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The following is a summary and possibly some reflection on Newton (2003). I'm still trying to decide if, as I read literature associated with the PhD, if I should take the time to produce these summaries. I wonder if, instead, I should concentrate on writing the thesis.......more...
The following post and its content has been shaped by (at least) three separate influences:...more...
Well this week has been the worst yet in terms of progress on the PhD, at least with the last 5 weeks of updates. Most of it has been work related. Issues and events that have taken away the time, motivation and peace of mind necessary to effectively engage with PhD work....more...
As part of the PhD I'm developing the P Frameworks as a theory for analysing/understanding the factors the impact the organisational implementation of e-learning. Essentially, I argued that that the current institutional practice of e-learning within universities demonstrates an orthodoxy. Further, I argue that this orthodoxy has a number of flaws that limit, some significantly, potential outcomes....more...
I've been banging on about the tendency for educational technology folk, especially those in the technologists alliance to "blame the teacher" as the reason why technology-mediated learning hasn't achieved all of its promise....more...
I strongly believe in the notion that both learning and teaching, and attempting to improve learning and teaching, are wicked design problems to which there is no single answer, there are no right nor easy answers. The better answers lie in a broad recognition, understanding and synthesis of the diverse perspectives that exist; an in-depth understanding of the local context in which you are trying to operate; and a broad (usually much broader than people assume) set of knowledge of concepts and fields that might help....more...
In my last post I pointed to a talk by Postman that outlined five things we should know about technological change. This list has resonated me due to my involvement with elearning within universities and feelings that it is failing, often due to naive views of how technology can be implemented and what effects it will have on teaching and learning. This post continues/starts an attempt to make connections with Postman's list and elearning....more...
A prompt from a reader led to some additional searching for detail on the talk by Postman that forms the basis of this post. A search that led to a 2025 podcast episode of Modern Futura titled "AI & Technological Change: The Postman always delivers". That page's footnote includes details of the conference at which Postman delivered the talk. The body of the post points to Punya Mishra's 2022 post "The Postman always rings twice"....more...
It's a small world. I work in Rockhampton at a university and last year traveled to Canberra for a Cognitive Edge workshop (which I recommend). One of the other participants was Cory Banks who, a few years ago, was a student at the university I work at. He's obviously moved onto bigger and better things....more...
This week is turning out to be perhaps the most frustrating, not due to lack of program, but instead due to connections between what I'm reading/writing and what I'm seeing in my local context. As per last week's update the aim this week was to complete sections of chapter 2 related to the Ps Framework. The first section I targeted was "Past Experience" and this has been the source of the frustration....more...
I'm currently working on chapter 2 of my thesis, which is an explication of some of what is known about "e-learning" through the lens of the Ps Framework....more...
A recent post summarised a paper that was taking some insights from the information systems discipline and applied it to the implementation of a LMS/VLE. This post draws on some insights from Alavi and Leidner (2001), an influential paper (208 citations on Google Scholar) from the information systems discipline. A paper that calls for IS researchers to focus more on technology-mediated learning - i.e. e-learning....more...
The following is a section of my thesis - chapter 2. As I get first drafts of this stuff done, I'm going to post it to the blog - where appropriate. This is the first....more...
The following post is sparked by reading Findlow (2008) as part of my PhD work. I'm about halfway through it and finding it very interesting. In particular, this post is sparked by the following paragraph from the paper...more...
The aim of this post is to summarise my current reading - Keller (2005). I believe it will have some connection with the thesis....more...
A new record. A renewed interest in the PhD has lasted 3 weeks. I've even made a come back from the weak second album problem and probably had the most fulfilling week. Though I could have been more productive, perhaps that's an aim for next week....more...
Growing up in Rockhampton in the 70s and 80s, access to music that wasn't pop or C&W just didn't happen. Different types of music were scarce. In these days of iTunes, peer-to-peer etc. it has radically changed. There is an abundance....more...
The indicators project is seeking to mine data in the system logs of a learning management system (LMS) in order to generate useful information. One of the major problems the project is facing is how turn the mountains of data into something useful. This post outlines another potential track based on some findings from Lee et al (2007)....more...
My current disciplinary home is within the information systems community, which, not surprisingly, concerns itself with research and practice around information systems. This begs the question, "What is an information system?". This post provides one answer to this question and in doing so suggests another reason why most institutional, university-based e-learning implementations enjoy less than stellar success. Of course, it's not limited to just e-learning, but that's what my focus is....more...
Just another quote, but a good one. And one that connects with a recent post about the difficulty of getting agreement around learning and teaching and the difficulty this creates within universities when you want to try and improve the quality of that learning and teaching....more...
In a previous post I talked about the rationale and need for thinking about a taxonomy of educational aggregation projects. Something that I haven't really given a lot of thought to, just yet....more...
The following is floating an idea that might be useful in my local context....more...
The Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) project is an attempt to be a bit more Web 2.0/SaaS in the implementation of e-learning within a University. BAM works by students creating and using their own blog on one of a number of freely available external blogging services and registering it with BAM. BAM provides some management infrastructure that integrates these external services with university information and also offers support for staff to mark and track student posts. The staff interface is primarily via a web interface....more...
Over the last week or so I've been criticising essentially all current practice used to improve learning and teaching. There are probably two main prongs to my current cynicism:...more...
Welcome folk from UHI. Hope you find this interesting. Your e-learning portal is here. Good luck with it all....more...
Last week I started a new Phd tradition - weekly updates. Traditionally the second album for a successful pop group is somewhat less than successful, I feel some connection with that tradition. Hopefully it will be significant motivation for next week....more...
George Siemens has a post introducing the IRIS model of technology adoption - image shown below....more...
There is a definition of insanity that I've seen seen attributed to either Einstein or Benjamin Franklin,...more...
Busy being a good boy working on the thesis, currently reading a collection of literature to flesh out Chapter 2 which is drawing on the Ps Framework to illustrate the current state of e-learning within Universities. As the last post illustrates, the most recent paper I'm reading is White (2006)....more...
In a couple of recent posts (and this one) I've essentially been arguing that most evaluation of teaching at universities is actually worse the useless. The following quote from White (2006) provides some additional ammunition....more...
The initial design and use of the Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) system was, in part, designed to try out approaches that leverage the protean nature of information technology. A major part of this is a move to something different, and hopefully better, than the current, broken e-learning orthodoxy within universities that is stuck on the idea of course management systems (CMS - aka learning management systems) as the only possible solution....more...
Thinking about reflective alignment, I came across the following quote in Booth and Anderberg (2005). Thought it might be useful so am saving it here....more...
This post adds another perspective borrowed from Gonzalez (2009) as a framework to report or evaluate findings from Col and Ken's indicators project. Col added an update on his work recently. Like previous post this one borrows a table of dimensions around conceptions of online learning because it may be helpful....more...