Another year and another institutional grant opportunity around openness. This year the focus is on Open Educational Practice and is...more...
David Wiley has posed a little thought experiment that encourages reflection around levels of automation and "personalisation" within a University course. Judging by my Twitter stream it appears to have arisen out of a session or happening from the ELI conference. The experiment describes a particular teacher purpose, outlines four options for fulfilling that purpose, and offers a standard against which to consider those options....more...
Another day and another short presentation showing off a particular aspect of learning and teaching. This time social bookmarking....more...
Today I'm giving a 10 minutes spiel on why, what, and how I make use of blogs to support student learning in one of my courses. The slides for the talk will will be available below....more...
David Jones, Elke Schneider...more...
Paper presented at SITE'2016. One of three papers awarded the Ann Thompson TPACK Paper Award....more...
A previous post recorded some early exploration of what tweaks might be necessary to be made to the Moodle book search block. The original code for the block and the tweaks I've made are available via GitHub....more...
A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation showing off some work from the Moodle open Book project. The middle of the presentation was a live demonstration of the Moodle Book and various features. At one point in the presentation members of the audience (including a number of academics who used the Book module in their Moodle sites) gave an audible gasp. This occurred when I showed off the search block for the Book module. A tool that allows the user to search the contents of all the books in a Moodle course. The gasp indicated just how much teachers and students desire this feature. A feature I've been calling out for quite some time....more...
Following on from the work late last week and the lovely feedback provided by @rolley it's time to convert some plans into action....more...
The Moodle Book github tool allows the import/export (pull/push) of Book content from/to GitHub. The content from the Moodle Book is stored as a single file on GitHub. One of the many unanswered questions about the tool is the format of the exported file. The current format is a bit of dodgy HTML with divs, classes, and ids. Aim here is to figure out if and how the HTML 5 semantic elements might provide a more useful method....more...
A major aim of the Moodle Open Book project has been to connect the Moodle Book module with GitHub. The intent was that such a connection would enable the easy sharing of content that is currently largely locked within the LMS, not to mention improving the authoring process for the Moodle Book module. Earlier this week I gave a presentation in which I demonstrated a working connection between the Book module and GitHub. The following post illustrates how this connection works....more...
On December 1 I gave the following presentation. Titled "Opening up and enhancing Moodle books with GitHub, ePub, etc." the presentation reports on the work I've done as part of the Moodle open book project. In particular, it will describe the "why" and "what" behind the development of the Moodle Book github tool. A tool that integrates with the Moodle Book module and allows the Book module to push and pull it's content from GitHub....more...
by HA! Designs - Artbyheather ...more...
The following is a description of how I've gone about revising the Week 1 material for EDU8117, Networked and Global Learning. The intent is to demonstrate how a tool can be used for something a little different....more...
The LMS used by my institution is Moodle, but the institution has "branded" it as "Study Desk". Meaning students and teachers talk about finding X on the "Study Desk". They don't talk about finding X on Moodle. The following suggests that this branding of the LMS may actually hurt learning....more...
What do the following two artefacts say about learning analytics?...more...
There are two versions of this talk....more...
This post continues the adaptation of the original work of David Wiley around the reuse and remixing of open content and applying that knowledge to the LMS and other institutional e-learning systems and practices. The idea is that explicitly ignoring the distinction between the "content" and the digital systems (and perhaps also the physical equipment) that are used in contemporary learning/teaching spaces is useful in identifying problems with current practice and identifying alternatives....more...
When time permits I'm working with a group (one of many) that is tasked with coming up with project ideas that could support my current institution's strategic plan around learning and teaching. In particular we've been tasked to consider projects that will help build the institution's capacity to...more...
This post is an example assignment 1 blog post for EDC3100....more...
A student of mine is reporting problems embedding a Prezi into a blog post. Here's a quick test....more...
The second assignment for the course I'm currently teaching has a second assignment where learners are required to design a unit plan that uses ICT to amplify and transform student learning. Given the nature of the learners, their backgrounds,and the curriclum most use there is some significant scope and benefit in collaboration. Not as in group work, but as in seeing what each other are doing, making comments, and drawing inspiration. The following is an attempt to figure out how to encourage this a bit more. (There are 300+ of them spread throughout Australia and a few sprinkled further afield)....more...
