Campus Wide Information Systems have just published 'Educational and Institutional Flexibility of Australian Educational Software', a viewpoint paper which I wrote with Barry O'Grady and Peter Mayall of Curtin Business School. The heart of the paper is the identification of these categories:
"Well-designed educational software can be a key enabler for flexible education, although embedding it at an institutional level brings its own demands for change management. Here
we define flexible educational software to mean applications that provide both educational and institutional flexibility. Educationally flexible software should enable educators to design and manage effective learning experiences and materials and provide an interface that is appropriate for educating. Meanwhile it should provide students with opportunities to learn at their convenience and provide an interface dedicated to learning. Institutionally flexible software should provide institutions and their developers with facilities to adapt and integrate the product with local administrative processes, IT platforms and teaching culture. It should also help universities to join effective federations and partnerships with other institutions, which requires adherence to open standards and tolerance of diverse coding languages and platforms, including those that are popular in other nations ... The three [Australian] educational software packages we introduce below each match our informal definitions of educationally and institutionally flexible educational software and provide solid support and training to domestic and international clients." (Shurville, O'Grady and Mayall, 2008, p 76-77).
The paper is part of a special issue on Australasian E-Learning which I co-edited with Professor Ken Fernstrom (University College of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia), Dr Michael Henderson (Monash) and Barry O’Grady (Curtin). The papers were sourced from ICICTE 2007.
Reference
"Searchin'.... for so long" - Change
Campus-Wide Information Systems is now indexed and abstracted in:
I am now program director of the business information management and the library and information management programs at the University of South Australia.The business information management suite of postgraduate programs have been developed to meet the needs of the 21st Century and are offered, together with associated applied research, to educate technically skilled:
The LIM program
Newly qualified librarians in the 21st century need to be familiar with standards and technologies for information management and also require mature capabilities to collaborate across allied professions, such as archives, information systems and records management, as well as the diverse cultures of business and public service. Ideally they will also bring experience from the workplace. Moreover, understandings of change and innovation management, human resource management, organizational learning and project management are becoming ‘table stakes’ for all knowledge workers. Hence, postgraduate education for librarians must augment the core curricula necessary for ALIA accreditation with key knowledge from multiple disciplines and also encourage networking and teamwork with fellow professionals. Further, due to the rate of change in processes and technologies, it should foster skills for lifelong learning and continuing professional development. The problem is that providing such a range of knowledge and experience is beyond the capability of a single institution. So, the collaborative capability that we seek to foster needs to be a fundamental part of designing, delivering and improving such educational offerings.
Collecting and managing information is increasingly vital in all areas of modern life: from small businesses and multinational organisations, to schools, universities, libraries and museums. Among the many professions that deal with information - record managers, archivists, librarians and information officers - the need for a new type of information manager has emerged!
The library and information management programs are designed to provide replacements for the current, Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA)-accredited programs currently offered by the School of Communication .
All courses will be available totally online, part-time or full-time depending on your circumstances. The choice is yours! To make the programs even more exciting some of the teaching staff are actual industry based lecturers who can bring real-world experiences to your studies.
The new programs provide a continuing path of learning from the Graduate Certificate in BIM (Library Management specialisation) through to a Graduate Diploma or Masters qualification in Library and Information Management.
There is an increase in interest for both the Business Information Management and the Library and Information Management programs from industry sectors. Employers and employees wanting to be retrained to meet industry requirements along with career minded employees.
Henk Eijkman and I are also running a symposium at the conference on the philosophy of educational technology. I hope to see lots of regulars at the conference and look forward to co-editing the Campus-Wide Information Systems special issue based upon it.
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* "Every night on sep'rate stars, before we go to sleep, we pray so breathlessly. Baby, please, don't take my hope away from me."
If you have not heard We Three sung by Patti Smith (or Bob Dylan), then do yourself a very big favour and buy Patti's Easter album then take out an hour or three to engage with a Rock N Roll poet at the top of her game. Finding the Dylan version takes a bit longer with a torrent search engine but as Stan Lee would say "it qualifies you as a true beliver".
The ICICTE 2007 special issue of Campus-Wide Information Systems has now gone to press. This is an Australasian issue and it provides a snapshot of e-learning in Australasia for international readers. It was edited by Ken Fernstrom, Barry O’Grady, Michael Henderson and me. This may be the first special issue in the history of academic publishing to go to press four months early.
