The following arises from some recent experiences with the idea of "minimum course sites" and this observation from @cogdog in this blog post...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...
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...
Just after 9:30pm last Wednesday I read an email from the Dean and Director of the ANU College of Business and Economics congratulating me on the fact that my thesis had been accepted without revision by the examiners and the institution. Needless to say that it was good news....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...
After more years than I care to count, almost as many structures, and many, many more plans and timetables, the thesis is just about done. I have just finished stuffing around with Word and have produced a single PDF that will almost certainly be the version that is submitted....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...
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...
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...
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...
After a week away traveling with my sons in Western Queensland, I have to get back into the thesis. This post is essentially an attempt to capture where I'm up to and plan out what I need to do for the next week or so. As with the last update, I'll start scratching these out as I complete....more...
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...
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...
Am attempting to keep this weekly update thing going within the new context. Not much to report this week as I was out of town for three days, baby sitting and recovering for another, and thinking about jobs and family-based travel on the other....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's been over 4 months since my last PhD update, past time to get back into the discipline. A lot has happened in those 4 months, the grant talked about in the last post didn't get off the ground thanks to folk leaving positions at the potential partner institution and then because I left mine. So, the new context is that I'm currently a man of leisure, thanks to a separation payout, and increasingly focused on finally finishing the thesis....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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
There is now a version 2.0 of this section....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...
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...
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...
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...
Two weekly PhD updates in a row, will be interesting to see how long this keeps going....more...
The last PhD update I posted here was in early November last year. It's time to get back into the discipline of posting these updates, especially now I'm in the downhill stretch....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...
Dave Cormier has recently published a blog post titled Dave's wildly unscientific survey of technology use in Higher Education. There's a bunch of interesting stuff there. I especially like Dave's note on e-portfolios...more...
The following is a reflection on and response to a paper by Lisa Lane (2009) in First Monday titled "Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching". I've been struggling with keeping up with reading, but this topics is closely connected to my thesis and the presentation I'll be giving soon....more...
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...
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...
I'm taking the weekend, including Friday, off from the PhD - so an early update. It's been a good week. If only a short one in that I'll miss Friday....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...
The last week has seen only one day spent on the PhD. Mainly due to working on a conference paper. The good news is that the paper is connected to the PhD. It looks at mining LMS usage logs to generate indicators of patterns which may be interesting. The paper includes a comparison of LMS feature adoption between Blackboard (CQU's existing institutional LMS) and Webfuse - the topic of the PhD. Webfuse comes out favourably from a couple of perspectives. More on this later....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...
It's been almost two weeks since my last PhD update, mainly due to two factors. First, a lack of motivation due to some external factors and second, a decision to move back to Fridays as the release day for the summaries. The move back to Fridays arises from a new regular discussion with my esteemed supervisor on Friday afternoons. Releasing an update just before such a discussion seems to make sense....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...
The following is part reflection, part admission and mostly a warning and explanation to those that might care. Over the last few months, I've been spending a fair amount of time working on my thesis. As part of that I have attempted to ignore any number of things and limit my interests. Consequently, any number of social relationships have been let slide, not to mention reading and keeping up with things outside of the PhD (e.g. blogs of other folk)....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...
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've fallen a bit short of what I wanted to achieve this week, however, overall I'm feeling pretty good about progress. In particular, because some of the initial evaluation results point to the "Webfuse way" having some quantitative benefits. Also, if the work in the last week get's the okay from the esteemed supervisor it should make completing chapter 5 pretty straight forward....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...
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...
Last week's update reported on a bit of a brick wall that had been struck. Thankfully, the strategies outlined in that update and feedback from the esteemed supervisor has well and truly destroyed said brick wall and progress is steaming ahead with a renewed sense of vigour and perhaps just the vaguest glimmers of light at the end of a long, long tunnel....more...
In the last PhD update I outlined a change to tack. I've moved from working on chapter 2 (the lit review) to working on chapter 4. Chapter 4 is the first of two chapters, each describing one iteration of the 2 action research cycles that make up the core contribution of the thesis. Chapter 4 focuses on the period from 1996 through to 1999 and is titled "Build it and they will come"....more...
