This post continues an on-going exploration of knowledge reuse in design for digital learning. Previous posts (one and two) started the exploration in the context of developing an assemblage to help designers of web-based learning environments create a card interface (see Figure 1). Implementing such a design from scratch requires a diverse collection of knowledge that is beyond most individuals. It is hoped that packaging that knowledge into an assemblage of technologies will allow for that knowledge to be used and reused (within Blackboard 9.1) by more people and subsequently have a positive impact on the learning environment and experience....more...
The following documents the (hopefully) last bit of extra work I have to undertake to prepare the digital "learning space" for EDC3100, ICT and Pedagogy. It's work that has taken most of my working day. At a time when I can't really afford it. But it's time I have to spend if I want to engage effectively in one of the most fundamental activities in teaching - know thy student....more...
David Jones, Elke Schneider...more...
For quite some time I've experienced and believed that there how universities are implementing digital learning has some issues that contribute to perceived problems with the quality of such learning and its associated teaching. The following is an outline of an exploratory research project intended to confirm (or not) aspects of this belief....more...
Jasperson, Carter & Zmud (2005)...more...
Earlier this week I attended a session given by the research ethics folk at my institution. One of the observations was that they'd run training sessions but almost no-one came. I've heard similar observations from L&T folk, librarians, and just about anyone else aiming to help academics develop new skills. Especially when people spend time and effort developing yet another you beaut website or booklet that provides everything one would want to know about a topic. There's also the broader trope developing about academics/teachers being digitally illiterate, which I'm increasingly seeing as unhelpful and perhaps even damaging....more...
Apparently there is a digital literacy/fluency problem with teachers. The 2014 Horizon Report for Higher Education identified the “Low Digital Fluency of Faculty” as the number 1 “significant challenge impeding higher education technology adoption”. In the 2015 Horizon Report for Higher Education this morphs into "Improving Digital Literacy" being the #2 significant challenge. While the 2015 K-12 Horizon Report has "Integrating Technology in Teacher Education" as the #2 significant challenge....more...
This is the 2nd post (first here) looking at Instructional Science 43(2) on the topic of "Teachers as designers of technology enhanced learning". This post looks at Matuk et al (2015)...more...
The following is the outlines the core of the argument used in a talk to folk at UniSA today titled "The perceived uselessness of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) for e-learning". The argument is that the mindset underpinning the implementation of institutional e-learning within Universities focuses on widespread reuse across an institution (and sometimes beyond). As a result institutional e-learning has a tendency to remove considerations of context, which in turn reduces/removes any chance of learners and teachers perceiving any usefulness or ease-of-use from the provided systems and processes....more...
Here we go again. There's an OECD report on "Students, Computers and Learning" that is doing the rounds. @palbion points to one media report...more...
The first key takeaway from Motz, Teague and Shepard (2015) is...more...
In a bit more than an hour I'll be talking to @catspyjamasnz trying to nut out some ideas for a project around LX Design and Learning Analytics. The following is me thinking out loud and working through "my issues"....more...
by CRC, University of Edinburgh ...more...
Apparently teacher education has a technology knowledge problem....more...
22 years ago I helped a group of undergraduate Information Technology students set up CQ-PAN - Central Queensland - Public Access Network. An early attempt to allow CQ residents get on the Internet. CQ-PAN got used by a range of people for a range of tasks. In 1994 CQ-PAN started hosting mailing lists for a range of purposes, including for courses being taught by my then employer, the Department of Mathematics and Computing (who were funding the hardware)....more...
The students in a course I'm teaching are asked to reflect on their own work and respond to the question embedded in the title to this post. What follows is mostly a test post to illustrate how it will all work, but also captures some of my views....more...
I must be getting old and have spent far too long in universities and educational technology. I keep seeing the wheel being reinvented all over again....more...
Below you will find the slides, abstract, and references for a talk given to folk from the University of South Australia on 1 October, 2015. A later blog post outlines core parts of the argument....more...
In a section with the heading "ALL MODELS ARE WRONG BUT SOME ARE USEFUL", Box (1979) wrote...more...
by HA! Designs - Artbyheather ...more...
My current institution has a content problem when it comes to e-learning (insert digital learning, online learning, technology enhanced learning, or just learning if you prefer). The following is an attempt to use my experience teaching at the institution to understand what are some of the factors contributing to the problem....more...
@marksmithers has just written a blog post that makes the following point...more...
Behrens, S., Jamieson, K., Jones, D., & Cranston, M. (2005). Predicting system success using the Technology Acceptance Model: A case study. In 16th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (Paper 70). Sydney. Retrieved from http://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2005/70/...more...
Below you will find resources associated with a talk titled "Digital Learning: It's deja vu all over again". The slides below are the near final set to be presented at the #dLRN15 conference (abstract available below)....more...
The last assignment for the course EDC3100, ICT and Pedagogy was due to be submitted yesterday. Right now the Moodle assignment activity (a version somewhat modified by my institution) is showing that 193 of 318 enrolled students have submitted assignments....more...
As part of the "Moodle open book" project I'm hoping to increase my knowledge of what the Moodle community has already discussed about the Book module. The following is a summary of the process I'm using to analyse those discussions....more...
My tweet stream reminded me this morning that #oer15 is up and running. The following tweet from @courosa was amongst the first I saw....more...
Assignment 1 for my course is due later today. 100+ students have submitted. Time to explore the Moodle assignment submission system and how to allocate assignments to markers....more...
This paper analyses the outcomes of what a small group of academics (myself included) attempted to do to develop the knowledge/capability to develop effective learning for hundreds of pre-service teachers via e-learning. That experience is analysed using a distributive view of knowledge and learning and illustrates just how broken what passes for ed tech support/academic staff development in some universities. Picking up on yesterday's post, the paper reports on academics harnessing their digital fluency to address the almost complete lack of usefulness of the institutionally developed attempts at supporting academic staff in developing the knowledge necessary for effective e-learning....more...
Late last year @salvetore read and commented on the "three paths" paper that @beerc and @rolley wrote for ASCILITE'2014. (Always nice to know that someone reads a paper). The following is a response I've just added to the thread on the Moodle research discussion forum. In particular, picking up on two suggestions from Sean Dicks, which badly summarised are...more...
The following does a compare and contrast between the "what is" of university e-learning systems and the "what might be". There are three sections...more...
moreStudentDetails.user.js is a Greasemonkey script I've written to provide more details about a student when I'm using Moodle. Originally intended to help when responding to a student query in a course I teach that regularly has 300+ pre-service teachers from a range of backgrounds and locations. The current version produces something like the following image (click on it to see a larger version)....more...
A couple of weeks ago @kateMfD wrote a post asking "What next for the LMS?". (one of a raft of LMS posts doing the rounds recently). Kate's point was in part that...more...
by TheGiantVermin ...more...
The following is a copy of a paper accepted at ASCILITE'2014 (and nominated for best paper) written by myself and Damien Clark (CQUniversity - @damoclarky). The official conference version of the paper is available as a PDF....more...
This is a plea for help. I'm certain I remember a particular phrase/concept that arose from some research around educational technology from 10+ years ago (may have been as long as 30 years ago)....more...
The use of blogs in one of the courses I teach is now into it's fourth semester. Well past time to do explore how it's all going, evaluate some of the design decisions, and make some decisions about future developments. In preparation for that it's time to look at some of the extant literature to look at findings and methods. The following is the first such summary and is focused on @spalm et al's...more...
The institutional LMS seems to be having some problems, so I'll post this instead....more...
What follows is a long overdue summary of Ciborra (1992). I think it will have a lot of insight for how universities implement e-learning. The abstract for Ciborra (1992) is...more...
The title of this post is from a presentation by someone at a University responsible for the institutional e-learning systems. It doesn't matter which university because I imagine it's a line that has been used at quite a few of them. It does matter that I think it's completely wrong-headed and illustrates perfectly the problem with institutional e-learning systems and the processes and people that support them....more...
In which I relate a personal story about how the one eportfolio I was required as a student to make on an institutional eportfolio system has now disappeared for good (to me) with no communication from the institution....more...
In short, there is definitely a pattern. In fact, there are two patterns evident:...more...
I'm currently analysing the structure of a course I teach and have been using @damoclarky's Moodle Activity Viewer to help with that. In the process, I've discovered that I'm an idiot in having missed the much more interesting and useful application of MAV than what I've mentioned previously. The following explains (at least one example of) how I'm an idiot and how MAV can help provide a type of process analytics as defined by Lockyer et al (2013)....more...
I've spent the last few days - on and off - getting the Moodle Activity Viewer installed on my local Moodle instance. There were two main reasons for doing this...more...
A friday afternoon rant/story illustrating what I see as a fatal flaw in institutional University L&T systems (at least those I'm experienced within in Australia). This flaw helps explain why the quality of L&T - especially e-learning - leaves something to be desired....more...
