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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
A recent post of mine continued the trend of reflecting on the impacts - in my mind negative impacts - of a top-down, compliance driven culture in higher education. This bit has been encouraged by a comment on that post which makes a number of interesting points, at least in terms of encouraging some additional thinking on my part. It's also serindipitously coincided with some recent local events....more...
Peter Albion picked up on an earlier post of mine and offers a brief description of his own experience within Australian universities. In particular, the increasing focus on compliance with bureaucratic systems as a means of assuring quality, a move back to hierarchies of command and control and apparent adoption of a Theory X view. A view that resonates with what I see within my current institution and one others talk about....more...
One of the themes for this blog is that the majority of current approaches to improving learning and teaching within universities simply don't work. At least not in terms of enabling improvement in a majority of the learning and teaching at an institution. Recently I finally completed reading the last bits of the book Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein. Chapter 18 is titled "The Real Third Way". This post explores how that metaphor connects with some of the thinking expressed here....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...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The purpose of this post is to work out some initial ideas for a presentation I'll be giving at CQUniversity in the next month or so. The title of the presentation is probably going to be "Herding cats, losing weight and how to improve learning and teaching". The talk is related to my current position/ and is the first step in making the position better known within the organisation....more...
Anyone who listens to me or reads this blog (e.g. when senior management loses the plot, quality compliance and task corruption, models of growth - responding to the grammar of school, improving university teaching and learning: learning from constructive alignment by not mandating it) knows that I think there are fundamental mistakes being made at most universities when it comes to how they try and improve or change the practice of learning and teaching. The following is an attempt to explain why I think it's very badly broken and offer an alternative approach based on different theoretical underpinnings....more...
Phillips (2005) includes the following quote...more...
Within the next year AUQA are coming to pay a visit to my institution to "check our quality". I am a major cynic when it comes to quality assurance or the various other associated buzz words. An organisational unit I joined was big on the whole quality stuff, and while it was certified it was my view that most of what it was certified to do was completely and utterly wrong for the organisation. Not to mention that it was inefficient, badly designed and we had consultants reports to tell us that (not just our own views)....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...
AUQA is coming. Eventually most Australian universities will receive a second visit from AUQA. As such visitations come closer increasing levels of thought are given to demonstrating quality. What does it mean to demonstrate quality of learning and teaching?...more...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The following is a summary and possibly some reflection on Newton (2003). I'm still trying to decide if, as I read literature associated with the PhD, if I should take the time to produce these summaries. I wonder if, instead, I should concentrate on writing the thesis.......more...
The following post and its content has been shaped by (at least) three separate influences:...more...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Thinking about reflective alignment, I came across the following quote in Booth and Anderberg (2005). Thought it might be useful so am saving it here....more...