the next bit of the Product component of my thesis....more...
The following post is the next step in completing the Product component of chapter 2 of my thesis. An earlier post started off the Product component. This post is the first section in a broader section titled "University e-learning technology". This post focuses on the learning management system (LMS)....more...
A bit of progress made on chapter 2 this week, sufficient to suggest that the end is nigh - at least for the first draft. That progress is in spite of only having limited time this week to work on the thesis because of work on Monday and having to baby sit the two boys on Wednesday....more...
In the last bit of work I did on BIM, I got to the stage of having some initial working code for BIM module that allow someone to create a BIM activity and have that data saved to the database. The activity wouldn't do anything, but it's a start....more...
One of the problems within universities with the types of role I've been performing in the last couple of years is the out-of-sight, out-of-mind, problem. As a L&T "support" person the folk in the faculties, especially those in senior management, aren't always aware of exactly what it is you're doing. At the same time, they are aware of all sorts of problems they are seeing with L&T, have specific ideas how those should be addressed and don't see folk like me implementing those ideas. Consequently, they don't see any value in what we do....more...
This post contains the start of the Product component of the Ps Framework that forms a section out of chapter 2 of my thesis....more...
This is a story about serendipitous connectability connecting both the online and offline worlds and making me aware of a growing narrative or theory. Which makes me question whether or not nudging or nudge theory is libertarian paternalism...more...
The purpose of this post is to work out some initial ideas for a presentation I'll be giving at CQUniversity in the next month or so. The title of the presentation is probably going to be "Herding cats, losing weight and how to improve learning and teaching". The talk is related to my current position/ and is the first step in making the position better known within the organisation....more...
This is the last section from the People component of chapter 2 of my thesis. It is an attempt to derive some lessons from the previous sections that are relevant to the practice of e-learning....more...
I'm involved in some early discussions with some folk from the Psychology department here at CQUniversity about a project looking at curriculum mapping. If I've got any idea of their problem, it's associated with the need to show their students, themselves and the accrediting bodies how the activities, resources and assessments of the courses within they degree meet the outcomes for the courses and the program....more...
The last post in this series saw me struggling - the long way around - to the realisation that the implementation model I had in my head wasn't going to work. At least not with the constraints of the model adopted by Moodle....more...
The following is the second to last section for the People component of chapter 2 of my thesis. The basic aim of this section is to establish that people are generally not rational and methods that assume that they are, are destined to fail. It's my proposition that most of the organisational approaches to e-learning and, more generally, learning and teaching at universities suffer this flaw....more...
It's been almost two weeks since my last PhD update, mainly due to two factors. First, a lack of motivation due to some external factors and second, a decision to move back to Fridays as the release day for the summaries. The move back to Fridays arises from a new regular discussion with my esteemed supervisor on Friday afternoons. Releasing an update just before such a discussion seems to make sense....more...
The story of trying to get BAM into Moodle (BIM) continues, today's saga continues on from the last post which had progress stalled. The NEWMODULE template module was put in place, I had thought most of the necessary steps were being taken, however, the module name is not showing up as expected....more...
As outlined in the last BIM post the aim here is to take the "template" NEWMODULE and start creating a BIM module. Initially, this will contain hard-coded HTML or perhaps some initial non-functioning forms, we might progress onto some canned examples and finally to the real thing....more...
Over the last few weeks I've slowly been getting into Moodle/PHP as part of need to put the BAM project into Moodle. I've decided today to abbreviate this project into BIM - BAM into Moodle. It'll do for now....more...
October last year we purchased Wandilla Zanzibar - Big Z from the big Brahman sales in Rocky. He was the new bull for the small number of remnants of our might herd of cattle....more...
The following is the next section for the People component of the Ps Framework for chapter 2 of my thesis. It starts the trend away from specific roles/groups within e-learning to some more abstract descriptions of the people involved. This one talks about the chasm....more...
I'm back to working on the People component of the Ps Framework for chapter 2 of my thesis. The last post in the blog from this section was back in mid July and examined leaders and managers. This section moves onto "support staff". It's the last of the sections examining groups/roles associated with e-learning....more...
The following is part reflection, part admission and mostly a warning and explanation to those that might care. Over the last few months, I've been spending a fair amount of time working on my thesis. As part of that I have attempted to ignore any number of things and limit my interests. Consequently, any number of social relationships have been let slide, not to mention reading and keeping up with things outside of the PhD (e.g. blogs of other folk)....more...
Over the last week I've posted a bit around papers and ideas about how you evaluate the use of a learning management system (LMS). This post is intended to summarise findings from an initial evaluation of the use of features in the Webfuse system from 1997 through 2009. Webfuse is the system I designed as part of my PhD and has been used at Central Queensland University since 1997. At least the "LMS" part of Webfuse will cease being used in 2010....more...
Anyone who listens to me or reads this blog (e.g. when senior management loses the plot, quality compliance and task corruption, models of growth - responding to the grammar of school, improving university teaching and learning: learning from constructive alignment by not mandating it) knows that I think there are fundamental mistakes being made at most universities when it comes to how they try and improve or change the practice of learning and teaching. The following is an attempt to explain why I think it's very badly broken and offer an alternative approach based on different theoretical underpinnings....more...
This post follows on from a previous post and continues an examination of some papers written by Malikowski and colleagues examining the adoption of features of an LMS/VLE/CMS. This one focuses on the 2006 paper....more...
I'm in the midst of looking at the work of Malikowski et al in evaluating the usage of VLE features. The aim of this work is an attempt to provide information that can help those who help academics use VLEs. The following is an idea to address those problems and arrive at something that might be useful for cross-institutional comparisons....more...
As a step towards thinking about how you judge the success of an LMS/VLE, this post looks at some work done by Steven Malikowski. Why his work? Well he is co-author on three journal papers that provide one perspective on the usage of features of an LMS, including one that proposes a model for research into course management systems. A list of the papers in the references section....more...
My PhD is essentially arguing that most institutional approaches to e-learning within higher education (i.e. the adoption and long term use of an LMS) has some significant flaws. The thesis will/does describe one attempt to formulate an approach that is better. (Aside: I will not claim that the approach is the best, in fact I'll argue that the notion of there being "one best way" to support e-learning within a university is false.) The idea of "better" raises an interesting/important question, "How do you measure success with institutional use of an LMS?" How do you know if one approach is better than another?...more...
I came across a post title "Some ways university will change over ten years by Mark Smithers via a tweet from Claire Brooks. The post is, as Mark puts it, an attempt to anticipate the changing roles and functions of universities and how it will effect educational technology. To some extent it's the sort of thing that I might be expected to do in my current position/, if not to develop institutional policy, at least to inform it....more...
I've fallen a bit short of what I wanted to achieve this week, however, overall I'm feeling pretty good about progress. In particular, because some of the initial evaluation results point to the "Webfuse way" having some quantitative benefits. Also, if the work in the last week get's the okay from the esteemed supervisor it should make completing chapter 5 pretty straight forward....more...
In a recent post I messily wrote about the start of the process of evaluating the use of Webfuse for my thesis. This post takes the ideas/process from that post and applies it to the course websites produced by Webfuse from 2006 through 2007. The data in here is in a similar time frame to the work being done by Col and Ken on their indicators project....more...
At the start of an early day of working on the PhD I am feeling particularly old. Dealing with a teenager at home may also have contributed to it. So, I'm feeling in a particularly curmudgeonly frame of mind, i.e. grumpy old b*stard. Please keep that in mind when reading the following, it will likely come over much more cynical/negative than it is meant....more...