I've just finished the Douglas Rushkoff book Program or be Programmed: Ten commands for a digital age. As the title suggests the author provides ten "commands" for living well with digital technologies. This post arises from the titular and last command examined in the book, Program or be programmed....more...
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...
Came across the article, "Nobody likes a do-gooder: Study confirms selfless behaviour is alienating" from the Daily Mail via Morgaine's amplify. I'm wondering if there's a connection between this and the chasm in the adoption of instructional technology identified by Geoghegan (1994)...more...
Yet another "death of X" article is the spark for this post. This one comes from the Wall Street Journal and is titled The end of management. There's been a wave of these articles recently, but this one I like because it caters to my prejudice that most of the problems in organisations, especially in universities around learning and teaching, arise from an inappropriate management paradigm. The following has some connections to the oil sheiks thread....more...
In writing the last post, I had the opportunity re-read the Wikipedia article on wicked problems. This quote struck a chord with me...more...
I should be writing other things, but there's a wave amongst some of the "innovation bloggers" at the moment that I wanted to ride for the purposes of - once again - trying to get those driving university e-learning (and learning and teaching more generally) to realise they have something fundamentally wrong. They are using the wrong type of process....more...
The following draws on principles/theory from psychology to guide thinking about how to incorporate "data" from "academic analytics" into an LMS in a way that encourages and enables academic staff to improve their learning and teaching. It's based on some of the ideas that underpin similar approaches that have been used for students such as this Moodle dashboard and the signals work at University of Purdue....more...
Yesterday, Derek Moore tweeted...more...
A growing interest of mine is an investigation of how the design of the environment and information systems to support university learning and teaching can be improved with a greater consideration given to factors which can help encourage improvement and change. i.e. not just building systems that do a task (e.g. manage a discussion forum) but design a discussion forum that encourages and enables an academic to adopt strategies and tactics that are known to be good. If they choose to....more...
Antonio Vantaggiato gives one response to a post from Donald Clark titled "Moodle: e-learning's frankenstein". Clark's post is getting a bit of traction because it is being seen as a negative critique of Moodle....more...
Last year I gave a a couple of presentations titled "Alternatives for the institutional implementation of e-learning". In those presentations I essentially argued that what passes for current practice of e-learning in universities - what I now call "industrial e-learning" - suffers from a significant mismatch which, I believe, contributes to most of its limitations. My argument is that the nature of the product (the LMS) and the process (teleological) adopted in industrial e-learning to be completely unsuited to the nature of the people involved in e-learning, the nature of learning and teaching and the nature of universities and the context in which they operate....more...
The following is a first draft of a section from my thesis. It will form part of the newly cut down section on Process within chapter 2 (170 pages down to 50). The following tries to say something about the design processes used for teaching within universities. It starts with a characterisation of instructional design, looks at the limitations (referring to some earlier work about teleological and ateleological processes) and seeks to describe what the literature has to say about how teaching academics actually design/plan their courses....more...
A few days ago Stephen Downes - a little unusually - made a sequence of comments/tweets on Twitter around the "sameness of meaning" and its impossibility. Since then I've had a number of experiences and discussions that suggest some of the problem associated with learning and teaching policy, process and structure within universities arises because too many people assume that there is sameness of meaning....more...
Dave Cormier has recently published a blog post titled Dave's wildly unscientific survey of technology use in Higher Education. There's a bunch of interesting stuff there. I especially like Dave's note on e-portfolios...more...
The following is a reflection on and response to a paper by Lisa Lane (2009) in First Monday titled "Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching". I've been struggling with keeping up with reading, but this topics is closely connected to my thesis and the presentation I'll be giving soon....more...
Two thesis related posts in a day, I must be on a roll. This post actually marks a milestone, the following rough bit of material is the last bit of original writing I'll need to do for chapter 2. What remains will be tidying up, fixing typos/spelling/grammar, "concludings" and some major cutting. Sadly chapter 2 currently stands at 200+ pages and will need some major cutting I think to be a reasonable size. That's a job for another day....more...
It's almost a month since the last post from the first draft of my thesis. So, after much time away here's the next installment. It's probably rougher than previous versions - which says something - I'm still getting back into the swing of things....more...