I am planning to do some more work on BIM in preparation for using it in teaching this year, including finishing some analysis of how the blogging went in last year's two offerings....more...
The following is a summary of McNaught et al (2009). This is one of three papers that from the same institution around the LMS that I've looked at recently....more...
The following is an attempt to expand upon a mention in the last post about exploring one set of thoughts about why/how we might extend/reuse/build upon some prior research using TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) and its application to understanding the use (or not) of Online Assignment Submission and Management (OASM) in higher education....more...
Much earlier this year I was invited to participate with some folk much cleverer than I around the question of the adoption of learning analytics and a project to explore this using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Going by the date embedded in the URL of this post, that was way back in August. It's December and I'm now trying to get back to this post to capture some of my thinking....more...
The following is a draft version of the presentation I'll be giving at ASCILITE tomorrow. Hopefully this will go close to fitting within the 12 minute time frame....more...
An attempt at some live blogging from #ascilite starting with the Australian Learning Analytics Summer Institute (#a-lasi)....more...
Via a very roundabout method I came across an editorial from the journal "Computers in the Schools" (Maddux and Johnson, 2012) titled "External Validity and Research in Information Technology in Education"....more...
The following is a summary and some thoughts on Lam et al (2010). It's a paper from the same authors/research from which I summarised an earlier paper....more...
The following is a summary and some thoughts on Lam et al (2012). The abstract from the chapter is...more...
A quick followup to some comments/replies on @marksmithers post "Because academic freedom does not include the freedom to create a poor learning experience". In particular, on Mark's suggestion...more...
The following is a summary of an exploration of the recent literature analysing University LMS usage and some thinking about further research....more...
The following is a summary and some thinking around...more...
The following is a summary and some thoughts on...more...
The following is a summary of and some reaction to the final report of an OLT funded project titled "Hunters and gatherers: strategies for curriculum mapping and data collection for assuring learning". This appears to be the project website....more...
The following is a summary and some thoughts on the final report of an OLT funded project titled e-Teaching leadership: planning and implementing a benefits-oriented costs model for technology enhanced learning....more...
The following two quotes are talking about the e-learning context at the same institution at about the same time (2009 through about 2011)....more...
The following is the final version of a short paper that's been accepted for ASCILITE'2013. It's our first attempt to formulate and present the IRAC framework for analysing and designing learning analytics applications. This presentation from last week expands on the IRAC framework a little and touches on some of the future work....more...
The following is a "webified" version of an invited presentation at the Blended Learning 2013 Summit. This version is largely an experiment with this medium/approach to sharing the talk. The slides from the talk are shown below with a written version of what I might have hoped to have said during the talk....more...
Learning analytics is being enabled/driven/sparked by the concept of "big data", but for a while I've wondered just how big is the data being gathered by Universities. Preparations for a workshop earlier in the week provided an opportunity to find out....more...
2013 post updated for 2015 to (un)scientifically test for any changes over time....more...
The video below is of a talk by Brett Victor on "The Future of Programming". But don't let that stop you, underpinning the talk is an important message for folk involved in learning, teaching and most things. The two main points I took away from it are (as applied to my area of interest):...more...
It's been an intellectually draining few days with a range of visitors to the institution talking about a range of different topics. It started on Monday with George Siemens giving a talk titled "The future of the University: Learning in distributed networks" (video and audio from the talk available here). A key point - at least one I remember - was that the structure of universities follows the structure of information and the current trend is toward distributed networks. On Tuesday, Mark Drechsler ran a session on Extending Moodle using LTI which raises some interesting questions about how the LMS mindset will handle the challenge of a distributed network mindset....more...
In a a prior post I wondered about the "end in mind" for university analytics projects. What follows outlines why I'm skeptical of such projects....more...
The following is an early description of work arising out of The Indicators Project an ongoing attempt to think about learning analytics. With IRAC (Information, Representation, Affordances and Change) Colin Beer, Damien Clark and I are trying to develop a set of questions that can guide the use of learning analytics to improve learning and teaching. The following briefly describes:...more...
Sadly, but not surprisingly, I missed out on an invite to LASI 2013. But I am able to follow the conversation via other means such as the LASI blog aggregator. Via the aggregator I've come across this post from Mike Tissenbaum reflecting on the opening sessions....more...
The following post started over the weekend. I'm adding this little preface as a result of the wasted hours I spent yesterday battling badly designed systems and the subsequent stories I've heard from others today. One of those stories revolved around how the shortening available time and the poorly designed systems is driving one academic to make a change to her course that she knows is pedagogically inappropriate, but which is necessary due to the constraints of these systems....more...
Came across Perrotta et al (2013) in my morning random ramblings through my PLN and was particular struck by this...more...
The following is a summary and some thoughts on the following paper...more...
The following is a description of the kludge I put in place to mark the learning journals - see here for a description of initial thinking behind the journal - folk in the EDC3100 course this semester had to complete. It's meant to record what I did, provide some food for further development and offer an opportunity for some initial reflection....more...
It seems to be the day for a backlash against learning analytics or its parent big data. This morning my PLN has filtered to the top Taleb's "Beware the big errors of 'big data'" and Why big data is not truth. Not that surprising to me given that I've argued that learning analytics in Universities has all hallmarks of yet another fad....more...
It's the last week of semester, EDC3100 ICTs and Pedagogy is drawing to a close and I'm putting together the last bit of activities/resources for the students in the course. Most are focused on the last assignment and in particular a final essay that asks them to evaluate their use of ICTs while on their three week Professional Experience where they were in schools and other locations teaching. Perhaps the most challenging activity I'd like them to engage in is questioning their assumptions around learning, teaching and the application of ICTs. A particularly challenging activity given that much of what passes for the use of ICTs - including much of my own work - in formal education hasn't been very effective at questioning assumptions....more...
From an article in The Australian by Les Field - DVC (Research) at UNSW - titled "Impact sometimes requires long decades of research"...more...
A question for those with experience of Moodle or other LMS tools/plugins/services etc...more...
I have a problem. If I'm really lucky, BIM will get added to my institution's version of BIM for Semester 2 and I will be able to use it. Based on my experience this semester - where I've used an approach that depends on BIM - there has been limitations and workload issues. Having BIM installed in the "enterprise LMS" will help significantly reduce these problems. It will also severely limit my ability to learn....more...
I have this growing sense of deja vu. I'm beginning to think that my current experience with the institutional policies and processes around Australian university enterprise e-learning is essentially a repeat of my experience with the institutional policies and processes around Australian university print-based distance education systems of the mid-1990s. Almost twenty years on its deja vu all over again?...more...
What's good for research, must surely be good for teaching?...more...
The following is a mini-argument for and example of how the e-learning tools should be made more supportive. i.e. actually help the staff and students using them actively address common problems in a pro-active way. It continues some more thinking about an earlier question I asked, Does institutional e-learning have a TPACK problem?" and hopefully will inform the on-going research and development around BIM (now officially released to the Moodle community) and also inform the Moodlemoot'AU 2013 presentation I proposed....more...
The title for this post is (probably a slight re-phrasing) of something @palbion mentioned last week during a conversation about the low quality of information systems within higher education (or at least our experience thereof). The comment was in relation to the professional and academic staff who are struggling with the various information systems universities are increasingly using to support tasks such as managing research higher degree students form application through to graduation, managing the process of sending students out into industry for practicums, and of course the more general LMS and student records system....more...
The following is just a "diary entry" recording a bit more evidence for the story that our students are neither digital natives nor digitally literate. It may or may not become useful in future research/writing. It's not meant to be insightful, just a record of an experience....more...
The following is an initial attempt to restart some earlier explorations of research methods that may prove useful in examining the "Story of BIM" for potential useful insights. The starting place is ethnography and auto ethnography and an exploration of some writings....more...
The following is the first attempt to expand upon an idea that's been bubbling along for the last few weeks. It arises from a combination of recent experiences, including...more...
Yesterday I attended a session with three different presentations focused around "student voices and their current use of technologies at USQ". There was some very interesting information presented. However, I have a few reservations with aspects of the research and especially with some of the conclusions that have been drawn. I'm hoping to reflect upon and post more about this when I have some time. But an experience just now reinforced one of my reservations and is worth a short sidetrack....more...
Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen to Sir John Daniel give a presentation titled "Higher Education Futures: Keeping an open mind". The text and slides from the presentation are available here. Following the presentation there was a panel session involving Sir John, Professor Jan Thomas (USQ's Vice-Chancellor), Professor Ken Udas (USQ's Deputy Vice Chancellor - Academic Services and CIO) and Professor James Taylor (a USQ emeritus professor and big name in distance/open learning including OERU)...more...
E-portfolios have increasingly been seen as a good thing. A welcome innovation in assessment practices that show evidence of institutions improving their learning and teaching. At the same time, there's been an increasing question about whether a student's e-portfolio should be hosted on an institutionally owned system. Various questions arise, including...more...