Increasingly, the IT requirements of organisations are being met through the application of "enterprise systems". Large systems created by commercial vendors (though increasingly there are also open source variants, which while offering small improvements still suffer some of the same problems) that are meant to provide an integrated solution to a large scale system with an appraoch that combines "best practice" processes and techniques with information technology that will "scale" to meet the requirements of the organisation. Examples including ERP systems like Peoplesoft for finance, human resources and, at universities, student enrolment. In terms of e-learning at Universities the current dominant approach is also to employ "enterprise systems". With e-learning the "enterprise system" is known as the learning management system (lms), course management system (cms), virtual learning environment (vle) or some other 3 letter acronym. Examples include: Blackboard, Moodle and Sakai....more...
It's been a fortnight since the last PhD update due to last weekend's personal, celebratory trip to Adelaide. The time away was useful and has resulted in an insight that's going to change focus for a bit....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...
As mentioned a fortnight ago I've had much of the last two weeks doing non-PhD stuff including a road trip to Longreach. So this update is somewhat light on....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...
Some progress made this week, but it comes as a prelude to a week in which not much, if anything will be done. This week, after a couple of days at work, the family and I are off to visit Longreach, my sister and her family. We won't get back until after my normal "updates" day. So, I'll miss the updates for next week....more...
I told myself that I would get this section completed today before I went home and I have achieved that goal. Perhaps, however, I have engaged in a bit of "task corruption". A couple of days ago I was listening to a podcast about how the United States education system might be improved. One of the panelists suggested that one of the strategies employed by various school sectors to improve graduation was to make it easier to graduate. Just perhaps, in order to get this posted, I've relaxed my standards more than normal. Time will tell if it is too far....more...
A little while ago, I was sparked by Dilbert and my own prejudice against external consultants to contribute two posts (1 and 2) critical of the assumptions underlying the idea of and the contribution of such folk. In some thesis reading today, I came across this great quote the continues my basic assumption of the basic silliness of a reliance on external consultants....more...
The following is the penultimate section from the Processes section of chapter 2 of my thesis. It aims to talk about the types of processes used for learning and teaching (including e-learning). It seeks to use the lens of teleological and ateleological processes. This version has been finished quickly and could be made better. I'm trying hard to get "good enough" done and out so I can make progress. I guess supervisor feedback will tell the tale....more...
I occasionally get comments (usually agreement) on the quote that I include in my email signature. The quote...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...
This is the first of the updates to be sent out on a Sunday. Part of a plan to move from doing this on Friday to Sunday. Mostly because there have been a couple of Friday's I've missed. Also, this might set the reflection up as the start to a week, rather then the end and consequently encourage greater emphasis on moving forward than looking back...who knows....more...
I've noticed over the last few weeks an increasing number of my colleagues, friends and relatives asking questions like "How long until you finish?"...more...
The following is the next section of the Process component of the Ps Framework section of my thesis. I have an inkling that my bias towards ateleological processes comes through a bit strong in this. May have to balance it up with some additions later on....more...
This is the first draft of a section from my thesis. I'm currently working on the Process component of the Ps Framework. The section included below is the first of three sections that seeks to summarise/describe the types of processes used within universities....more...
After 12 weekly updates I missed one last week as the missus and I went on a holiday, ate some nice meals (e.g. this one), and purchased a new car. This time last week I was driving the new car out of Brisbane on the way home, hence no update....more...
The following post offers a description of ateleological processes and their weaknesses. It's a version 1 draft from the process components of the Ps Framework for chapter 2 of my thesis. A previous post gave a brief overview of teleological and ateleological processes and another described teleological processes and their weaknesses....more...
After a long pause due to holidays and work, here's the next installment of the process component of the Ps Framework for chapter 2 of my thesis. A previous post gave a brief overview of teleological and ateleological processes. The purpose of this post is to go into more detail about teleological processes. A subsequent post will do the same for ateleological....more...
I'm currently back from a holiday restarting work on my thesis and in particular on the process component of the Ps Framework. I'm currently working on the section that describes the two extremes, I'm using Introna's (1996) distinction between teleological design and ateleological design....more...