One current challenge is attempting to engage productively with institutional strategic/operational planning. The big challenge in doing so is balancing the perceived importance of institutional level concerns (governance etc) with those of an individual teacher....more...
Metaphors are useful. They reveal some of the underlying assumptions held by people. For example, this paper (Behrens, 2007) reveals that Information Systems research has a strong bias towards thinking of organisations as if they were machines. A bias that tends to invade most organisational practice. The following picks up on a couple of recent events to examine one of the metaphors commonly used in academia. It argues that this metaphor reveals some problematic assumptions....more...
The following is a summary of what it takes for a teacher to find support resources around e-learning/network learning within the existing USQ systems. I had started this as part of another blog post that was going to draw upon my research to suggest an alternative approach. I had thought this would provide a useful comparison. However, as I stepped through the process it became obvious that what exists is far worse than I thought existed. Part of me wonders whether I've missed something simple, can't it really be this bad?...more...
The Christmas break is over. It's the start of a new week and I've completed some holiday tasks (complete a run through of Dragon Age Inquisition, watch the final series of The Newsroom, and upgrade the family computers to Yosemite). Time to start engaging with #fedwikihappening and trying to make sense of how it connects with other work I'm doing....more...
Thanks to the good folk of @reclaimhosting I know have a FedWiki working as part of my own domain - http://fedwiki.djon.es/. That's the good news. The bad news is that the move creates two problems...more...
And onto daily #6 of #fedwikihappening. I'm hoping this will start explore what the process might be around using fedwiki in my day-to-day thinking. To that end, I'm planning to...more...
Time to start using Fedwiki to do some writing....more...
So I now have a federated wiki of my own. Rolled by the good folk of #fedwikihappening....more...
A bit more reading/thinking about identity in the form of reading Day et al (2006) and also in light of some conversations going on around identity and the Reclaim Project. More on my personal Reclaim my Domain project tomorrow, hopefully. Day et al (2006) was one of the readings set in the NGL course, meant to spark some thinking about identity and its connection with NGL....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...
The following is a summary of some tinkering to develop a script that will help me appropriately attribute use of Creative Commons licensed images in presentations. Beyond addressing a long-standing problem of mine, this bit of tinkering is an attempt to feel a bit productive....more...
Have signed up for another MOOC - Statistics in Education for Mere Mortals - to fill a hole. What follows is the diary of the first week....more...
Over recent weeks I've been so busy that I've largely ignored Twitter. To my detriment. A quick return to it this afternoon found me following two links via tweets from @palbion. The two links were...more...
The following is a summary and perhaps some reflection upon Osman and Koh (2013). It's part of the thinking and reading behind the re-design of the ICTs and pedagogy course I help teach to pre-service teachers....more...
Ensuring the quality of the student learning experience has become an increasingly important task for Australian universities. Experience over the last 10 years and some recent reading suggests there are some limitations to how this is currently being done. New innovations/fashions like learning analytics appear likely to reinforce these limitations, rather than actually make significant progress. I'm wondering whether the current paradigm/mindset that underpins university quality assurance (QA) processes can be challenged by learning analytics....more...
The following is inspired by this tweet...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 an excerpt from an unsuccessful 2012 second round OLT grant. We're currently pondering what the next step is with the idea....more...
The following resources are for a presentation given at the Southern Solar Flare on the 30th November, 2012....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...
Becoming somewhat cynical about the headlong rush toward learning analytics I'm commencing an exploration of the problems associated with big data, data science and some of the other areas which form the foundation for learning analytics. The following is an ad hoc collection of some initial resources I've found and need to engage with....more...
The following is an early attempt to write and share some thoughts on what, why and with what impacts Australian universities are going to engage with learning analytics over the next couple of years. Currently it's fairly generic and the same structure could be used with any fad or change process....more...
In putting the finishing touches on this ASCILITE paper I discovered that Tuesday will be the 2 year anniversary of when I first put together much of the following on attempts by universities to improve/transform the quality of e-learning through checklists and other "quality assurance" methods. Given that I still see this tendency from central L&T folk in Universities - especially those in management - and that the original checklist the sparked the following has been largely gotten rid of, I thought I'd share this....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...