In around two months a couple of hundred pre-service teachers will be wanting/required to start engaging with the course EDC3100, ICTs and Pedagogy. For the last 3 or 4 months I've been reading a bit and generally mulling over what I'll do and how far to go. Back in July I started off with this initial post. It's now (past) time to make some of this explicit, make some design decisions and implement it. This is the start. Littered through the following will be questions and reminders to myself for further consideration....more...
I'm slowly recovering from a week at conferences. First, ASCILITE'2012 (#ascilite2012) and second the SoLAR Southern Flare Conference (#FlareAus). I was going to spend the week before preparing, but marking and other tasks intervened. This meant I spent much of the week preparing presentations which meant a couple of late nights and limited social collaboration. Add in a couple of early flights and I'm a little tired and frustrated. This may come through in the following....more...
The following is a collection of presentation resources (i.e. the slides) for an ASCILITE'2012 of this paper. The paper and presentation are a summary of the outcomes my PhD work. The thesis goes into much more detail....more...
I've spent the last week dealing with a range of institutional systems for the submission and processing of assignments, results etc. I'm likely to spend at least another week or two trudging through the inexplicable holes, dead-ends, and busy work such systems create. Hence the need for a break. While walking through the local "Japanese Gardens" back to the office I stumbled across a possible explanation. Or at least a catchy phrase to represent that explanation and provide an opportunity to revisit and share some recent reading....more...
The following started life as a submission to the SoLAR Southern Flare Conference and is serving double purpose as a contribution to #cfhe12, which is currently looking at Big data and analytics....more...
The following bit of pseudo-code is from van Dam (1999) and strongly matches my experience with educational technology, especially within universities....more...
The following has some reflection/questions generated while reading...more...
As mentioned in the last post I'm currently reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. The title of this post comes from this quote from that book...more...
The following arises from some recent experiences with the idea of "minimum course sites" and this observation from @cogdog in this blog post...more...
This semester I'm teaching EDU8117, Networked and Global Learning, one of the Masters level courses here at USQ. It's been an interesting experience because I'm essentially supporting the design - a very detailed "constructive alignment" design - prepared by someone else. The following is a belated start of my plan to engage in the course at some level like a student. The requirement was to use one of a few provided quotes attempting to define either networked learning or global learning and link it to personal experience. A first step in developing a research article in the topic....more...
Thanks to @cj13 for the heads up about the EDUCAUSE analytics sprint in the midst of moving, conferences, end/start of term and grant writing I missed it. Found it interesting that the first thing the struck my eye was a link to this discussion titled "Faculty need how-to information for the data they do have". It's interesting because the grant application I'm writing is directly aimed in this general area. Though we perhaps have a slightly different take on the problem....more...
Another task for today is to put some finishing touches on an application for an OLT grant around learning analytics. The project - some early thinking shown here - is coming together nicely, but could always be better. Some good feedback from Rob Phillips reminded me about what the Horizon Report for Australian Tertiary Education (Johnson et al, 2012, p. 1) has to say about analytics in Oz higher ed...more...
After a week of increasingly intermittent engagements with Twitter I stumbled back into the Twitterverse this afternoon and one of the first things I see is this post from @marksmithers. It is Mark's response to the call for help from @courosa for his keynote at the Melbourne PLE conference next week. Alec's question is...more...
Note: An update to this post included at the end....more...
So the last of three sections examining the limitations of industrial e-learning and suggesting an alternative. Time to write the conclusion, read the paper over again and cut it down to size....more...
The last couple of posts have attempted to (in the confines of an #ascilite12 paper) summarise some constraints with the dominant product and process models used in industrial e-learning and suggest an alternative. The following - which probably should have been posted first - describes how and where this alternative comes from....more...
And here's the followup to the well received "LMS Product" post. This is the second section looking at the limitations of how industrial e-learning is implemented, this time focusing on the process used. Not really happy with this one, space limitations are making it difficult to do a good job of description....more...
What follows is the first draft of the "Product" section for an ASCILITE paper (the overview for the paper) I hope to finish by tomorrow......just a bit of wishful thinking. Much of it has appeared in this blog previously, just now trying to wrangle it into a formal publication and all the limitations (e.g. space) that brings with it....more...
Another day and another #ascilite12 paper to think about. This is the one where my periodic engagement is potentially driving my co-author slightly crazy. I'm sure this contribution will add further to that....more...
The following is an attempt to formulate and structure some ideas for a paper for ascilite'12 in Wellington. The aim is to convert my PhD thesis - especially "The information systems design theory for emergent university e-learning" - into something useful and interesting for the ascilite crowd. The following is an attempt to organise the mish-mash of content I currently have into something sensible....more...
The following is an attempt to build a bit more on an earlier idea around the use of learning analytics. It's an attempt to frame a different approach to the use of learning analytics and to share these ideas in preparation for a potential project....more...
What follows is some reflection on forward thinking about the Pre-Service Teacher Network (#pstn) project. Bits of this may end up in a paper destined for the PLE Conference 2012...more...
The almost 300 students in the course I'm teaching have their first assignment due on Monday. I'm currently laying the ground work to help the small course team to mark those assignments. Actually I'm busy procrastinating about the task by writing this blog post. Mainly because it is more work than it needs to be and it is this way because of one of the fundamental flaws of how universities are currently implementing e-learning systems....more...
I'd like to argue - and yes it is perhaps a case of wishful thinking - that there are reasons to suspect that learning management systems (LMSs) will probably go away. Or at the very least, identify some forces that are pushing that way....more...
Came across this post titled "Five Trends to Watch in Education Technology" via Stephen Downes' OLDaily. In particular, I was really drawn to trend #1 - the Curriculum. In particular, because it connects with some ideas that have burbling away for the least week or so sparked by some questions from a colleague....more...
For a long time I've had a vague interest in narrative research, i.e. it's one of those things I always meant to learn more about. Here are some initial explorations....more...
I was asked to respond to a set of questions around ePortfolios. The questions arose from some earlier posts: Why am I an ePortfolio skeptic and Portfolios often implemented badly. What follows are my responses....more...
In my previous academic life, I never really saw the point of book chapters as a publication form. For a variety of reasons, however, my next phase in academia appears likely to involve an increasing number of book chapters. The need for the first such chapter has arisen this week and the first draft is due by February next year, which is a timeline to give me just a little pause for thought. (There is a chance that this book might end up as a special edition of a journal)...more...
Tomorrow morning I have the opportunity to participate in a Skype session around a nascent project looking at how pre-service teachers might be aided and abetted in the creation of professional networks and subsequently learning more about their new profession. It's likely that my description of the project doesn't capture the full diversity of views, as mentioned the project is still in its formative stages. The following is an attempt to gather some of my thoughts about the project....more...
I've just had a visit from my 6 year-old son. He was jumping out of his skin with excitement and a sense of achievement. Apparently he's just won a "chilli that blows up a whole row of zombies" in Plants vs Zombies. A game he's been playing on and off for a couple of days without any instruction or reading any documentation. Plants vs Zombies, like most good games, is designed to help a new player learn about the game by playing the game....more...
The ICTs for Learning Design course I'm taking has at least four weeks structured around looking at 4 different groups of technologies where each group is made up of multiple examples. For example, the first group is "Online spaces" and includes blogs, wikis and "websites" (e.g. Weebly). We are meant to explore and experiment with these technologies and then select one to analyse. The analysis is intended to...more...
For a variety of reasons, mostly due to some current study, I've retrieved from the rubbish tip of history a course website I helped design and teach back in 1999. What follows here are some reflections on what has and hasn't changed since 1999. At the end there is a bit of speculation that the current context within universities would make it harder to generate this type of course site....more...
The following is intended to be an illustration of one of the potential origins of the gap between learning technologists and educators. It picks up on the idea of schemata from this week's study in one course and connects to my point about the dissonance between how educational technology is implemented in universities and what we know about how people learn....more...
To some extent this post is a cop out. Rather than take the time to looking into what, is for me, an important and interesting question I am going to post this for two reasons. First, to remind myself to follow up later. But mostly and second, to see if someone within my PLN (why do I find the use of that term somewhat troubling?) can offer some suggestions....more...
This post is sparked by a combination of recent personal experience and recent discussions on the interweb. As part of current studies I'm reading a lot about e-learning theories, especially constructivism, and seeing the student perspective of the reality of institutional e-learning/resource-based learning. At the same time the last couple of weeks have seen various media articles, blog posts and commentaries around e-learning. I'll point to a few of these below, but I'll probably miss a few. Most have been highlighting or commenting upon the significant difference between what is known about good learning and teaching (i.e. something along the lines of constructivist) and what is being done/what academics expect to do....more...