Earlier this year I posted on Disruption and the “mythic” technologies of education and my views about consistency and diversity when applied to learning, especially e-learning within universities....more...
Another early update today - off to the Crocodile Farm as an excursion with the boys so today's a write off. However, progress has been good and the end is nigh for chapter 2 - at least in first draft....more...
The following is the first part of the Pedagogy component of the Ps Framework with forms part of Chapter 2 of my thesis. As with previous thesis posts this is a rough first draft of the content, feedback welcome. This is the first of three parts to this component. The next will say something about "learning theory" and the final will draw some lessons....more...
This post contains the last section of the "Product" component of chapter 2 of the my thesis, at least a rough first draft version of it. This is getting to the crux of my argument and problem with how most universities implement e-learning (adoption of an LMS) and it refers back to many of the other components of the Ps Framework. This will eventually become part of my EDUCAUSE'09 presentation and I'm thinking of re-working the following from thesis speak into something a little more leading....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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
One of my continuing "rants" that long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with is the lack of fit between enterprise systems and what people want to do with them. I've blogged about this with enterprise systems, learned to live and thrive in spite of that gap and drawn some lessons from it for enterprise systems....more...
The previous couple of posts (one and two) described the context in which the Webfuse e-learning system was designed. This focused primarily on the context at CQU up to 1996 or so. These posts form the definition of the problem which Webfuse was meant to address....more...
The following is the next completed (to a rough first draft stage) section of chapter 4 of my thesis. It follows on from a post from yesterday that started defining the problem being faced. This section completes the definition of this problem by giving a broad summary of the use of "e-learning" at CQU up until 1996....more...
In the last PhD update I outlined a change to tack. I've moved from working on chapter 2 (the lit review) to working on chapter 4. Chapter 4 is the first of two chapters, each describing one iteration of the 2 action research cycles that make up the core contribution of the thesis. Chapter 4 focuses on the period from 1996 through to 1999 and is titled "Build it and they will come"....more...
Increasingly, the IT requirements of organisations are being met through the application of "enterprise systems". Large systems created by commercial vendors (though increasingly there are also open source variants, which while offering small improvements still suffer some of the same problems) that are meant to provide an integrated solution to a large scale system with an appraoch that combines "best practice" processes and techniques with information technology that will "scale" to meet the requirements of the organisation. Examples including ERP systems like Peoplesoft for finance, human resources and, at universities, student enrolment. In terms of e-learning at Universities the current dominant approach is also to employ "enterprise systems". With e-learning the "enterprise system" is known as the learning management system (lms), course management system (cms), virtual learning environment (vle) or some other 3 letter acronym. Examples include: Blackboard, Moodle and Sakai....more...
After a bit of an absence, time to get back to the thesis. The following continues the recent work on the People component of the Ps Framework. So far, I've done students and teaching/academic staff. This post looks at leaders and managers (badly). I'm working on a section or two on technical and instructional design staff....more...
Currently reading Winefield et al (2003) as part of writing my thesis, thought I'd share some of the points and reflections here....more...
I'm currently working on the "Leaders and managers" part of the People component of the Ps Framework for my thesis. As part of the reading for that section I came across the following quote. It turns out I won't use it directly in the thesis and I need to save it for future work/reference. I'm also taking the opportunity to track down and record a bit more information about it....more...
Over the last few days I've finished reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely a professor at Duke University in behavioural economics. What follows is a bit of a summary. In short, I enjoyed it and it's reinforced an interest in questioning some of the assumptions that seem to underpin the current practice of L&T at Universities....more...
The following is the next part of the People section for chapter 2 of my thesis. The People section was started a week ago with this post. This one takes up the task of saying something about academic staff, subsequent and soon to be completed sections will look at management, academic staff developers and technology staff....more...
The following is the first step in the People component of the Ps Framework from chapter 2 of my thesis. The first bit ("People") is the introduction to the thesis section and the following ("Students") is the first major section of that component. Hopefully, over the next week and in fairly quick progression the remaining sections of the People component will get posted....more...