Constructive alignment is an approach to designing courses where there is - not surprisingly - alignment between what the students do, what is assessed and what it is intended that they will learn. It's gotten a lot of play in the higher education sector over recent years. It has some value, but I've always had some qualms about constructive alignment, but I'd like to add another observation about an apparent tension within constructively aligned courses....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...
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...
I'm definitely in need of a "customer relationship management" (CRM) system for the Learning Management System (LMS). Any suggestions?...more...
For various reasons I am feeling frustrated with the inertia of systems....more...
A few weeks ago, inspired by @sthcrft, I speculated around the idea of having a eduhack session at ASCILITE'2012. There was some interest and I had other tasks, but now it's time to think a bit more about it....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...
This is interesting (hat tip to @timbuckteeth). English schools will no longer be teaching Information and Communications Technology (ICT) study - a situation where students are bored out of their minds learning Word and Excel by bored teachers - and instead will be taught "more rigorous computer science and programming"....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...
This is an attempt to briefly (and possibly badly) express a disquiet I have with the idea of scaling educational innovations. It's sparked by a post by Rick Hess titled "Why education innovation tends to crash and burn"....more...
And the first day of my transition back into Academia commences. What follows is an initial list of my short-term plans for research and development. I had pondered coming up with some grand vision for my academic career, but I really detest visions and mission statements as ways to enshrine your current limited understanding in such a way as to ignore everything else that happens in the world....more...
Almost a year ago I blogged about a turning point in my formal work life. I'd finished a draft of the PhD and had been accepted into a pre-service teacher graduate diploma. A year on and there is another turning point. Tomorrow is the last day of my teaching internship, if my eportfolio passes I will become eligible for provisional registration with the Queensland College of Teachers to teach high school Information Technology and Mathematics. But I won't be teaching in high schools next year....more...
Have to give a 5 minute summary of an earlier presentation on the Australian Government's Digital Education Revolution (DER). The following is a first draft of the summary....more...
Yesterday I spent most of the day as a judge in the local Opti-Minds Challenge. Opti-Minds is a problem solving event/competition. Groups of at least 4 have to develop a 10 minute presentation/play to present a solution to an open-ended question. I volunteered for the Social Sciences challenge which was to develop a new method of education because of changes in technology and the observation that no-one wants to be a teacher anymore....more...
The following graphs are based on statistical information provided by the Queensland Studies Authority. The intent was to explore what was happening in terms of enrolments in the Senior High School course Information and Processing Technology (IPT)....more...
So, gamification is one of the flavours of the month in the ed tech community. The Khan Academy are doing it and there's a growing list of people writing about it: various gaming folk are talking about how it might work, an EDUCAUSE article, some smart folk are doing interesting stuff around Moodle course design and professional development, and some high school teachers are actually doing it....more...
Following up on my previous suggestion that High-school classes in information technology may be turning students off IT, I decided to do a quick literature search to see what was out there. Ain't procrastination grand. Here's what I found. I haven't had a chance to read them, back to the assignment....more...
The following is a quote from Steffy and English (1997, p. 6) cited in Ramirez (1999, p. 206) about schools from a standardised test in the USA....more...
This post from Mark Guzdial is the last of three looking at a PhD thesis examining the influence of using computational/programming approaches to teaching physics. This post talks about the finding in the thesis that students attitudes towards computational modelling became more unfavourable after instruction....more...
Over the last few weeks I've been thinking about the Australian Federal Government's Digital Education Revolution (DER). The presentation arising from that thinking will be given later this week and am hoping the slides will be up soon. I'm currently thinking about the People aspect of the DER. In particular, I'm wondering if the digital visitors and residents idea might need to be modified a bit in light of the protean nature of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and ideas like Douglas Rushkoff's Program or be Programmed....more...
So the Australian Federal Government recognises that there is something going on (DEEWR, 2010)...more...
So I'm working on an assignment examining and critiquing the government's Digital Education Revolution (DER). It looks like the argument I'm going to make is that it won't be a success. Where success is defined as achieving its goals, which is to...more...
The following is a bit of a summary and initial reflection on the Teaching teachers for the future project that is currently underway in Australia as part of the Australian Government's Digital Education Revolution (DER). The project...more...
