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Given what know (see the below) about the importance of people to the implementation of information systems and also to learning and teaching, how would you characterise the involvement of uses in the selection and implementation of an LMS at most universities? What impact does it have?...more...
The following is a description of a common "problem" with BIM....more...
A few recent posts have been first draft excerpts from my Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT) from emergent university e-learning systems. Being academics and hence somewhat pedantic about these things there are meant to be a number of specific components of an ISDT. One of these is the expository instantiation that is meant to act as both an explanatory device and a platform for testing (Gregor and Jones, 2007) i.e. it's meant to help explain the theory and also examples of testing the theory....more...
Today has not been a good day for progress on the thesis. Have posted a few things I've already written and there are some folks reading bits of it thanks to Stephen Downes and OLDaily. That these folk find the work vaguely interesting enough to click on the link is a comforting thing, if not a motivating one for today....more...
The following is a first version of the justificatory knowledge section of my ISDT for emergent university e-learning systems. Still fairly uncertain just how information is meant to go in here and also just how far I should go with the reference to other theories (there are lots) and how much time should be spent looking at the interactions between them....more...
The following is the other main component of the ISDT for e-learning I'm working on. A prior post focused on the principles of form and function (i.e. the structure of an information system, the product), the following focuses the principles of implementation (i.e. the process)....more...
While reading a recent post from Gardner Campbell I was taken by a quote from Alan Kay...more...
The aim of my thesis is to formulate an information systems design theory for e-learning. Even though I have a publication or two that have described early versions of the ISDT, I've never been really happy with them. However, I'm getting close to the end of this process, at least for the purposes of getting the thesis submitted....more...
I'm slowly reading through How people learn and thinking about how it applies to my own practice and what I see within higher education. This post arises from this paragraph...more...
Am working on the final ISDT for the thesis. An Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT) is a theory for design and action. It is meant to aim to provide general principles that help practitioners design information systems. Design theory provides guidance about how to build an artifact (process) and what the artifact should look like when built (product/design principles) (Walls, Widmeyer et al. 1992; Gregor 2002). Walls et al (1992) see an ISDT as an integrated set of prescriptions consisting of a particular class of user requirements (meta-requirements), a type of system solution with distinctive features (meta-design) and a set of effective development practices (meta-design). Each of these components of an ISDT can be informed by kernel theories, either academic or practitioner theory-in-use (Sarker and Lee 2002), that enable the formulation of empirically testable predictions relating the design theory to outcomes (Markus, Majchrzak et al. 2002)....more...
After a week away traveling with my sons in Western Queensland, I have to get back into the thesis. This post is essentially an attempt to capture where I'm up to and plan out what I need to do for the next week or so. As with the last update, I'll start scratching these out as I complete....more...
The following is a record of some work to investigate some more apparent problem with BIM mirroring blog posts that contain "special" characters due to a bit of copying and pasting from Word into Wordpress....more...
A couple of days ago I floated the idea of scaffolding, context-sensitive conglomerations as one idea/model/suggestion for how e-learning systems (currently mostly LMS, but hopefully other models will arise)....more...
For various reasons, mostly PhD related (and somewhat related to procrastination), I'm taking the time to read a bit more about situated cognition. Not sure how far it will go. The following are some ad hoc reflections and essentially a diary of what I'm reading. Not aiming for this post to fulfil any purpose beyond being a place to dump observations....more...
For the last week or so I've been attempting to bring together the principles that underpin the design theory for e-learning that will be the main contribution of my thesis. This post summarises one of the principles of form and function that is emerging from the last week or so. I using this blog post to escape the confines of PhD-ese and see if writing about it can generate some further refinement....more...