I'm currently working on the People component of the Ps Framework as part of my thesis. One of the sections of the People component will be "People and cognition". It will seek to illustrate that people are not rational decision-makers, that we have all sorts of significant flaws in how we make decisions and that these flaws significant impact upon the implementation and practice of e-learning (the topic of the thesis)....more...
I told myself that I would get this section completed today before I went home and I have achieved that goal. Perhaps, however, I have engaged in a bit of "task corruption". A couple of days ago I was listening to a podcast about how the United States education system might be improved. One of the panelists suggested that one of the strategies employed by various school sectors to improve graduation was to make it easier to graduate. Just perhaps, in order to get this posted, I've relaxed my standards more than normal. Time will tell if it is too far....more...
A little while ago, I was sparked by Dilbert and my own prejudice against external consultants to contribute two posts (1 and 2) critical of the assumptions underlying the idea of and the contribution of such folk. In some thesis reading today, I came across this great quote the continues my basic assumption of the basic silliness of a reliance on external consultants....more...
The following is the penultimate section from the Processes section of chapter 2 of my thesis. It aims to talk about the types of processes used for learning and teaching (including e-learning). It seeks to use the lens of teleological and ateleological processes. This version has been finished quickly and could be made better. I'm trying hard to get "good enough" done and out so I can make progress. I guess supervisor feedback will tell the tale....more...
I've reached a phase in my thesis work that allows me, long after I should have, to return to Cavallo (2004). I had previously put in a place holder to remind me to go back to this paper. The full impact of the paper will likely become evident over the next few days, but this post focuses specifically on an issue I see arising locally....more...
I occasionally get comments (usually agreement) on the quote that I include in my email signature. The quote...more...
The following contains some initial thoughts about what might turn into a paper for ASCILITE'09. It's likely that I'll co-author this with Col Beer....more...
The following contains the next section from chapter 2 of my thesis and the section on Processes. It follows on from the section on institutional learning and teaching strategies and seeks to talk a bit about institutional strategies for e-learning....more...
The following is the next section of the Process component of the Ps Framework section of my thesis. I have an inkling that my bias towards ateleological processes comes through a bit strong in this. May have to balance it up with some additions later on....more...
This is the first draft of a section from my thesis. I'm currently working on the Process component of the Ps Framework. The section included below is the first of three sections that seeks to summarise/describe the types of processes used within universities....more...
After 12 weekly updates I missed one last week as the missus and I went on a holiday, ate some nice meals (e.g. this one), and purchased a new car. This time last week I was driving the new car out of Brisbane on the way home, hence no update....more...
The following post offers a description of ateleological processes and their weaknesses. It's a version 1 draft from the process components of the Ps Framework for chapter 2 of my thesis. A previous post gave a brief overview of teleological and ateleological processes and another described teleological processes and their weaknesses....more...
After a long pause due to holidays and work, here's the next installment of the process component of the Ps Framework for chapter 2 of my thesis. A previous post gave a brief overview of teleological and ateleological processes. The purpose of this post is to go into more detail about teleological processes. A subsequent post will do the same for ateleological....more...
I'm currently back from a holiday restarting work on my thesis and in particular on the process component of the Ps Framework. I'm currently working on the section that describes the two extremes, I'm using Introna's (1996) distinction between teleological design and ateleological design....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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I'm currently struggling with writing the "Place" component of the Ps framework as part chapter 2 of my thesis. In wondering the literature, as I tend to do while writing, I've come across an article (Gilbert and Geoghegan, 1995) that has some interest for me. Gilbert's description of the paper is...more...
This posts contains the last content of what (I hope) will become the "Past Experience" section of Chapter 2 of my thesis. Previous content for this section is already on the blog, including: History of technology-mediated learning, Paradigms of e-learning, e-learning usage - quality, and e-learning usage - quantity....more...
This post serves as a brief placeholder of ideas and also to remind me to follow up further on this paper (Cavallo, 2004). The paper seems to offer a very interesting and informed perspective on issues that are of great interest to me, including the "Process" used in implementing e-learning within Universities and the "grammar of school"....more...