At some stage in the last week I was pointed to this report/paper from Michael Fullan titled "Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform". The argument is that the large-scale reforms of K-12 education being undertaken in both the USA and Australia are destined to fail because they have adopted exactly the wrong drivers to encourage system-wide reform that actually improves learning outcomes for all students....more...
I have a problem. I'm hoping you can solve it by pointing to an existing tool or collection of tools that might solve it. I'm pretty sure there will be prior work in this area (e.g. social bookmark visualisation, the metadata/library crowd, knowledge management, networks, the visualisation and I suppose even data analytics groups, and maybe the connectivist folk), even if it isn't explicitly connected to teaching....more...
@sthcrft has reflected and expanded upon this article from The Australian on research graduates wanting a career in academia. In particular, the point is made that increasingly academics are payed a comparative pittance, have little or no job security, and being sent mixed messages about the relative importance of research and teaching (see the last paragraph of The Australian article). I'd like to add my 2c worth....more...
This is a follow-up to a post from yesterday that appears to have struck a chord. This post offers some additional explanation about the purpose and origins of the post and adds two more archetypes....more...
Based on my experience in Australian universities I would like to suggest four archetypes that are destroying the quality of learning in higher education. They are, in order of arrival at universities:...more...
So assessment for term 1 of the Graduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching is complete, term 2 beckons. The following is some reflection on initial exploration of the courses, expectations and assessment....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...
I've only listed to some of the audio of this presentation, and from that experience, watching the video is probably the advised approach. ...more...
For the last few years some colleagues and I have been watching the rise of managerialism within higher education, and more recently in K12 education. ...more...
This post draws on this article about Google's Talk Guru to argue the need for systems that support people at the point of them carrying out some task. ...more...
It appears that there is an increasing, ERA driven trend within Australian universities for placing greater emphasis on teaching scholars. These are academics who are no longer expected to do research, apart from engage scholarly with their own teaching practice. ...more...
I'm biased, for other reasons I'm in the process of becoming a high school teacher of information technology/maths. That said, it's given me the opportunity to think about a problem from a previous live as a University academic in information systems/information technology. ...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...
For almost 10 years now I have been hearing within higher education things like...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...
So the Australian Learning and Teaching Council has got the chop. There are a lot of folk upset about this and I can understand why. A lot of people invested a lot of time and energy into ALTC activities, some/many of which had good outcomes....more...
What follows is an early attempt at the acknowledgements section of the thesis. My better half, also completing here PhD, queried why this section would be needed? I will be including because there are some people that need to be acknowledged for their contributions....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...
I'm becoming increasingly interested in how the design of e-learning systems can be improved through insights from behaviour change literature and related work (e.g. I think game design principles have some connections with behaviour change. A while ago I started some thinking about this. The following is a summary of/reflection on...more...
Increasingly I think most of management is driven by fads. Even if the "fad" has some good underlying principles, or is perhaps simply a bit better than previous options. It is still implemented by management as a fad. As if we only implement this successfully, we will have the silver bullet that solves all our problems. Within higher education I have previously argued that open source learning management systems are one of the more recent fads....more...
Via Scott Leslie's free and learning composition comes the news that EduFeedr is up and going. ...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...
This weekend provided a wonderful story of the power of intrinsic motivation, and a perfect example of what I think is increasingly wrong with Australian higher education, especially its use of technology....more...
Over the last few days I've been catching up on some writing (first last week Leigh Blackall and this morning from Richard Hall) that, at least for me, seems to be trying to find ways that the current crisis in higher ed can be used as a spring board for something better. I certainly think there is an opportunity there. Dave Snowden has argued...more...
The following is yet another sign that the thesis is finally getting close to submission. The following is the second version of an abstract of the thesis. There have been some changes, feedback always welcome....more...
The quote attributed to Lisa Paul illustrates the vast distance between her experience and that of staff within universities. The phrase "we'll get to that after the AUQA audit" has been oft repeated at one institution I'm familiar with for at the best part of a year. ...more...
As work on the thesis is slowly finishing, I'm increasingly starting to think about the next chapter. What am I going to do post-PhD? The answer, potentially surprising for some, is probably going to high school teaching....more...