Today a mate posted to his blog about a small project he's involved with. The context of this project seems to be a good opportunity to comment on the potential flexibility of open source LMS and the limits of that flexibility within an institutional context. It's also an attempt to link it back to the design theory described in my thesis (if you want more of the theory behind the following, look at the thesis)....more...
As part of the LAK11 course Howard Johnson has commented on an earlier post of mine. This post is a place holder for a really nice quote from Howard's post, an example from recent media reports, and perhaps a bit of a reflection on responses to analytics....more...
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...
This is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of the thesis. It's a re-do of an earlier post, I'm a bit happier with it than v1.0. I'm posting it here because it connects with some work I'm doing preparing to work on BIM v2.0 and also because it summarises what I think may areas of further research in e-learning would be, if I were to do any....more...
Once I get out from under the PhD, I'm hoping to expand an initial idea attacking the rhetoric of blended learning currently in vogue in some parts of higher education. The purpose of this quote is to save a quote that I've just come across for that expansion, and also to summarise the idea....more...
The following draws together some work on distributed cognition in the Globe Theatre and some early thoughts on how that might be useful in improving the design of learning management systems such as Moodle (there's also an argument to be made about university teaching and learning, but I'll mostly leave that alone). While primarily focusing on helping teachers teach and thus improve the student learning experience, the ideas could equally be applied to learners (and probably have been)....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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
Am currently reading Faegri et al (2010) as part of developing the justificatory knowledge for the final ISDT for e-learning that is meant to be the contribution of the thesis. The principle from the ISDT that this paper connects with is the idea of a "Multi-skilled, integrated development and support team" (the name is a work in progress). The following is simply a placeholder for a quote from the paper and a brief connection with the ISDT and what I think it means for curriculum design and academic development....more...
Listened to this interview of Chip Heath, a Stanford Professor in Organizational Behaviour about his co-authored book Switch: How to change things when change is hard. My particular interest in this arises from figuring out how to improve learning and teaching in universities. From the interview and the podcast this seems to be another one in a line of "popular science" books aimed at making clear what science/research knows about the topic....more...
The following is a slightly edited copy of a message I've just sent off to the Learning Analytics GoogleGroup set up by George Siemens. I'm into reuse. Essentially it tries to highlight a small subset of the uses of learning analytics that I see as most interesting....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...
I'm in the midst of the horrible task of trying to abstract what I think I know about implementing e-learning information systems within universities into the formal "language" required of an information systems design theory and a PhD thesis. This post is a welcome break from that, but is still connected in that it builds on what is perhaps fundamentally different between what most universities are currently doing, and what I think is a more effective approach. In particular, it highlights some more recent developments which are arguably a step towards what I'm thinking....more...
The following arises from a combination of factors including:...more...
The following is an early draft of the "lessons learned" section of chapter 5 of the thesis, the third last section that needs to be completed (to first draft stage). It still needs some work and completing the last two sections will probably lead to some changes, but it's a start....more...
It seems like I'm in the downhill stretch with the thesis. Almost all the new material has been written, am just waiting on some feedback from my esteemed supervisor before completing the last new section (it follows the same structure as a previous section, hence the importance of feedback). So, while I'm waiting on that feedback, I'm starting the revision of the draft chapters. The following is a re-working of the first main section of chapter 1 and provides the background to the research....more...
In some reading for the thesis today I came across the concept of McNamara's fallacy. I hadn't heard this before. This is somewhat surprising as it points out another common problem with some of the more simplistic approaches to improving learning and teaching that are going around at the moment. It's also likely to be a problem with any simplistic implementation of academic analytics....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...
Over on the Remote Learner blog, Jason Cole has posted some information about a keynote by Dr Richard Clark at one of the US MoodleMoots. I want to focus on one key quote from that talk and its implications for Australian higher education and current trends to "improve" learning and teaching and adopt open source LMS (like Moodle)....more...
The following is a "formalisation" of a previous post. This is the version that forms the first draft of a section in the thesis....more...
Have spent the last day or so doing some more data munging of access logs trying to determine the level of usage of Wf applications within Webfuse. Wf was the framework for developing dynamic web applications within Webfuse - the topic/outcome of my PhD. The following is an initial summary of that munging with some initial reflection. This will get further polished and re-worked for inclusion in chapter 5 of the thesis....more...
Dave Cormier has presented 8 hypotheses summarising what he's learned about open learning. I've been meaning to post about it for a day or so, there is some really good stuff here. Some really important insights that formal education institutions need to think about, especially those wishing to ride the online learning revolution into the greener fields of growing student markets....more...
As part of the PhD I have to summarise aspects of Webfuse usage, the following is a quick attempt to summarise usage of the Webfuse course sites from 1997 through 2009. The main aim is to show what I've got so far, think about what needs to be added, generate a to do list, and make an initial stab at explaining some of the movements. The hope is that writing this is essentially a rough draft/scribble of material that will end up in the thesis....more...
Yesterday, via a tweet from @marksmithers I read this post from the author of the DIYU book titled "Vast Majority of Professors Are Rather Ludditical". This is somewhat typical of the defict model of academics which is fairly prevalent and rather pointless. It's pointless for a number of reasons, but the main one is that it is not a helpful starting point for bringing a out change as it ignores the broader problem and consequently most solutions that arise from a deficit model won't work....more...
Yesterday, I rehashed/summarised some earlier thoughts about "handling the marriage of PLEs and institutions. Since then, I've been reflecting on that post. Am coming to the belief that this is just the wrong problem, or perhaps just a symptom of a deeper problem. (Signal the start of the broken record)....more...
The following is my attempt to think about how the "marriage" of the PLE concept and educational institutions can be handled. It arises from reading some of the material that has arisen out of the PLE conference held in Barcelona a few weeks ago and some subsequent posts, most notable this one on the anatomy of a PLE from Steve Wheeler....more...
Time to get back into the thesis. The following is the next completed section from the evaluation part of chapter 5 of my thesis. A result of much data munging and some writing, still needs a bit more reflection and thought, but getting close....more...
Col's recent blog post has just started the necessary process of the Indicators project paying closer attention to the question of ethics when applied to learning analytics. The following are some of my initial responses to Col's post and an attempt to invite some additional suggestions from other folk around the question...more...
The following is a report of my attendance at Moodlemoot'AU 2010 during the first half of this week. The aim is to engage in a touch of reflection, outline tasks to do, and inform colleagues back at CQUniversity about the conference....more...
I'm off to the 2001 Australian MoodleMoot next week. The conference program includes a collection of 3 minute show and tell sessions on the Tuesday afternoon. The following is a summary of what I think I'm going to talk about and a call for suggestions....more...
I'm currently trying to formalise the information systems design theory for e-learning that is meant to be the contribution of my thesis. i.e. what is the model, set of principles etc that I think is important....more...
The following presents details of feature adoption by courses using the Webfuse system from 1997 through 2009. It presents the data generated by the work described in the last post....more...
I'm in the throws of finalising the second last bit of data analysis for the thesis. For this I'm trying to examine the level of feature adoption within courses supported by the Webfuse system (the main product for the the thesis). The following describes an attempt to formalise the process for this evaluation....more...
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...
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...
The following details an attempt to use user/messageselect.php with BIM in an attempt to move towards implementing an email merge facility for BIM....more...
This carries on "bits" from chapter 5 of the thesis. It's a rough draft of a description of the institutional context within CQU from 2000 onwards. It's brief and targeted mainly at the factors which impact on Webfuse development....more...
Back working on the thesis. The following is a rough draft of the introduction and part of the first section from Chapter 5 of the thesis. This chapter is starting to tell the story of Webfuse from 2000 to 2004 and beyond....more...
This post is a summary of work being done to update the Moodle indicators block so that it can support multiple visualisation tools and approaches....more...
The following is an attempt to explain the initial description and rationale of an exploratory research project (perhaps ethnographic, narrative inquiry or some similar qualitative methodology) aimed at understanding what teachers/academics actually experience within a particular environment during a single term. The assumption is that by better understanding the lived experience of the teaching staff you can better understand why (or why not) teaching is likely to improve....more...
A couple of days ago I wrote the last few sentences for a fairly serious first draft of chapter 4 of the thesis. This chapter has to be re-read by me, read by my esteemed supervisor and then by a copy editor, so it's not finished yet. But it's a step closer....more...
The Indicators project team are off to Moodlemoot AU 2010. All three are giving presentations, but only two (i.e. not me) are on the indicators project. In thinking about how we might make the most of this opportunity, we've floated the idea of announcing an "indicators" Moodle block at the conference. This post is an attempt to make concrete our thinking and take some steps towards making it happen, hopefully even generate some interest and external comments....more...
Am busy reading and trying to do up a grant application, when I should be working on the PhD. However, I couldn't bypass this quote from FUllan (2001: 65)...more...