Here is a snippet from the editorial to whet your appetite:
The issue features papers presented at the International Conference on Information and Communications Technology in Education (ICICTE). ICICTE addresses the many challenges and new directions presented by technological innovations in educational settings. Each year academic and professional participants at ICICTE gain an excellent overview of current thinking and practices in applications of technology to education. This was exemplified in 2007 by our keynote speaker Professor Rob Koper of the Open University of the Netherlands, who gave an overview the €10,000,000 pan European TenCompetence project (see Stefanov and Koper, 2007): “The aim of the project is to build a European Network for Lifelong Competence Development by establishing a technical and organizational infrastructure for lifelong competence development. The infrastructure will use open-source, standards-based, sustainable and innovative technology to support the lifelong development of competences by any citizen, team or organization” (TenCompetence, 2007, online). Although TenCompetence is a European Union funded project, it is important that contributions from the accession countries and beyond Europe have been included in the research and dissemination agenda. For example Richards, Donkers, Hatala and Dufresne (2007) have contributed work undertaken in Canada. Such cosmopolitanism shows that the educational technology community is taking strides towards the internationalist goals set by Papandreou at ICICTE in 2006 and practical steps toward global interoperability.
Informal discussions of Koper’s keynote throughout the conference noted that TenCompetence seems to be as concerned with fostering international networks as it is about pioneering new educational technologies. Such multi-cultural activity is also a hallmark of ICICTE. While the conferences are based in Greece, they are co-organized between local universities and the University College of the Fraser Valley in Canada. Throughout the conference delegates can find themselves networking with colleagues from all five continents. Conspicuously, despite the travel costs, Australasian delegates have loyally attended year after year; making sizable contributions to the both academic and social life of the conference. Indeed, it is fair to say that ICICTE just would not be ICICTE without them. So the organizers thought it appropriate to acknowledge the dedication of the Australasian contingent by selecting papers from the 2007 event that offer overseas readers a snapshot of current developments in Australasian e-learning and flexible education. This is a timely decision as Australasian institutions have made considerable inroads into Asian higher education and are now turning their gaze towards China. As a forthcoming themed issue of this journal will attest, the Chinese market for e-learning is set to grow considerably and China’s choice of platforms and partners could decisively affect international standards and technologies. With its new Mandarin speaking prime minister taking a public interest in educational technology, Australia is particularly well positioned to enter this emerging market. Competitors and potential collaborators are therefore advised to follow developments in Australasian e-learning closely.
The first issue of the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business has just gone online. It provides broad coverage of all aspects of project management, from strategy to planning and implementation. With a unique and practical focus on project management in business, it is an essential resource for all those involved in the field of project management. I think that e-learning could stand a robust infusion of project management knowledge!I have started work a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems in the School of Computer and Information Science at the University of South Australia.today! I am based at the City West Campus and my new e-mail is Simon.Shurville at unisa.edu.au. My home page at Uni Sa is http://people.unisa.edu.au/Simon.Shurville. I am program director of Business Information Management and Library Information Management.
I flew in from Perth a couple of weeks ago to start the reno on our house in Brighton. I have lifted a lot of dusty carpet so far. Marian flew over a few days later and has been busy stripping wall paper. The reno is going well and our furniture from Brighton, Enfgland and Fremantle arrived this morning. Fairly soon we will be able to relax in the pool and watch Skippy the cat slide on our newly polished floors into our newly painted walls. Bliss.
The call is now open for papers for plenary sessions examining the theoretical and practical applications of technology in education at all levels in both the public and private sectors. All proposals and papers are peer reviewed by members of the Scientific Committee. If you wish to present at ICICTE 2008 and have your paper published in the conference proceedings submit your proposal to Nancy Pyrini at nancypyrini@icicte.org by February 21, 2008. Papers from the conference will be published in special issues of Campus-Wide Information Systems (here is the 2007 issue), the UCFV Research Review and Interactive Learning Environments. Conference papers will be considered by each publication’s editorial board and authors will be invited to submit journal-length articles.
Proposals should be in MS Word and include title, purpose/objective section, and a 250–300 word summary. Papers must be suitable for a 15–20 minute presentation at a plenary session. Please include name, position and department, institution and contact information (mail, phone, fax and e-mail).Each proposal will be double-blind reviewed by the Scientific Committee. Notification on whether the proposal has been accepted will be sent by February 28, 2008.Completed manuscripts must be submitted by April 15, 2008 and will be double-blind peer reviewed by the Scientific Committee. Comments will be forwarded to the authors, and final manuscripts, with editorial changes, must be received by May 26, 2008.