I'm currently working on the Process section of my thesis. As part of that I'm referring back to a book chapter (that was a conference paper) by Bo Carlsson (2004) titled "Public policy as a form of design". This post is an attempt to summarise some of the points made in that chapter as they are connected to my new job/....more...
The following is an early section on the Process component of the Ps Framework and is intended as part of chapter 2 of my thesis. Still fairly rough, but somewhat cleaner than some of the thesis sections I've shared here....more...
I'm currently on a bit of a wave with bashing the consultant model of change, i.e. a model by which an "expert" from outside comes into a context performs or directs the performance of some analysis and evaluation of the context and then, drawing on their vast knowledge, recommends some ways forward. I started my "bashing wave" in a post comparing this model with the "fat smoker" problem (telling them what they already know isn't sufficient to create change) and then continued with this inspiration from Dilbert....more...
Number 12 of the weekly PhD updates and the first one that is late - this was meant to be done yesterday afternoon. Better late than never. This has been a fairly positive week, some progress made and more importantly I may have learned a small lessons (and put it into practice) about the size and amount of stuff I'm trying to put into these sections of Chapter 2....more...
The following is yet another section from chapter two of my thesis. As with previous sections, this is an early first draft, it will change....more...
The main point of this post is to save this quote. I'm about to delete it from the thesis, can't make it fit, and I think it is important....more...
The following is the last part of the Place section of chatper 2 of my thesis. It's not that good, but enough has been done to get it out and await feedback....more...
Well, this week was a very short week. All up 4 days were lost with illness, work and a burst pipe at childcare requiring some additional babysitting duties. That said, I'm feeling pretty happy about the thesis mostly because on major hurdle is out of the way and it went fairly quickly. Hopefully this can continue - the progress, not the short weeks....more...
For longer than I care to remember, I've been working on the Place component of the Ps Framework for chapter 2 of my thesis. This post brings the penultimate section for the Ps component - institution. The last section will be the "lessons from place" section that attempts to draw some lessons from the Place component for the practice of e-learning. Who knows when that will arrive....more...
In a previous post I mentioned the current raft of "the university will die" discussions going on online and soon in print. Many of these, and especially this one, embody some sort of argument along the lines of "those silly, impractical academics will only be helped if they become more like business". This is not a new perspective....more...
Work on the PhD thesis is currently going slow. There are many reasons for this, one of them is I keep following interesting streams of literature beyond the needs of the thesis. I can rationalise that most of these extra-thesis streams do connect with the work I may be doing into the future/, though that doesn't necessarily help feel good about the thesis. (aside: I continue to be amazed by the folk who haven't learnt that the one question you do not ask someone in my position is, "How's the thesis going?")....more...
Well, I've reached double figures for these updates. The last week has been a slow one, or at least felt like it. The public holiday didn't help, nor the day off to ponder the new position. Progress has been made, but it just seems slow, especially when compared to what I said I'd do. I'm becoming more used to accepting some progress, be it slow or otherwise, as long as it's moving forward....more...
Looks like I'm on a bit of a roll with the "good enough" approach - soon to halt I'm sure. The following is the next section of the Place component of the Ps Framework section for chapter 2 of the thesis....more...
The following, finally, is a first draft of the sector section of the "Place" component of the Ps Framework. This is all meant to be part of chapter 2 of my thesis....more...
The following arises out some current reading, writing and thinking for the Place component of the Ps Framework. In the following I ponder the idea (which I currently agree with) that universities are inherently adaptable, they aren't likely to die anytime soon and that this adaptability is yet another reason why the LMS product model for e-learning is wrong - since it ain't adaptable....more...
The following is the introduction to a section of Chapter 2 of my thesis. It introduces the examination of the Place component of the Ps Framework. Hopefully, the remaining sections of the section will be posted over the coming day or so....more...
It's that time of week again, time to report on the progress of the PhD. This week has been one of those weeks where progress has not been as much as desired, but perhaps isn't quite as bad. As often happens, last week's optimistic claims of "speeding up" spluttered out a bit....more...
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...
The week since my last PhD update has been a good one. The most productive (in terms of completed first drafts of thesis sections) since I started this series of updates. I feel I'm getting into a routine and slowly developing pragmatic ideas and techniques for producing a thesis that is "good enough". In reality, I'm probably still to far up the scale towards "too good", but I'm getting there. It's a journey....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'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...