During the last week I have been in Canberra for various events, including giving a presentation on BIM at University of Canberra. Somewhat surprisingly (as last I knew, he was in New Zealand), Leigh Blackall was in "audience" at the presentation, and as is Leigh's wont, he asked some serious questions. I was troubled by those questions and needed time to reflect on what an answer might be....more...
Markus has finally posted the set of questions for framing a research proposal idea that he showed me weeks ago. This post is an attempt to use those questions to frame what I'm doing in my current position/....more...
This post is an attempt to synthesize and reflect more upon two posts from yesterday. One from me trying to explain an early form of a framework for improving L&T based on findings from psychology behavior change research. The second from Markus that expands on the potential psychological foundations for this thinking by mentioning:...more...
The following is an attempt to describe early attempts at developing a framework for evaluating existing and developing new interventions aimed at improving learning and teaching within universities. It builds on some ideas from an earlier post....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...
My current institution has adopted Moodle as its institutional LMS as of 2010. Due to my role, I haven't really had to think about how you best go about designing a Moodle course. Now, however, due to the curriculum mapping project it is likely that I am going to have to engage with this. Hence the question, what are the different principles, guidelines or approaches for designing a Moodle course site?...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...
The following is a presentation abstract that I've submitted to MoodleMoot AU'2010. It's based on some ideas and thoughts expressed here previously. In particular, the main focus on the paper will be showing that the reason most university e-learning/teaching is not that great, is not really the fault of the academics. Instead it will argue that there are a range of limits within the higher education environment that are mostly to blame....more...
Yesterday, Derek Moore tweeted...more...
The following is the first part of chapter 3 of my thesis. The aim of this part is to explain the broad view of research that informs the work. The second part will give more specific details about the specific method used. Over the next week, I'm re-reading this chapter, when the fixes are done, I will upload a completed version....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...
Just floating another idea for a research project around the Indicators project....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...
I think that the quality of most university learning and teaching is somewhat less than it could be. There are some really good examples and really engaged teaching academics. However, they are in the minority. This problem is made worse when the context of a particular university is extremely complex. For example, a number of Australian public universities, in response to reductions in government funding, have developed a collection of partnerships with commercial and overseas organisations to offer their courses in various modes. Some of these universities also have traditional on-campus students as well as distance education student spread throughout the globe....more...
Since about 1996 much of my research and development around e-learning has found "concrete" form in a system call Webfuse. First described in Jones and Buchanan (1996) Webfuse became an essential part of CQU's operations. The unkindest (and basically wrong) description of Webfuse is that it was a proprietary, single institution learning management system....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...
I've been back working at the PhD thesis, hopefully down to months before submission. At this stage, I need to work on the 2 chapters that are reflecting on the usage of Webfuse during two periods: 1996 through 1999 and 1999 through 2004 (and a bit later). In doing some, the main tasks I need to achieve are:...more...
The following is a summary/reflection of Winn (1990), the abstract follows...more...
The following is at first a rambling diatribe outlining some of my reservations with instructional design as it is practiced. Then it is a summary/reflection on Winn (1990) - "Some implications of cognitive theory for instructional design". The abstract for Winn (199)...more...
The following is an attempt to make concrete various ideas that have been floating around about a project to take a very different approach to curriculum mapping. There's a small glimmer that these ideas may form the basis for an ALTC grant application...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...
What follows is an attempt to develop some of the foundations of what is driving the work I do in my current position/....more...
I'm wondering if too much of the focus on improving teaching within universities is focused on groups within strong(er) ties at the cost of increasing the weaker ties....more...
The following is an attempt to make concrete some idea and tasks associated with writing a journal paper for the Australian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) based on the ASCILITE'09 paper based on the work of the Indicators project. The paper will be co-authored by a group and the aim of this post is to start discussion about content of the paper and the tasks we need to do to get it written....more...
One of the good and also problematic things about the Indicators project (attempting to identify patterns in LMS usage data) is that there are so many interesting idea for further research that arise from the patterns being identified. What's best/worst is that the project has really only scratched the surface. This post is an attempt to write down an idea I had today in order to save it for another day, perhaps see if anyone has any insights that can improve it, and if anyone is keen to get involved....more...
This is in part a test of Wordpress.com's new support for Vimeo video. The video below is of a presentation I gave at CQU this year. The abstract is below. The slides are on slideshare....more...
This is a plea for pointers, suggestions and direct assistance....more...
Over the weekend it was reported in various media outlets that the Australian government has a new plan for higher education. A plan that includes words like "results-based funding", performance, targets, quality and "readily available". They cynical tone that I hope you are hearing, is not solely - or even mainly - due to some opposition to the idea of universities being accountable or effective. It's mainly due to the belief that I think for the majority of teaching at universities this move will encourage more task corruption than it will actual real improvement in the quality of teaching....more...
The last couple of months have resulted in an absence from work on BIM (BAM into Moodle). This post is meant to be a summary of where I had gotten up to and a restatement of what I need to do. The latter part is somewhat uncertain due to limited communication within my local context. Somewhat disappointing....more...
The final keynote at ASCILITE'09 was by James Clay and was titled the Future of Learning (this is a link to an apparently earlier presentation by same author, same topic). Many aspects of the talk resonated with many in the audience, however, the one that perhaps resonated the most was that of the Innovation Prevention Department....more...
I've heard a number of folk at ASCILITE'09 claim that there needs to be a change in culture amongst academics around learning and teaching. To me this has always sounded a bit like a deficit model of teaching staff. It's a model that I've heard again and again at ASCILITE'09 and in other literature around learning and teaching in higher education. You know the sort of thing e.g....more...
I'm currently on my way to Auckland for the 2009 ASCILITE conference. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be in Denver for the 2009 EDUCAUSE conference. Both were/will be useful and interesting experience. But having been at EDUCAUSE, read a couple of the ASCILITE papers and talked with a colleague I'm once again wondering...more...
The Indicators project is an attempt to enable the examination, analysis and comparison of LMS usage across time, systems and institutions. The project is nothing new. Projects around academic analytics have been around for a while and I and others at my current institution have been talking about using the collective data in systems logs to inform the practice of L&T at universities for a long time....more...
The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Initiative combined with various local institutional and personal factors has increased the interest of some colleagues and I in biting the bullet and entering the next stage of academic development. i.e. the preparation, submission and hopefully successful receipt of applications for external funding. This post is the start of some reflections and thinking about how and what to do....more...
The following is a collection of reflections on the Web 2.0 Authoring Tools in Higher Education Learning and Teaching: New Directions for Assessment and Academic Integrity National Roundtable that I attended yesterday....more...
Tomorrow I am off to attend a "National Roundtable" on Web 2.0 Authoring Tools in Higher Education Learning and Teaching: New Directions for Assessment and Academic Integrity. Quite a mouthful. I've spent some of the traveling time today reading the discussion paper and trying to formulate what I might be able to contribute. We're meant to give an opening statement as the lead off. What will I say?...more...
I'm currently sitting in the QANTAS club at Canberra airport waiting to return home after a week at ANU working on the PhD (being done through ANU). I decided to read a copy of CIO magazine while having brunch. In doing so I came across this article (Rodgers, 2009) title "Mind your own Business Intelligence....more...
Next Monday I will be at the University of Melbourne participating in a "National Roundtable" title "Web 2.0 Authoring Tools in Higher Education Learning and Teaching: New Directions for Assessment and Academic Integrity". This is being run as part of an ALTC project titled Web 2.0 authoring tools in higher education learning and teaching: New directions for assessment and academic integrity...more...
I've just completed a presentation which included an experiment with some different technologies for lectures and a talk I gave at EDUCAUSE09. The slides, video and other related resources are available from the main presentation page....more...
I'm in the midst of preparing some additional slides for a presentation/experiment tomorrow around alternatives for the LMS and the lecture. In part, this presentation connects with the future of universities - and perhaps learning in general - a topic that seems to have gotten increasing airplay in the last year or so. Especially in the form of pundits predicting problems with current practice. This post is in part about showing that this is not a new thing, but also about saving some nice quotes for future use....more...
This Wednesday I'm involved with an experiment and presentation that is seeking to test out some alternatives for lectures/presentations. As it happens, the last week has brought a couple of events that are (so far) helping the case for the experiment. These are described below....more...
Last week I attended a presentation by a colleague at CQUniveristy titled The Bureaucratic Model of Adult Instructional Design. The stated purpose of the presentation was...more...
A couple of colleagues and I are trying to kickstart a little thing we call the Indicators project. We've developed a "tag line" for the project which sums up the core of the project....more...
The following basically tells the rationale and approach used to create a (audio) podcast of the presentations from the Personal Learning Environments & Personal Learning Networks Online symposium on learning-centric technology....more...
After at least a decade of "wouldn't it be a good idea if" and at least one aborted attempt (hint: an organisational restructure in which you are a loser, is not a great context for a new project with intra-organisational implications), the Indicators Project is getting started. This post is my attempt to define what the project means for me. What I hope to get out of the project, and what I hope others might get out of the project....more...