20 years ago, straight from graduating, I started work as a part-time tutor within a Department of Mathematics and Computing. Within a few years it was obvious to a naive computing person that the mathematics part of the department was in trouble. Fewer and fewer people were enrolling in the mathematics programs, but they still had a fairly large group of academics (mostly doing service teaching - i.e. stats for business undergrads). At the same time, computing was exploding in enrolments. We had too few staff and too many students. The perception was that it wasn't fair on us, to carry them....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...
Today has not been a good day for progress on the thesis. Have posted a few things I've already written and there are some folks reading bits of it thanks to Stephen Downes and OLDaily. That these folk find the work vaguely interesting enough to click on the link is a comforting thing, if not a motivating one for today....more...
The following is a first version of the justificatory knowledge section of my ISDT for emergent university e-learning systems. Still fairly uncertain just how information is meant to go in here and also just how far I should go with the reference to other theories (there are lots) and how much time should be spent looking at the interactions between them....more...
The following is the other main component of the ISDT for e-learning I'm working on. A prior post focused on the principles of form and function (i.e. the structure of an information system, the product), the following focuses the principles of implementation (i.e. the process)....more...
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...
Am working on the final ISDT for the thesis. An Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT) is a theory for design and action. It is meant to aim to provide general principles that help practitioners design information systems. Design theory provides guidance about how to build an artifact (process) and what the artifact should look like when built (product/design principles) (Walls, Widmeyer et al. 1992; Gregor 2002). Walls et al (1992) see an ISDT as an integrated set of prescriptions consisting of a particular class of user requirements (meta-requirements), a type of system solution with distinctive features (meta-design) and a set of effective development practices (meta-design). Each of these components of an ISDT can be informed by kernel theories, either academic or practitioner theory-in-use (Sarker and Lee 2002), that enable the formulation of empirically testable predictions relating the design theory to outcomes (Markus, Majchrzak et al. 2002)....more...
After a week away traveling with my sons in Western Queensland, I have to get back into the thesis. This post is essentially an attempt to capture where I'm up to and plan out what I need to do for the next week or so. As with the last update, I'll start scratching these out as I complete....more...
A couple of days ago I floated the idea of scaffolding, context-sensitive conglomerations as one idea/model/suggestion for how e-learning systems (currently mostly LMS, but hopefully other models will arise)....more...
For various reasons, mostly PhD related (and somewhat related to procrastination), I'm taking the time to read a bit more about situated cognition. Not sure how far it will go. The following are some ad hoc reflections and essentially a diary of what I'm reading. Not aiming for this post to fulfil any purpose beyond being a place to dump observations....more...
For the last week or so I've been attempting to bring together the principles that underpin the design theory for e-learning that will be the main contribution of my thesis. This post summarises one of the principles of form and function that is emerging from the last week or so. I using this blog post to escape the confines of PhD-ese and see if writing about it can generate some further refinement....more...
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...
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 attempt to consider and respond to a suggestion on my thesis from my esteemed supervisor. It's essentially some thinking and questions arising from further refinement of the research method being used in my thesis....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...
Am finding this HBR article to have an interesting take on the centralisation verse de-centralisation argument. However, still reading through it. ...more...
And now for something completely different, leaving the dinosaurs of academic development within universities behind, it's time to move on to some real dinosaurs, or at least their fossilised remains. In a few weeks, the two boys and I are off out west. In particular, we're off to "ride" the Dinosaur trail of Western Queensland. Both boys are going through the dinosaur phase, with the 5 year old certain he wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up....more...
There is a lot I like about within this discussion of a "systems approach to e-learning". However, there is also much that I dislike. ...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...
Am somewhat torn between the logic of this sort of approach to applying insights from broader business practice to higher education, and a slight shudder at the history of misuse that exists as folk mindlessly adapt business practices to higher education. Mindless, ill-informed, or perhaps simply naive adoption of techno-rational management approaches such as top-down, "strategic" thinking and aspects of quality management are amongst the biggest problems for higher education at the moment. ...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...
This quote summarises very nicely what I think will become a major research interest of mine in the future. i.e. how can we modify the environment - particularly, but not primarily, through information technology - within universities to encourage and enable improvements in teaching and learning? ...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 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...
