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This is the second in an intermittent collection of posts associated with visits to nice restaurants. This one tells the story of the visit of my wife and I to Ezard in Melbourne....more...
I'm currently working on the Process section of my thesis. As part of that I'm referring back to a book chapter (that was a conference paper) by Bo Carlsson (2004) titled "Public policy as a form of design". This post is an attempt to summarise some of the points made in that chapter as they are connected to my new job/....more...
The following is an early section on the Process component of the Ps Framework and is intended as part of chapter 2 of my thesis. Still fairly rough, but somewhat cleaner than some of the thesis sections I've shared here....more...
I'm currently on a bit of a wave with bashing the consultant model of change, i.e. a model by which an "expert" from outside comes into a context performs or directs the performance of some analysis and evaluation of the context and then, drawing on their vast knowledge, recommends some ways forward. I started my "bashing wave" in a post comparing this model with the "fat smoker" problem (telling them what they already know isn't sufficient to create change) and then continued with this inspiration from Dilbert....more...
In recent post I eventually made some disparaging comments about consultants and what they do. Like many, I believe that the idea that they know the solution when they have little or no idea appreciation of the complexity of the context and believe that they can overcome this because their "special" knowledge is somehow universally applicable, is just plain silly and is the source of most of the problems they create....more...
Number 12 of the weekly PhD updates and the first one that is late - this was meant to be done yesterday afternoon. Better late than never. This has been a fairly positive week, some progress made and more importantly I may have learned a small lessons (and put it into practice) about the size and amount of stuff I'm trying to put into these sections of Chapter 2....more...
While chasing down some work by Fullan on educational change I came across the following well-known quote that happens to, based on recent experience, have a fair bit of resonance....more...
I've just been listening to this podcast of a keynote by Dr Phil Long. Apart from the content of the talk, this is interesting because Dr Long has just recently started work at the University of Queensland (which is just down the road from here) at the Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology....more...
The title and spark for this post comes from this post entitled "A night of 'Biggest Loser' Inspiration". I came across it via a tweet from Gardner Campbell and in particular the quote from the post he tweeted (included here sans the 140 character tweet limit)...more...
The following is yet another section from chapter two of my thesis. As with previous sections, this is an early first draft, it will change....more...
The main point of this post is to save this quote. I'm about to delete it from the thesis, can't make it fit, and I think it is important....more...
Following on from yesterday's start of using the blog to record fixes to software, here comes another one....more...
Happened to watch this talk by Emily Levine at a 2002 TED conference a funny talk with some interesting insights and perspectives that I find potentially directly connected to my new role. What follows is some reflection on these....more...
Trying out a new approach to documentation of coding changes to BAM - i.e. writing it up in a post....more...
AUQA is coming. Eventually most Australian universities will receive a second visit from AUQA. As such visitations come closer increasing levels of thought are given to demonstrating quality. What does it mean to demonstrate quality of learning and teaching?...more...
I have a quote from software engineering that I have been quoting for a long time. It's from Glass (2001) and says that when building software, 40 to 80% of the costs are going to be for maintenance. i.e. Only from 20 to 60% of the costs are going to for the initial development or purchase....more...
The following is the last part of the Place section of chatper 2 of my thesis. It's not that good, but enough has been done to get it out and await feedback....more...
Well, this week was a very short week. All up 4 days were lost with illness, work and a burst pipe at childcare requiring some additional babysitting duties. That said, I'm feeling pretty happy about the thesis mostly because on major hurdle is out of the way and it went fairly quickly. Hopefully this can continue - the progress, not the short weeks....more...
For longer than I care to remember, I've been working on the Place component of the Ps Framework for chapter 2 of my thesis. This post brings the penultimate section for the Ps component - institution. The last section will be the "lessons from place" section that attempts to draw some lessons from the Place component for the practice of e-learning. Who knows when that will arrive....more...
Theoretically, I'm in the process of starting a new job/ that is focused on encouraging e-learning and innovation within a university context. The following post is an early attempt to try and make sense of this job, what it might do and how it might do it. It's probably of little value to others, but I'm trying to be open about this....more...
Theoretically, I'm in the process of starting a new job/ that is focused on encouraging e-learning and innovation within a university context. I'm still reading some of the different literature but the following quotes resonate with me around this position and how it is likely to evolve....more...
In a previous post I mentioned the current raft of "the university will die" discussions going on online and soon in print. Many of these, and especially this one, embody some sort of argument along the lines of "those silly, impractical academics will only be helped if they become more like business". This is not a new perspective....more...
Work on the PhD thesis is currently going slow. There are many reasons for this, one of them is I keep following interesting streams of literature beyond the needs of the thesis. I can rationalise that most of these extra-thesis streams do connect with the work I may be doing into the future/, though that doesn't necessarily help feel good about the thesis. (aside: I continue to be amazed by the folk who haven't learnt that the one question you do not ask someone in my position is, "How's the thesis going?")....more...
Well, I've reached double figures for these updates. The last week has been a slow one, or at least felt like it. The public holiday didn't help, nor the day off to ponder the new position. Progress has been made, but it just seems slow, especially when compared to what I said I'd do. I'm becoming more used to accepting some progress, be it slow or otherwise, as long as it's moving forward....more...
Looks like I'm on a bit of a roll with the "good enough" approach - soon to halt I'm sure. The following is the next section of the Place component of the Ps Framework section for chapter 2 of the thesis....more...
The following, finally, is a first draft of the sector section of the "Place" component of the Ps Framework. This is all meant to be part of chapter 2 of my thesis....more...
After a period of uncertainty, it appears likely that at some stage during May 2009 I may be starting a new position at my current institution. The position goes under the title - "eLearning and Innovation Specialist". It is a academic position, I will retain my current appointment as a Level C Academic but rather than teaching will have to achieve the following position purpose...more...
The following arises out some current reading, writing and thinking for the Place component of the Ps Framework. In the following I ponder the idea (which I currently agree with) that universities are inherently adaptable, they aren't likely to die anytime soon and that this adaptability is yet another reason why the LMS product model for e-learning is wrong - since it ain't adaptable....more...
The following is the introduction to a section of Chapter 2 of my thesis. It introduces the examination of the Place component of the Ps Framework. Hopefully, the remaining sections of the section will be posted over the coming day or so....more...
It's that time of week again, time to report on the progress of the PhD. This week has been one of those weeks where progress has not been as much as desired, but perhaps isn't quite as bad. As often happens, last week's optimistic claims of "speeding up" spluttered out a bit....more...