The aim of this post is to investigate the question of whether or not the learning pyramid (see following figure - click to expand) is true or false, or perhaps a hoax, myth, misdirection, useful model and/or theory based on verifiable research....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 call for participation from folk interesting in writing a paper or two that will tell some real stories arising from LMS evaluations....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...
This post stores information about an experiment/presentation seeking to examine alternatives for both the lecture and the LMS. Information available below includes:...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...
There's a bit of talk at my current institution about adopting "blended learning". The Vice Chancellor had this to say and various other folk have been pushing the idea. However, I do hear that there has been some disagreement about the exact definition of blended learning being used by various parties....more...
In a recent post reflecting on a presentation I referenced a TED talk by Dan Pink in which he proposed a new operating system for companies based on staff having:...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...
I recently posted about the need to develop an approach that allows for the simple and consistent comparison of usage and feature adoption between different Learning Management Systems (aka LMS, Virtual Learning Environments - VLEs - see What is an LMS?). That last post on the need didn't really establish the need. The aim of this post is to explain the need and make some first steps in identifying how you might go about enabling this sort of comparison....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...
BAM is a little project of mine playing at the edges of post-industrial e-learning. Since 2006 it's been relying on students creating and using blogs provided by external service provides - mostly Wordpress.com....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...
As part of the thesis I've been engaging with some of the literature around LMS feature usage to evaluate usage of Webfuse. A good first stab of this was reported in an earlier post. There were a number of limitations of that work, it's time to expand a bit on it. To some extent for the PhD and to some extent because of a paper....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...
Over the last week I've posted a bit around papers and ideas about how you evaluate the use of a learning management system (LMS). This post is intended to summarise findings from an initial evaluation of the use of features in the Webfuse system from 1997 through 2009. Webfuse is the system I designed as part of my PhD and has been used at Central Queensland University since 1997. At least the "LMS" part of Webfuse will cease being used in 2010....more...
This post follows on from a previous post and continues an examination of some papers written by Malikowski and colleagues examining the adoption of features of an LMS/VLE/CMS. This one focuses on the 2006 paper....more...
I'm in the midst of looking at the work of Malikowski et al in evaluating the usage of VLE features. The aim of this work is an attempt to provide information that can help those who help academics use VLEs. The following is an idea to address those problems and arrive at something that might be useful for cross-institutional comparisons....more...
As a step towards thinking about how you judge the success of an LMS/VLE, this post looks at some work done by Steven Malikowski. Why his work? Well he is co-author on three journal papers that provide one perspective on the usage of features of an LMS, including one that proposes a model for research into course management systems. A list of the papers in the references section....more...
My PhD is essentially arguing that most institutional approaches to e-learning within higher education (i.e. the adoption and long term use of an LMS) has some significant flaws. The thesis will/does describe one attempt to formulate an approach that is better. (Aside: I will not claim that the approach is the best, in fact I'll argue that the notion of there being "one best way" to support e-learning within a university is false.) The idea of "better" raises an interesting/important question, "How do you measure success with institutional use of an LMS?" How do you know if one approach is better than another?...more...
I came across a post title "Some ways university will change over ten years by Mark Smithers via a tweet from Claire Brooks. The post is, as Mark puts it, an attempt to anticipate the changing roles and functions of universities and how it will effect educational technology. To some extent it's the sort of thing that I might be expected to do in my current position/, if not to develop institutional policy, at least to inform it....more...
In a recent post I messily wrote about the start of the process of evaluating the use of Webfuse for my thesis. This post takes the ideas/process from that post and applies it to the course websites produced by Webfuse from 2006 through 2007. The data in here is in a similar time frame to the work being done by Col and Ken on their indicators project....more...
At the start of an early day of working on the PhD I am feeling particularly old. Dealing with a teenager at home may also have contributed to it. So, I'm feeling in a particularly curmudgeonly frame of mind, i.e. grumpy old b*stard. Please keep that in mind when reading the following, it will likely come over much more cynical/negative than it is meant....more...
The following contains some early results from the evaluation of Webfuse course sites as mentioned in the last post. The aim is to get a rough initial feel for how the course sites created for Webfuse in the late 90s and early 00s stack up using the framework produced by Malikowski et al (2007). As opposed to other PhD work, this is a case of "showing the working"....more...
For the last couple of weeks I've been working on chapter 4 of my thesis. I've worked my way through explaining the context (general context and (use of e-learning), the design guidelines and the implementation (parts 1, 2 and 3). I've now reached the evaluation section, where I'm meant to describe what happened with the use of Webfuse and make some judgement calls about how it went....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 following is the last of, what is now, a three part series of blog posts outlining the design and implementation of the Webfuse system. These are part of chapter four of my thesis. The previous two parts are here and here....more...
This post continues the description of the design and implementation of Webfuse started with this post....more...
This continues the collection of content that goes into Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis. Chapter 4 is meant to tell the story of the first iteration of Webfuse from 1996 through 1999. The last section I posted describes the design guidelines that informed the implementation of Webfuse. This post and at least one following post seeks to describe the details of the design and implementation of Webfuse....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...
I continue to have a high level of skepticism around the concept of universities investing in ePortfolios. I feel that it is another example of how people within universities tend to over-emphasize their importance in the scheme of things, extend the university role into areas it where it should never have been and subsequently waste resources and more importantly the time and energy of academic staff that would be better spent focusing on other aspects of improving learning and teaching. In particular, I see ePortfolios being another approach that is being over-run by the technologists alliance....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...
As part of my new position/ I'm meant to identify opportunities, trends etc around learning and teaching and inform the local institutional community of them. The following is the first of those reports. I've attempted to keep the explanation as short as possible as I'm uncertain the type of folk I'm writing this for are likely to read long essays....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...
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 an attempt to reflect upon an EDUCAUSE Review article by Bryan Alexander entitled "Apprehending the Future: Emerging Technologies, from Science Fiction to Campus Reality". I'm doing this because I believe the topic, at least at first glance, has connections with the new role/ I'm meant to fulfill at my current institution....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 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...
Phillips (2005) includes the following quote...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...
I have a thing against large scale enterprise information systems (such as ERP systems like Peoplesoft or learning management systems - commercial or open source) and how they are generally implemented within organisations. This morning provides a wonderful example of why....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...
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...
A local Sunday paper had an article last Sunday titled "Is this the future of our universities?" and with a sub-heading of "Attending lectures is 'old school'. This post is a first attempt to gather some thoughts about how the whole thinking about lectures in universities, including the notions around e-lectures in articles like this, are just so 'old school'. So much so that what passes for "digital lectures" is pretty limited....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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The following is a summary and perhaps a bit of a reflection on McDonald and Gibbons (nd). This is a journal article that has been accepted, but not yet officially published. It appears to be based on the PhD thesis of McDonald....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 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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The editorial team over at Slideshare have decided my recent PhD presentation is worth of featuring on the Slideshare home page. The following screen shot of the Slideshare home page is included as proof and also as a record. 105 views before being featured. How high can you go?...more...
Part of the rationale for developing and using BAM had its origins in this unpublished paper (Jones, 2005). A part of the paper talks about minute papers, that content is reproduced below....more...
Most university teaching is crap. Too general, too sweeping? Maybe, but based on my experience I'm fairly comfortable with that statement. The vast majority of what passes for teaching at Universities has a number of really significant flaws. It's based more on what the teaching academic is familiar with (generally based on the discipline experience) than on any idea of what might be effective....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...
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...
In the following I reflect on my aborted and half-baked attempts at harnessing design patterns within the practice of e-learning at universities and wonder whether it was a lost opportunity and/or a project that was destined to fail. This is written in the light shed by the work of a number of other folk (Google "patterns for e-learning"), including the current JISC-emerge project and, I believe, the related Pattern Language Network....more...
On Friday the 20th of Feb I gave a talk at the ANU on my PhD. A previous post has some background and an overview of the presentation....more...
Yesterday I gave a presentation at the Australian National University on my PhD. I'm doing it through ANU and this 30 minute presentation is a standard requirement of study. The slides are up on slideshare (embedded below). I recorded the audio and will be trying to put that online later on today and make the slides into a slidecast....more...
When you talk to anyone in an "organisational" position (e.g IT or perhaps some leadership positions) within a university about using external "Web 2.0" tools to support student learning one of the first complaints raised is...more...
I've had a Facebook account for about a year. I've never really used it beyond making contact with other folk. Have never uploaded any content and tonight I've decided to make that permanent. I won't shut the account down. I'll keep it open so that friends from the past can find me....more...
The following is a quick mind dump of ideas that have arisen today about how you might make use of the usage data and content of course websites from course management systems (CMS) to find out interesting things about learning and teaching. i.e. Col is aiming to develop inidcators that might be of use to the participants associated with e-learning - management, support staff, academics, students etc....more...