The following post is a continuation of posts from the "Past Experience" section of chapter 2 of my thesis. This part of chapter 2 is looking at the usage of e-learning within higher education. A previous post provided the introduction to the section and also covered usage from a quality perspective - i.e. how good is the learning and teaching....more...
The following post is a continuation of posts from the "Past Experience" section of chapter 2 of my thesis. It follows on from previous posts including: Ps Framework, History of technology-mediated learning, and the paradigms of e-learning....more...
I've just skimmed through a recent paper by Convery (2009) titled "The pedagogy of the impressed: how teachers become victims of technology vision". This paper resonates quite strongly with a growing sense of concern I have about simplistic, ill-informed practices around e-learning. In particular, there are (for me at least) direct connections with some of my recent posts about how a new LMS will improve L&T, the paradigms of e-learning, the fad cycle in higher education and its application to technology-mediated learning, the technologists alliance (more on this soon) and the idea of technological gravity and technology I, II and III....more...
I'm currently working on chapter 2 of my thesis - the literature review. Mine is using the Ps Framework as the organising structure and also as part of the contribution of the thesis. I'm currently working on the "Past Experience" component of the Ps Framework. Recently, I posted the History of technology mediated learning section. It provides a brief overview of technology-mediated learning prior to e-learning - defined as using the Internet....more...
Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a particular disdain for the perspective that e-learning within a university can be treated as an IT project and in particular as the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP system). i.e. the LMS is an ERP and should be implemented as one. Some previous rants can be found on this blog, including:...more...
The following is a section from my PhD thesis. It is part of the "Past Experience" section of the Ps Framework. It aims to give a potted history of technology-mediated learning and show how it connects with e-learning. Since these terms are somewhat overused, it starts with some definitions. The plan is that this history will be used to identify lessons from history, which e-learning (generally) hasn't learned....more...
Given my pre-occupation with the thesis, which involves the formulation of a design theory for e-learning. It's of little surprise that I have an interest in the theory, practice and e-learning. Came across the following quote this morning in checking some literature, and I like it - new quote for a thesis chapter....more...
I told myself I wouldn't blog anything more not directly related to the PhD - I'm breaking that promise because a few things I've read over this weekend resonate strongly with the problems that are frustrating me the most with the current practice of higher education and its management....more...
Level 1 of Biggs knowledge of teaching is "blame the student". i.e. there are good and bad students. One of the common complaints I hear from academics at universities go something like this...more...
In a previous post I gave an early conceptualisation of a cycle I was seeing in the history of educational technology I've been working on as part of the "Past Experience" section of the Ps Framework - chapter 2 of my thesis. In this post I try and give an overview of a similar cycle already well established: Birnbaum's (2000) Life Cycle of the Fads Process....more...
For the PhD I'm essentially proposing that the current industrial model of e-learning adopted (almost without exception) by universities is a complete and utter mismatch with the nature of the problem. As a consequence of this mismatch e-learning will continue to have little impact, be of limited quality and continue to be characterised by 5 yearly projects to replace a software system rather than a focus on an on-going process of improving learning and teaching by using the appropriate and available tools....more...
The following is a summary/overview of Shurville, Browne and Whitaker (2008) - a paper title "Employing the new educational technologists: A call for evidenced change". One of the authors has a blog....more...
I came across the discussion underpinning these thoughts via a post by Scott Stevenson. His post was titled "Measuring the design process". It is his take on a post titled "Goodbye Google" by Doug Bowman. Bowman was the "Visual Design Lead" at Google and has recently moved to Twitter as Creative Director....more...
In the next week I've promised to get a more complete and academic version of the following onto the blog. But I have 30 minutes to spare so I thought I'd get a rough and ready version out....more...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Col Beer has been doing some work around the "indicators" project - an attempt to mine system logs and databases of a course management system (CMS) to generate data of some use....more...
Edupunk as a term has been circulating since May last year. D'Arcy Norman has posted the YouTube video from below with a couple of folk talking about Edupunk, including Jim Groom the guy who originated the idea...more...
I'm currently reading Waeraas and Solbakk (2009), a paper titled "Defining the essence of a university: lessons from higher education branding." and with the following abstract....more...