Papers presented at the conference will be published in the proceedings under the title Information Communication Technologies in Education. Papers received after the deadline will not be included in the proceedings.Papers must not exceed 10 pages (including abstract, references, tables, figures and diagrams). Papers exceeding the stated limits will be returned to the authors for revision. Please consult the Manuscript Preparation Guidelines at the conference web site before submitting the final version of your paper.
"Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake" - Bob Dylan
My old mate Matthew Knight recently turned me on to some interesting work by Philosopher Andy Clark (who taught us both back in the day) and David Chalmers. The extended mind is a radical extension to situated cognition that sprang from Clark’s research into cognition (Clark, 1989) and Chalmers’ (1996) research into consciousness. It postulates an “active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes” (Clark and Chalmers, 2003, p 7) to the extent that “if, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process. Cognitive processes ain't (all) in the head!” (ibid, p 10).
This year, ICICTE 2008, the best and most intimate e-learning conference in the history of civilisation, will be held on July 10-12 in Kanoni, Corfu (see below).
Papers from the conference will be published in special issues of Campus-Wide Information Systems (here is the 2007 issue), the UCFV Research Review and Interactive Learning Environments. Conference papers will be considered by each publication’s editorial board and authors will be invited to submit journal-length articles.
If you have not been to ICICTE before then, as the Aussies say, 'give it a go' --- you are in for a treat!
Heroic action by new web master Ġorġ Mallia means that ICICTE 2008 has a handsome new web site.
Most of what follows is cribbed from Gorg's site. Hey Gorg, I'm sure there will be a beer in it for you in Corfu!
The conference
ICICTE 2008 will seek to address the many challenges and new directions presented by technological innovations in educational settings. Following in the tradition of previous ICICTE conferences, ICICTE 2008 will bring together an international community of scholars and practitioners in a forum setting. Opportunities for discussion on current thinking and practices in applications of technology to education are enhanced by the limited number of participants. The key note will be professor Gilly Salmon. Conference themes include:
This year the conference will be held at the Corfu Holiday Palace Hotel in Kanoni, Corfu. Located in Kanoni, 4km from Corfu town and 4 km from the airport, the location of the hotel is one of outstanding beauty with elevated panoramic views of the Ionian sea.
On one side overlooking the picturesque Convent of our Lady Vlacherna, the fully renovated hotel is the only one with a direct view to the famous “Mouse island”, the trademark of Corfu island. On the other side, a beautiful view of Lake Halikiopoulou and distant hills.
Organizers
ICICTE is lead by Professor Ken Fernstrom (above right) the Canadian with the best jazz appreciation out of B.C. if you are ever stuck in the Greek countryside without a ride home, Ken is your man. The conference director is Nancy Pyrini (above right) who could manage a moonshot for half what NASA would charge. Nicole Levinsky is the conference registra (somewhere above on the left!). Nicole could get mankind to Mars and then fish for salmon to feed everyone once we got there!
P.S. I am proud as punch to be named a friend of the conference alongside Ġorġ Mallia (a talented cartoonist) and Marcie Boucouvalas.
I came across The Design-Based Research Collective through Jan Herrington's excellent keynote at AARE 2007. They are "... a small group of researchers who engage in design-based research, often in technology enhanced learning environments. In our own work, we have come to recognize the need to better define the nature, methods, and outcomes of design-based research so that we may more easily share our own research and build on the work of others." You can read more at their excellent web site. You can read more about design-based research, "which blends empirical educational research with the theory-driven design of learning environments, [and] is an important methodology for understanding how, when, and why educational innovations work in practice." in their paper "Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry".
I have been offered and have accepted a post as a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems in the School of Computer and Information Science at the University of South Australia. Marian and I love Adelaide and I am chuffed to bits to be working for Uni S.A. It looks like I am going to be leading a program this year, which is really exciting. 
I don’t usually write about music here but I am making an exception as I have been astounded by two comeback albums. Spookily, as Dame Edna would say, they are both by singers called Willams.