Wesley Fryer has a post summarising a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson. I'm pulling out a few relevant quotes/recollections for later use....more...
Last night I was looking for some information about recording audio for powerpoint presentations in order to create a slidecast...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...
This is a submission to a conference later in the year. The conference has its own specific requirements for submissions, hence the structure of this post. In some cases I've left in quotes or italics the directions given by the conference as to the content of the submission. It's still a work in progress. Submission is not due for a few days. More than keen to hear suggestions and criticisms....more...
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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...
In a post yesterday I talked about how most applications of e-learning within universities seems to actively prevent students and staff leveraging the protean nature of information technology. That is the nature of computer software to be flexible, malleable and customisable....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...
Scott has a post discussing the potential benefits of using VoiceThread as a mechanism for providing feedback to students - both by staff and students. Based on some experience, I agree there is some potential, but I also think there are some issues to be looked at. Details follow....more...
For almost as long as learning management systems have been around their have been researchers and technologists investigating how the usage logs of these systems can be harnessed to inform and improve learning and teaching. For a little while I was sort of involved in a project that would look at some of this - interest has waned in line with organisational realignments....more...
Jocene and I are having a bit of a chat about PLEs and she raises a number of questions or perspectives in her last comment in that discussion that are worth of thought. So, I'm starting a new blog post here, rather than making a comment (the inequity in power and ease of use between the editing tools/interface used to create a post and those used to make a comment - very limited - make an interesting comment about the assumptions and affordances of a blog)....more...
Jocene reflects a bit upon a slidecast (titled "Personal Learning Environments: The future of education?") by Graham Atwell....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...
This article from a Training industry magazine raises a number of issues, well known in the research literature, about the significant limitations that exist with the evaluation of university teaching....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...
Back in 1998/1999 I supervised a couple of project students (who have gone onto bigger and brighter things) in the development of some multimedia resources to support a course in operating systems. The most recent version of the course is available here....more...
This presentation by Dave Thomas talks about the Dreyfuss Model of Skill Aquisition and how it applies to software development. However, the ideas and insights seem to apply to a number of other contexts, in particularly learning and teaching at Universities. I certainly found a lot of points that resonated....more...
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I'm trying to run an experiment in blog-based discussions. Trying to understand, from experience, the realities of using individual blogs for a multi-person discussion. It's not going well....more...
In some previous posts (the original post and the followup post) I've been playing around using blogs for multiple discussion forums. As yet, no-one else has joined in :(. Which is not surprising, to some extent, given at least one of the bits of my experiment in the followup post did not work....more...
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A previous post has gotten a comment which I want to follow up on. The interface for writing a post gives more opportunity to be creative than that provided to add comments....more...
As proposed earlier this post is the first step in attempting to evaluate the differences between three learning management systems. This post attempts to understand and describe the model underpinning Blackboard version 6.3....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...
This is a continuation of my attempt to develop a list of the assumptions underpinning existing practice around learning and teaching at universities which the concepts surrounding the Personal Learning Environments (PLE) term bring into question. The list started with this post and is continuing (all the posts should be linked from the bottom of the original post)....more...
Last night the PLEs@CQUni project helped support a public session titled "Psychology and Public Health Infotainment". The purpose was to show the relevant local community practitioners research posters prepared by students in CQUni course - PSYCH13021, Special Topic in Psychology....more...
In a previous post I started developing some ideas about the current assumptions associated with university learning and teaching which the concepts surrounding the nebulous term of PLEs bring into question. This post struggles with suggesting another one - consistency....more...
Friday I am supposed to be giving a 30 minute overview of the PLEs@CQUni project. The tentative title is "PLEs@CQUni: Origins, Rationale, Outcomes and Future?". As part of the origins section I was going to talk about some of the fundamental assumptions of university learning and teaching which PLEs, learning 2.0 and associated concepts, memes and propaganda are undermining, or at least questioning. The following is an attempt to outline some of those and hopefully a plea for the perspective of others....more...
Yesterday I attended a session by George Siemens with the title "Extending the classroom: Open content and open teaching". The presentation was video-conferenced from the Sunshine Coast to a range of locations across Australia. I was in a room at CQUniversity in Rockhampton with quite a number of folk. What follows are my reflections on that talk....more...
My thesis is an example information systems design research. However, since the aim of the thesis is to develop a design theory for the implementation of e-learning within a university I do have some interest in the design-based research (DBR) literature from the education discipline....more...
Graham Atwell raises some questions around the topics Learning 2.0, PLEs, Web2.0, informal and formal learning in this blog post. Apparently based on a workshop which appears to be focusing on the harnessing of these technologies/approaches in existing educational organisations...more...
For some time I have thought that one of the major barriers to improving/innovation in learning and teaching has been the consistency of practice and mindset held by discipline based groups. Now I've got some suggestion of a research basis for this view. This post attempts to explain my view, outline the research basis and draw implications for the practice of learning and teaching at Universities....more...
For those of you who don't know, I'm developing something called the Ps Framework for sensemaking around e-learning (read the earlier post for more information....more...
The Ps Framework is a taxonomy/framework that has arisen out of my attempts to understand the literature around e-learning within universities. It's main aim is to serve as the structure for chapter 2 of my thesis. This blog post seeks to summarise some of the origins and potential futures of the Ps framework and also to explain why I think it might be useful....more...
I suggest that many of the problems organisations face can be traced back to a few observations...more...
This post is a summary and some reflection on a discussion paper posted to ITForum. It's by Goknur Kaplan Akilli and is titled Design Based Research vs. Mixed Methods: The Differences and Commonalities. The author is a PhD candidate with some interesting research runs on the board....more...
After a long deal due to contextual and individual (i.e. mine) limitations, the first of the two PLEs@CQUni project's research staff has arrived and started work. Welcome Jocene....more...
CQUniversity is in the process of evaluating two open source learning management systems for adoption by 2010. We're at the stage of finalising the criteria to be used to evaluate the two systems. The purpose of this post is to outline some thoughts about how to evaluate the evaluation criteria....more...
The unit I work with is undertaking a project called Blackboard Indicators. Essentially the development of a tool that will perform some automated checks on our institution's Blackboard course sites and show some indicators which might identify potential problems or areas for improvement....more...
The unit I work for is responsible for providing assistance to CQUniversity staff and students in their use of e-learning. Which currently at CQUni is mostly the use of Blackboard....more...
On Monday the 25th of August I am meant to be giving a talk that attempts to link complexity theory (and related topics) to the practice of leadership of learning and teaching within a university setting. The talk is part of a broader seminar series occurring this year at CQUniversity as part of the institution's learning and teaching seminars. The leadership in L&T series is being pushed/encouraged by Dr Peter Reaburn....more...
The following is step 2 in getting organised for a trial of VoiceThread as part of the PLEs@CQUni project. The background was given in a previous post....more...
The PLEs@CQUni project is attempting to figure out how/if social software, web 2.0 etc can be effectively used at CQUni to improve learning and teaching. I'm part of a group attempting to figure out how we can do this, figure out what works, what doesn't and get these technologies/ideas used effectively....more...
Yesterday I gave a presentation at CQU titled "The Ps Framework: Mapping the landscape for the PLEs@CQUni project". The slides are on Slideshare and the video on Google video and are embedded below....more...
We're in the process of getting serious about our PLEs@CQUni project. The following is a copy of a submission to CQUni's Vice-Chancellor's Executive to tell them about the project. Sharing it here so others can know what we're trying to do and why and also on the off chance that others might criticise and suggest alternate approaches that improve what we're doing....more...
Much of what we do involves enabling academics (and students) to become familiar with particular technologies. Sufficiently familiar to think about how they can use it in their learning and teaching. We've had to do it with Blackboard and we'll have to do it with Second Life....more...
In a growing category of blog posts I'm expanding and attempting to apply my interest in diffusion theory and related theories to increase the use of course websites. A major requirement, as outlined in the previous post, in achieving this requires and understanding of what students find useful?...more...
CQUni has an interest in increasing the quality of the course websites, as part of a broader push to improve the quality of learning and teaching. This post is an attempt to engage with some of the issues and develop some suggestions for moving forward....more...
Theoretically the group I work with is charged with helping staff at CQU improve the quality of their learning and teaching. To improve the courses they teach. A task that is not particularly easy for any number of reasons. Including the one identifed by Farhad Saba in this post. i.e. that academics by nature are a fairly solitary bunch and aren't used to, or particularly like, work with other people to help improve a course. I know this from two perspectives, working where I am now and because I was just such an academic....more...
As I've mentioned before Myers-Briggs puts me into the INTP box, a Kiersey Archiect-Rational. Which amongst many other things I have an interest in figuring out the structure of things....more...