It's amazing at how perspectives around technology and its use in education don't change. In the presentation on this page I use some quotes from the what if presentation by Karl Fisch to outline some previous fearful perspectives on the impact of technology on learning that mirror many of the perspectives held of e-learning....more...
I'm a fan of frameworks and taxonomies. Also known as theories for understanding (Gregor, 2006). It's the understanding part that I like. They provide, or at least good ones do, a leg up in understanding difficult concepts. As Mischra and Koehler (2006, p 1019) say...more...
In a previous post examining one reason folk don't take to e-learning I included the following quote from a book by Carolyn Marvin...more...
!!! warning "Broken image link"...more...
The video from NASA referenced in a post from yesterday illustrates many of the difficulties in attempting to be innovative within any largish type of organisation....more...
This video speaks to me on so many levels. It summarises many of the problems I have faced and encountered trying to implement innovative approaches to e-learning at universities over the last 15 plus year. I'm sure I am not alone....more...
In a recent post I started my collection of quotes on this blog. I also talked about the "mere exposure effect" and suggested it's one reason behind the horseless carriage approach to using new technology. It's also one reason why people resist new technology - especially e-learning/computer technology....more...
Moving into the "web 2.0"/social media/online world can be confronting for people. Especially the "open" part. With blogs, photo sharing, social bookmarking etc a lot of what used to be private (or closed) becomes public (or open). This can challenge people. Damien talked about this and other problems with social media in a blog post from late last year....more...
A part of my thinking around the Ps Framework I suggest that there are a number of dominant assumptions that underpin the current implementation of e-learning within institutions of higher education. I believe these dominant assumptions limit the quality, efficiency, effectiveness and innovativness of e-learning at Universities. In this post I am trying to identify one of the dominant assumptions associated with the "Product" component of the Ps Framework and its implications....more...
The very idea of "best practice" is silly. In any meaningful complex activity the idea of simply copying what someone else did is destined to fail because it doesn't seek to understand the reasons why that best practice worked for them and what are the differences between "them" and "us"....more...
This is the first post in my new "quotes" section. Acting as a storage place for all the interesting insights I come across....more...
The title to this post is included in a quote from Kane, Sandretto and Heath (2004)...more...
All over the place there are people in organisations performing evaluations and comparisons of competing information systems products with a strong belief that they are being rational and objective. Since the late 1990s or so, most Universities seem to be doing this every 5 or so years around learning management systems. The problem is that these processes are never rational or objective because the nature of human beings is such that they never can be (perhaps very rarely - e.g. when I'm doing it ;) )....more...
As part of working on my thesis I'm working on chapter 2. As the traditional literature review one purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate what I know about the topic and to highlight what I think are the flaws or holes in current research and practice that I believe my research will address. The following builds on some initial ideas from a previous blog post and serves as some practice in formulating my ideas. So it will still be rough. Feel free to suggest improvements, point out problems and disagree....more...
The following is forming up as something to go into my thesis as part of the "Past experience" component of the Ps Framework....more...
16 September, 2012 - for some reason today has seen a fair bit of interest in this post from over 3 years ago. I though I'd take the opportunity to move this particular argument up a level....more...
This post contains a link to a PDF working paper that uses metaphor analysis on a collection of journal papers to examine just how diverse research within the Information Systems field actually is. It finds that the IS field is actually not very diverse at all from this perspective, which is somewhat contradictory to what is accepted by most IS folk....more...
I've been a fan of Dave Snowden and his work for a couple of years. In this blog post from last year Dave shares 7 principles for "rendering knowledge". For me, these 7 principles have direct connection with the tasks I'm currently involved with e-learning, curriculum design and helping improve the quality of learning and teaching....more...
The following quote is from (Hirschheim, 1992) and is questioning the practice of research/the scientific method...more...
Currently, CQUni is undertaking an evaluation of Sakai and Moodle as a replacement for Blackboard as the organisation's Learning Management System. The evaluation process includes many of the standard activities including...more...
Ania Lian writes in the paper Knowledge transfer and technology in education: toward a complete learning environment...more...