It's now been 2 weeks since my last "weekly" PhD update. The public holidays, minor surgery and a general malaise contributed to by on-going issues at work have meant that work hasn't progressed as quickly as I'd hoped and it would have been pretty pointless to post an update last week....more...
The following is a section from my PhD thesis. It is part of the "Past Experience" section of the Ps Framework. It aims to give a potted history of technology-mediated learning and show how it connects with e-learning. Since these terms are somewhat overused, it starts with some definitions. The plan is that this history will be used to identify lessons from history, which e-learning (generally) hasn't learned....more...
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...
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...
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...
This update is being posted a day early due to the author being incapacitated over the next couple of days. This marks the start of a couple of shared weeks in terms of PhD effort/time. Not only does next week bring Easter, it also brings 2 days of introductory Moodle training (having designed, developed and supported LMSes for the last 13 years, I'm not sure how useful - regardless of quality - two days of basic Moodle training will be)....more...
The following post and its content has been shaped by (at least) three separate influences:...more...
Well this week has been the worst yet in terms of progress on the PhD, at least with the last 5 weeks of updates. Most of it has been work related. Issues and events that have taken away the time, motivation and peace of mind necessary to effectively engage with PhD work....more...
As part of the PhD I'm developing the P Frameworks as a theory for analysing/understanding the factors the impact the organisational implementation of e-learning. Essentially, I argued that that the current institutional practice of e-learning within universities demonstrates an orthodoxy. Further, I argue that this orthodoxy has a number of flaws that limit, some significantly, potential outcomes....more...
I've been banging on about the tendency for educational technology folk, especially those in the technologists alliance to "blame the teacher" as the reason why technology-mediated learning hasn't achieved all of its promise....more...
I strongly believe in the notion that both learning and teaching, and attempting to improve learning and teaching, are wicked design problems to which there is no single answer, there are no right nor easy answers. The better answers lie in a broad recognition, understanding and synthesis of the diverse perspectives that exist; an in-depth understanding of the local context in which you are trying to operate; and a broad (usually much broader than people assume) set of knowledge of concepts and fields that might help....more...
In my last post I pointed to a talk by Postman that outlined five things we should know about technological change. This list has resonated me due to my involvement with elearning within universities and feelings that it is failing, often due to naive views of how technology can be implemented and what effects it will have on teaching and learning. This post continues/starts an attempt to make connections with Postman's list and elearning....more...
A prompt from a reader led to some additional searching for detail on the talk by Postman that forms the basis of this post. A search that led to a 2025 podcast episode of Modern Futura titled "AI & Technological Change: The Postman always delivers". That page's footnote includes details of the conference at which Postman delivered the talk. The body of the post points to Punya Mishra's 2022 post "The Postman always rings twice"....more...
It's a small world. I work in Rockhampton at a university and last year traveled to Canberra for a Cognitive Edge workshop (which I recommend). One of the other participants was Cory Banks who, a few years ago, was a student at the university I work at. He's obviously moved onto bigger and better things....more...
This week is turning out to be perhaps the most frustrating, not due to lack of program, but instead due to connections between what I'm reading/writing and what I'm seeing in my local context. As per last week's update the aim this week was to complete sections of chapter 2 related to the Ps Framework. The first section I targeted was "Past Experience" and this has been the source of the frustration....more...
I'm currently working on chapter 2 of my thesis, which is an explication of some of what is known about "e-learning" through the lens of the Ps Framework....more...
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...
A new record. A renewed interest in the PhD has lasted 3 weeks. I've even made a come back from the weak second album problem and probably had the most fulfilling week. Though I could have been more productive, perhaps that's an aim for next week....more...
Last week I started a new Phd tradition - weekly updates. Traditionally the second album for a successful pop group is somewhat less than successful, I feel some connection with that tradition. Hopefully it will be significant motivation for next week....more...
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...
Shirley is keen to do some more work on the "research note" suggesting a structure for a design theory/research thesis/paper. This was the appendix that was original part of Gregor and Jones (2007) but which JAIS decided not to publish. The main reason was that the reviewers thought it boiled down the process of publishing to a formula, and they obviously thought this was a bad thing....more...