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The following is the next part of the evaluation section of chapter 5 of my thesis. It seeks to evaluate how well the Webfuse system fulfilled the guideline of "an integrated online learning environment" for the period 2000-2004. This is only the first section which talks about the provision of course sites. Subsequent sections will talk about feature adoption, staff and student usage of course sites, and staff and student usage of Wf applications....more...
This is the second version of an earlier post. As I wrote more of the chapter I felt the need to revisit and expand the idea (though the following is still at a rough draft stage). The following describes the rationale and implementation behind the implementation of the default course sites approach within Webfuse. This approach was used at CQU from 2001 through 2009. It has similarities with what Mark Smithers calls a minimium online presence policy (MOPP), though (I think) my take on the value of MOPP differs a little from Mark's. Not surprising given the following....more...
This is the second post containing a part of the evaluation section of chapter 5 of my PhD thesis. It looks at how much/well Webfuse acted as a web publishing tool during 2000-2004. There's not much here, as this is not the focus....more...
This is one part of the Evaluation section of Chapter 5 of my PhD thesis. It's actually the fourth section, but it's the first to have reached a rough first draft stage. The basic aim is to show how the Webfuse interventions from 2000 through 2004 (and beyond) increased the flexibility and diversity of the system....more...
In the last post I outlined some early rough usage figures for Webfuse from 2000-2009. The following goes into a bit more detail with the usage of the wf applications....more...
In terms of the thesis, my current focus is on chapter 5. This chapter seeks to describe what we did from 2000 through 2004 and beyond. I'm currently working on the evaluation section, a major component of the evaluation is looking at the usage statistics of Webfuse during this period. It's slow going and there is still a fair bit of analysis to go, but some initial figures are available....more...
Last week I was thinking that academics shouldn't manually create course sites. That arose out of the process of writing up the why/what behind what we did with Webfuse from 1999 through 2004. Today, I've been continuing that and looking at the usage statistics from that period....more...
The following is a first draft of the next section of chapter 5 of my thesis. The aim here is to try and illustrate how the combination of the agile and adopted-focused development process of Webfuse, when combined with the design of Webfuse enabled the rapid development of "workarounds" that enabled the system to adapt to changes in the environment and requirements of the systems users....more...
A blog post on the website of Gilfes Education Group (apparently a "network of independent education experts") picks up on the Indicators project and its take on academic analytics. The post seems to largely in agreement with what we're doing and the reasons behind it....more...
Stephen Downes makes a valid point about my recent question about whether or not academics should manually create websites. I agree with his underlying point that academics should not be forced to use the institutional approach. Given any option I would not suggest such an approach....more...
(There is a response/attempted clarification to comments on the following by Stephen Downes in another post)...more...
There is now a version 2.0 of this section....more...
Over the last couple of days I've enjoyed a small discussion that has arisen out of some comments Kevin has made on my blog. This post is an attempt to partially engage with the most recent comment. I echo Kevin's conclusion, I'd love to hear anyone else's take on this....more...
Yet another section from Chapter 5 of the thesis describing the various changes made to Webfuse in the period from 2000 onwards. This one (very briefly) describes the Webfuse framework for dynamic web applications....more...
The following is the third in a sequence of sections from chapter 5 of my thesis. These sections are describing the changes made in the development and support of Webfuse from 2000 through 2004 (and a bit beyond). This post very briefly describes the adoption a design patterns influenced, OO design....more...
The following is the second of the sections from my thesis that describe the various changes made to Webfuse and how it was implemented during the years 2000-2004 (and a bit beyond). It's a rough first draft. The first section describes how the Webfuse development process came to be very focused on the potential adopters of Webfuse. This section describes why and how the Webfuse development process became more emergent/agile....more...
A recent post of mine continued the trend of reflecting on the impacts - in my mind negative impacts - of a top-down, compliance driven culture in higher education. This bit has been encouraged by a comment on that post which makes a number of interesting points, at least in terms of encouraging some additional thinking on my part. It's also serindipitously coincided with some recent local events....more...
The following is a first draft of the next section in Chapter 5 of the thesis. It's the first section which starts describing the various different changes that were made to Webfuse and how it was supported from 2000 and on. IMHO, this particular change is something that continues to be missing from almost all university attempts to support e-learning. If not missing, they simply haven't recognised the need for greater levels of skills. It is particularly sad that my current institution, the institution at which these changes/lesson were first implemented and written about 10+years ago, still hasn't learnt the lesson - or perhaps the lesson just isn't important enough....more...
For a couple of different reasons I am helping someone with the design and implementation of a Moodle course site. I've developed an activity module for Moodle but have never created an entire course site. Have thought about how it might be done, but never done it. The following is a description and some reflections on the experience....more...
Peter Albion picked up on an earlier post of mine and offers a brief description of his own experience within Australian universities. In particular, the increasing focus on compliance with bureaucratic systems as a means of assuring quality, a move back to hierarchies of command and control and apparent adoption of a Theory X view. A view that resonates with what I see within my current institution and one others talk about....more...
The following describes the process of adding support for the provision of OPML files to the Moodle activity module BIM....more...