The dissonance between the lived experience of academics and students having to deal with institutional innovations in learning and teaching, and the outcomes reported by institutional evaluations of those innovations is a growing concern for me. As top-down management gets involved in these innovations, in directing what they are and how they should be done, it doesn't seem that the accompanying gathering of evidence and critical reflection is coming along with it. ...more...
I think I came across this via amplify, and am now using amplify to see how this posts back to the blog. ...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...
For the last couple of days our LG side-by-side fridge has been dying. Not a great situation, especially given the problems we've had with it. And then today I find out that my employment at my current institution is about to cease after 20 years. The following is a bit of reflection about what might happen now....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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The following outlines the conditions for Anna's phone....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 first draft of a section from my thesis. It will form part of the newly cut down section on Process within chapter 2 (170 pages down to 50). The following tries to say something about the design processes used for teaching within universities. It starts with a characterisation of instructional design, looks at the limitations (referring to some earlier work about teleological and ateleological processes) and seeks to describe what the literature has to say about how teaching academics actually design/plan their courses....more...
A few days ago Stephen Downes - a little unusually - made a sequence of comments/tweets on Twitter around the "sameness of meaning" and its impossibility. Since then I've had a number of experiences and discussions that suggest some of the problem associated with learning and teaching policy, process and structure within universities arises because too many people assume that there is sameness of meaning....more...
Just another test. Won't know it's worked for a bit....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 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...
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...
I've spent today trawling through various government websites trying to get a handle on the CRC program. Still much to read. Sometime soon will need to start talking with some folk. However, there does seem to be some important tasks to complete. The following is my first crack at such a list:...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...
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...
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...
October last year we purchased Wandilla Zanzibar - Big Z from the big Brahman sales in Rocky. He was the new bull for the small number of remnants of our might herd of cattle....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...
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...
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...
Over the last few days I've finished reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely a professor at Duke University in behavioural economics. What follows is a bit of a summary. In short, I enjoyed it and it's reinforced an interest in questioning some of the assumptions that seem to underpin the current practice of L&T at Universities....more...
The following is the next part of the People section for chapter 2 of my thesis. The People section was started a week ago with this post. This one takes up the task of saying something about academic staff, subsequent and soon to be completed sections will look at management, academic staff developers and technology staff....more...
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...
I'm currently working on the People component of the Ps Framework as part of my thesis. One of the sections of the People component will be "People and cognition". It will seek to illustrate that people are not rational decision-makers, that we have all sorts of significant flaws in how we make decisions and that these flaws significant impact upon the implementation and practice of e-learning (the topic of the thesis)....more...
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've reached a phase in my thesis work that allows me, long after I should have, to return to Cavallo (2004). I had previously put in a place holder to remind me to go back to this paper. The full impact of the paper will likely become evident over the next few days, but this post focuses specifically on an issue I see arising locally....more...
I occasionally get comments (usually agreement) on the quote that I include in my email signature. The quote...more...
The following contains some initial thoughts about what might turn into a paper for ASCILITE'09. It's likely that I'll co-author this with Col Beer....more...
The following contains the next section from chapter 2 of my thesis and the section on Processes. It follows on from the section on institutional learning and teaching strategies and seeks to talk a bit about institutional strategies for e-learning....more...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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'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...
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...
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...
This is not good. It seems that Wordpress.com is starting to eat posts....more...
It appears that this post and its use of a poll has broken the RSS feed for this blog. Am hoping that this post will knock that post out of the feed....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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Edupunk as a term has been circulating since May last year. D'Arcy Norman has posted the YouTube video from below with a couple of folk talking about Edupunk, including Jim Groom the guy who originated the idea...more...
I'm currently reading Waeraas and Solbakk (2009), a paper titled "Defining the essence of a university: lessons from higher education branding." and with the following abstract....more...
It's amazing at how perspectives around technology and its use in education don't change. In the presentation on this page I use some quotes from the what if presentation by Karl Fisch to outline some previous fearful perspectives on the impact of technology on learning that mirror many of the perspectives held of e-learning....more...
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...
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...
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...
The title to this post is included in a quote from Kane, Sandretto and Heath (2004)...more...