Dar Williams was a favorite of mine back in the mid 90s. She sang great folk pop that invariably made me feel glad to be alive and had me jumping from Brighton pier into the English channel on hot days. Change is inevitable though and her last album ‘The Green World’ dragged a lot. So I grew up and lost interest. The other day I was shopping for second hand cds in Fremantle and came across her 2005 album ‘My Better Self’. It features Marshall (oh cruel world why was he never mega) Crenshaw on vocals and guitar and an astounding version of Neil Young’s ‘Everybody Knows this is Nowhere’. There is also a surprisingly good version of ‘Comfortably Numb’ featuring Ani DiFranco. It is not often that I play imaginary mandolin to folk pop and wake up the cat but there is a time and a place and this album is definitely it.
I thought I gave up on Lucinda Williams a few years ago when she changed styles from narrative to chant. In fact I sold her last two albums before I left the UK. So I was surprise d to find myself buying a second hand copy of her new album ‘West’. Genius. Yes sheer wanton Genius with 300 kinds of hot sauce to spare. The album is worth buying for the opening track ‘Are You OK?’ and it builds and builds. It is not often I lift an imaginary bourbon glass in an equally imaginary after hours Antone’s in Austin but there is a time and a place and this album is definitely it.
The other unexpected soundtrack to my back yard this summer is a compilation by the Flamin Groovies which just oozes the grease like the cheese from a chilli dog. Go buy some mirrored aviators and 'Shake Some Action'!
"Through the mirror of my mind ... Time after time ... I see reflections of you and me" - Holland, Dozier, Holland
Emerald are now publishing a new journal called the International Journal of Project Management in Business. The journal is edited by Dr Derek Walker who is Professor of Project Management at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. I am very proud to be on the editorial board.
Derek describes the journal’s mission as follows “The International Journal of Managing Projects in Business (IJMPiB) is a peer reviewed journal that is focussed upon stimulating improved project management (PM) knowledge generation, transfer and practice. Its content will appeal to reflective PM practitioners and academics interested in current PM theory and leading edge empirical work. PM has moved beyond being a narrow technical speciality to a way of conducting business—be that for commercial enterprises, not-for-profit organisations or for government and administrative support agencies (Crawford, Morris, Thomas and Winter, 2006). The journal embraces the study of how these organisation currently manage portfolios, programs and projects, and more importantly it offers insights into how PM may be better undertaken to generate value (in its broadest sense) to stakeholders who should gain benefit from project outcomes. … This journal arose out of recognition of the need to extend available sources of published peer-reviewed project management theory and practice. Two well established and well respected journals (the International Journal of Project Management and the Journal of Project Management) are widely available to academics and practitioners in electronic and hardcopy form through library electronic data bases. The International Project Management Association (IPMA) also publishes an annual volume of peer reviewed papers through its member organisations e.g. the Project Management Association Finland. While these existing publications provide a current outlet for the serious review of project management theory and practice, it lags other disciplines in the general management and engineering arena where there are literally dozens of journal titles that are accepted and valued for their knowledge supporting contribution. Further, many of these journals rarely address the practical issues of how scientific, engineering, public policy, health services, and the entertainment for example, actually deliver benefit through projects. Delivering beneficial change through projects lies at the core of value generation and so the aim of this journal is to focus on how a range of industries undertakes and directs the business of project management in delivering its programs of projects within its portfolios of strategic activities. This broadens the business of managing projects well outside its traditional engineering and business ‘home’ disciplines.” (Walker, forthcoming).
I am really exited to be able to read (and be associated with) a project management journal where Argyris and Schon are foundational references.
References
"Nice one ... Geezer!" - Pulp
The promise: http://www.deezer.com/ is a *legal* site that enables you to listen to free music on demand. In theory it should enable users embed tunes on web pages. If this worked then it would be a *great* teaching and learning tool. For example, my partner recently wanted to play her students "Joe Hill" by Joan Baez as part of a lecture on the history of American unions. Theoretically she could then embed the song on the course web page so that the students could listen to it at their convenience. Students could also embed songs for in presentations and personal / shared learning environments. Yes, I know you can do this from You Tube but … see below.
In practice: Deezer generates code that you can insert onto a web site or blog. I tried (see the embedded player below) and cannot get it to work yet but I am going to investigate further as this is such a great idea. I will edit this post if I can work our what went wrong.