Nothing all that new in this post, at least not that others haven't talked about previously. But writing this helps me think about a few things....more...
Apparently Accenture have discovered "user-determined computing" and associated issues....more...
The purpose of these posts is to provide a bit of a history of the origins and development of the CQU Learning Second Life island and the initial steps into 3D MUVE's for learning and teaching. It's also to encourage a bit of reflection on why and what is happening as well as to make open the ideas, discussions and experiences we're having for the wider CQU community (and others) if at all interested....more...
It's almost official. CQU has an island in Second Life. Going under the name "CQU Learning" the purchase of the island is for the express purpose of examining what can be done in the environment to improve learning and teaching at CQU. The purchase is being funded by Curriculum Design and Development Unit and is connected with the Carrick Web3D project the unit is involved with....more...
Not unlike many institutions, at some stage in their use of e-learning, CQU finds itself in the perceived position of having two learning management systems (LMS):...more...
The following is an initial development of taking some the fundamental premise from Extreme Programming and apply it to learning and teaching. The rationale for doing this is to see if it provides a more effective way of generating improvements in learning and teaching at higher education, and in particular CQU....more...
There are inclinations amongst some at my university, as with many others, to move onto a different learning management system (LMS). Which creates n important questions - which new LMS?...more...
Here at CQU there is a mindset amongst a surprisingly large number of folk that align closely with a quote from Land (2001)...more...
The Division of Learning and Teaching Services which includes CDDU is going through a planning process driven by a range of organisational and contextual issues....more...
Through a range of coincidences I've been lucky enough to be involved with a team, lead by Penny De-Byl, that was successful in obtaining a Carrick grant to look at how to enable academics adopt the use of immersive 3D environments in their teaching. The project is only just starting, we had our first project meeting just over a week ago at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), and are still feeling our way as a group and a project....more...
Twice this year I've been asked to give a presentation at CQU's Foundations of University Learning & Teaching, essentially an induction program for academics new to CQU. The topic of the presentation I give is "Some Possible Futures for Learning: Lessons and Enablers"....more...
This is a work in progress...more...
One of the challenges facing CQU and in particular "my group" is the question of governance around e-learning (the use of ICTs to support/enhance learning and teaching) and learning design. The essential problem, from my perspective, is that there are limited resources how and who makes the decisions about how those resources are used....more...
I've been somewhat pre-occupied this week with producing a presentation that will form the basis for a submission to ASCILITE'2007....more...
As part of CQU's moves around improving its evaluation of good teaching I was sent a paper by Keith Trigwell (2001), "Judging university teaching"....more...
This post contains some initial thoughts for a potential paper for ASCILITE'2007, a conference that has as its theme "ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning"....more...
As part of a conversation on the Moodle site for the Online Connectivism Conference Stephen Downes posts the following....more...
Cole Camplese, in a blog post titled 69,000 reasons to pay attention, reflects on issues around innovation, especially with "web 2.0 like" tools, in e-learning within universities...more...
According to their website CAUDIT is described as...more...
Dave Tosh, project manager of the elgg project, has a post suggesting that the open source model doesn't work. He should know, given his three years working on elgg....more...
A discussion of ITForum provided a pointer to an interview with Badrul Khan (who provided the link). In it he suggests that instructional design deals with just 2 dimensions (pedagogy and evaluation) of 8 dimensions required to create learner-focussed learning material....more...
It's that time in my thesis work (trawling through references for the lit review) when I have finally come back to the "LMS Governance report" written by Lisa Wise and James Quealy. This went through the blogosphere a while back. You can access the PDF of the report and a MediaWiki based annotated bibliography from this blog post....more...
Starting with a review by Will thalheimer I came across the book The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results by Calhoun Wick et al....more...
I'm currently working on a paper/idea which is essentially seeking to argue that the herding cats metaphor. This metaphor's most famous instantiation is the EDS herding cats commercial. It is a metaphor/phrase that is often used within higher education, especially when someone has tried to get academics to do something. It's often equated to herding cats....more...
For at least the last 5 years there has been an increasing drive for university academics to have formal credentials in learning and teaching. The essential argument is that you wouldn't go to a medical doctor who hadn't been trained in medicine, so why should you be taught at university by a person who has been trained in teaching....more...
Just working my way through Pettit (2005) which tells the story of how the OUK used online conferencing for staff development around e-learning. What I'm finding useful to my situation is the literature review which covers some of the issues around this issue and which connects nicely with some earlier ideas....more...
Simon (1996, p 130) writing about the connection between what is designed (product) and the process used to designed it, says...more...
The OECD report "E-learning in Tertiary Education: Where do we stand?" says that universities have primarily used LMSes for adminstrative purposes and that LMSes have, so far, had a limited impact on pedagogy....more...
Pittard (2004) talks about the UK government's plans for e-learning (my bad description). It includes the following...more...
Pittard (2004) talks about the UK government's plans for e-learning (my bad description). It includes the following...more...
In a recent post I commented on the trend around how consumer driven computing is driving the development of "software as a service". In particular, pointing to an article from the Economist that talked about how Arizona State University was using Google Apps to host email accounts for their students....more...
A nice quote for REACT comes from Campbell, Gibson and Grammlich (2005)...more...
Goold and Auga (2006) describe an experiment in prototyping of a transformation of a face-to-face course into an online offering....more...
The Economist magazine ran an article on Dec 19th, 2006 which is sub-titled - "Consumer technologies are invading corporate computing"....more...
This post is going to be a holding place for a range of resources that will be connected with my fuzzy thoughts around how to establish greater trust and reciprocity (maybe social capital) amongst academics and the staff who support them in developing their teaching....more...
The following comes from 'Lessons for Education: Creating a Learning System' (Hargreaves, 2000). It talks about social capital and the role it might play in innovations in higher education....more...
A lot of educational innovations are reported to be prevented/plagued with the "not invented here" syndrome that prevents adoption. One perspective on this is that this is blame allocation by the producer of the innovator. i.e. it's not my fault, but the fault of those recalcitrant adopters, they are rejecting my idea because of sheer bloody-mindedness....more...
Knowledge Management in the Learning Society is a book from the OECD that examines the issues in and around education due to the changes in society - the learning society....more...
The work on the missing Ps is intended to contribute some research publications within the information systems field and also form the structure for chapter 2 of my PhD thesis. Consequently, it is important that the work have a good research foundation. This post is intended to provide that foundation, or at least document my development of the foundation....more...
The Missing Ps framework is my attempt to generate a way of identifying the flaws in the methods used by Universities to select an LMS....more...
LMS adoption decisions are made by people. LMSes are used by people. The nature of those people who they are, how they think and what they believe, amongst other characteristics, have a significant impact....more...
While elearning is still relatively new there has been significant levels of implementation and research around elearning. It seems fairly obvious that any LMS adoption process should make use of the knowledge generated by this past experience....more...
Tony Byrne has posted an article entitled A Scenario-based approach to evaluating CMS vendors. It's part of a website that examines/reviews content management systems. The post tells the story of how they evolved their evaluation of such systems from strictly functional evaluations to the addition of "vendor intangibles" and beyond....more...
A continuation of the elements of the "missing Ps"....more...
The Missing Ps framework is my attempt to generate a way of identifying the flaws in the methods used by Universities to select an LMS....more...
The Missing Ps framework is my attempt to generate a way of identifying the flaws in the methods used by Universities to select an LMS....more...
The missing Ps framework is very much under construction attempt to identify the holes and flaws in the methods used by Universities to evaluate and select a learning management system (LMS)....more...
George Siemens has posted a document entitled "Learning or Management System? A Review of Learning Management System Reviews" which, as the title suggests, reviews a recent collection of reviews of LMSes in an attempt to offer a more nuanced view....more...
For, what seems the longest time, CQU has been talking about the need to evaluate and choose yet another LMS. We've sort of done this two times before, and from my perspective, both adoption decisions have been fatally flawed. Some discussion about those processes can be found, to a lesser or greater extent, in a variety of publications by CQU authors including: Danaher, Luck and McConachie (2005), Sturgess and Nouwens (2005), and Jones, Luck, McConachie and Danaher (2005)...more...
Where now for development methodologies is an article from the Communications of the ACM thinking about the future of development methodologies....more...
What is online teaching? asks...more...
Must take a closer look at this. A video from Stephen Downes explaining the difference between groups and networks. Has some strong resonances with some of my vague thoughts about group work....more...
Terry Anderson has a post that points to a meme about "The people formerly known as students and teachers"....more...
Many people can't see the benefits of making content freely available....more...
The Web 2.0 Course Site idea has many flaws, hurdles or counter arguments....more...
A nice quote to support the approach taken with BAM and to some extent Webfuse...more...
Have had a report from one of the students...more...
I'm becoming interested in the notion of Web 2.0 course sites as the next step in the evolutionary development of Webfuse....more...