All over the place there are people in organisations performing evaluations and comparisons of competing information systems products with a strong belief that they are being rational and objective. Since the late 1990s or so, most Universities seem to be doing this every 5 or so years around learning management systems. The problem is that these processes are never rational or objective because the nature of human beings is such that they never can be (perhaps very rarely - e.g. when I'm doing it ;) )....more...
As part of working on my thesis I'm working on chapter 2. As the traditional literature review one purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate what I know about the topic and to highlight what I think are the flaws or holes in current research and practice that I believe my research will address. The following builds on some initial ideas from a previous blog post and serves as some practice in formulating my ideas. So it will still be rough. Feel free to suggest improvements, point out problems and disagree....more...
The following is forming up as something to go into my thesis as part of the "Past experience" component of the Ps Framework....more...
16 September, 2012 - for some reason today has seen a fair bit of interest in this post from over 3 years ago. I though I'd take the opportunity to move this particular argument up a level....more...
In a previous post I pointed to and summarised a working paper that suggests that IS research is not all that diverse. At least at the conceptual 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...
Online assignment submission is one of the more used features of Webfuse and is explained in part in a few publications....more...
Webfuse provides a "staff portal" called Staff MyCQU. It is essentially a web-based application that provides a single interface to most of the tools/services staff require while teaching a course....more...
As part of my PhD thesis I'll be generating some statistics about the usage of the Webfuse e-learning system that has been in use at CQU since 1996....more...
In mid to late October 2008 I moved my long-term personal website to this blog, the early story is told here. One of my concerns voiced in that original post was to maintain by Google ranking. Here's an update....more...
I don't like to brag, but you don't get this sort of thing all that often....more...
!!! warning "Broken image link"...more...
Information Systems Epistemology: An Historical Perspective...more...
The following quote is from (Hirschheim, 1992) and is questioning the practice of research/the scientific method...more...
The video and slides from the talk last Friday giving an overview of the PLEs@CQUni project are now up and available....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...
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...
Apparently Accenture have discovered "user-determined computing" and associated issues....more...
The following is a summary of and reflection upon...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...
(A Suggested Structure for a Design Science Article or Thesis)...more...
Continuing previous posts looking at/summarising recent design research literature this post gives a summary of the following paper...more...
In an attempt to reignite progress on my PhD and prepare myself for attending the 4th Information Systems Foundations Workshop next week. The workshop title is "Information systems Foundations: Answering the Unanswered Questions about Design Research". The workshop is organised by my PhD supervisor and will have a number of "names" from the IS community there....more...
What, if any, is the difference design research, design-based research and design theory? How does your answer to these questions modify your practice and understanding of design research? Answers to these, and other related questions, are important, at least to me, and perhaps a broader community. This and subsequent posts are related to a paper I'm trying to write that has the working title "The dimensions of design research"....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...
A meeting with the PhD supervisor must mean a new planned timetable for completion of the PhD. In order to maximise fear of embarasement if/when I miss the timelines I'm making it public. It also serves the purpose of helping people understand why I might be ignoring them over the next 8 months or so....more...
I currently work in e-learning for which I use the OECD definition - "the use of information and communication technologies to support and enhance learning and teaching". My original discipline as an academic is the information systems discipline. To some extent, I believe this background provides some useful insights that help with the implementation of e-learning within a university context....more...
Yippee!! Some actual thinking and writing about thesis related material....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...
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...
Advanced industrial societies are currently undergoing a fundamental transformation from capital- and labour-based economies into knowledge economies (Burton-Jones 2001). In such economies knowledge, education, people and their ideas, become the key strategic resource necessary for prosperity (Duderstadt, Atkins et al. 2002). This transition to a knowledge economy is characterised by factors including globalization, increasing competition, knowledge sharing and transfer, and an information technology revolution (Zhang and Nunamaker 2003). This transition raises a number of issues for education systems, in particular how best to adapt such systems to the changes in the socio-economic landscape and provide the best educational opportunities and outcomes (Knight, Knight et al. 2006)....more...
In the traditions of open source's "release early, release often" and in an attempt to get me writing, I am going to start releasing parts of my PhD thesis. Almost certainly of limited use to others and likely to demonstrate various flaws, but hopefully the public release might generate some fixes and encourage some progress....more...