Reflection: Of course you can do this with You Tube but I remain skeptical about the morality of You Tube and I think we have to set a digital rights management example to our students. This is a very grey area. I would claim that the quotes and pictures used on this site are examples of ‘fair use’. But I am not a lawyer. However, I was recently struck by something one of David Mamet’s characters said on ‘The Unit’ to advise someone with a moral dilemma: “If you knew the answer, then what would it be?”. My answer is that You Tube is built on shakey ground, I realize that the law and the younger generation think otherwise.
"Turn the pages you didn't open ..." - Gene Clark
I shared an office with Susan Bull at the University of Brighton in the late 1990s. Susan, who has now moved to the University of Birmingham, is one of the most imaginative and hard working people I ever met and she has produced umpteen trillion papers on Learner Modeling and in particular Open Learner Models. I wish I had thought of open learner models myself but at least I was lucky enough to co-author a couple of papers with Susan (Bull & Shurville, 1999a, 1999b).
So what are open learner models? Over to Susan and her co-authors ...
That more or less says it all. My only comment is that open learner models herald a way for artificial intellgence in education to embrace constructivist and student-centred approaches. To my mind reflection and metacognition have to outshine passive grazing of knowledge. It would be trendy to mention that open learner models have potential in personal learning environments and connections to learner-generated contexts. As Lyn Pemberton used to tease, I'm so a la mode that I'm going to do it anyway.
Susan has just co-edited a pair of special issues of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education that introduce the state of play and current research issues in open student models. I recommend that anyone with an interest in AI and education should read the first and second parts of the introduction (Bull, Dimitrova & McCalla, G, 2007; Dimitrova, McCalla & Bull, 2007). Susan's has a paper in the issue with Judy Kay of the University of Sydney 'Student Models that Invite the Learner In: The SMILI
:-) Learner Modelling Framework' , which takes us toward a common framework to compare and contrast open learner models. Phil Agre argues that research in AI goes through neat and scruffy phases and both are necessary to make progress. It is good to see the emergence of a neat framework to tie the field of open learner models together. Now people can get on with some wild and scruffy research!
With further progress in mind, I notice from her home page that Susan has some PhD opportunities available and is particularly interested in supervising PhD students interested in open learner modelling, adaptive learning environments, mobile learning or computer-assisted language learning. If you are setting out in educational technology then having Susan as a supervisor would be a grand way to start. I certainly learned a lot sharing that office.
References
Ranulph Glanville kindly sent me a couple of very interesting columns he has written for Cybernetics and Human knowing on second order cybernetics and education. I find myself a fellow traveler on Ranulph’s shirt tails on the importance of design disciplines and practice to the construction of knowledge. I am also in agreement that studio-based learning should be imported from design education to mainstream education. I just wish that he had not thought these thoughts ten or twenty years before I did. So I recommend tracking down his columns from Cybernetics and Human Knowing on ‘A (Cybernetic) Musing: Cybernetics and Human Knowing’ and ‘A (Cybernetic) Musing: Some Examples of Cybernetically Informed Educational Practice’. The second paper features excellent descriptions of studio-based and problem-based learning.
Asher Rospigliosi and I applied elements of the studio-based approach when teaching Digital Entrepreneurship, i.e. embedding information systems within SMEs, to entrepreneurs at the University of Essex iLab. We integrated the studio-based approach with action learning / research. So there *were* consequences to the learner's actions. Working together and ‘pinching’ ideas certainly seemed to help the learners to combine experiences in tasks such as authoring change and innovation plans and thus avoid reinventing wheels. My learning from the experience was that eclecticism is important in learning design. Although leaning designers should not be dilettantes, they should select the most appropriate aspects of the available approaches. This requires staying in contact with developments in learning and teaching and being a reflective practioner. As Van Morrison sang “No guru, no method, no teacher …” but perhaps that over states the case. Some of Ranulph’s advice from A (Cybernetic) Musing: Some Examples of Cybernetically Informed Educational Practice’ quoted below can help a learning designer/teacher to remain grounded.
Further reading
You can download both columns from Ranulph's web site.
"Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name ..." - Theme from Cheers by Lance Mannion
As there is a dearth of education and training opportunities for e-learning specialists, I would like to mention a course that I always hear good things about. The University of Brighton and Sussex University have joined forces to offer a Post Graduate Certificate in E-Learning Design. The following information is quoted from the course web site at Sussex:
“The PGCert in E-Learning Design is a part-time programme aimed at those working in or intending to work in the e-learning industry. Two potential awards are available: a 60 credit and a 90 credit version. The 60-credit PGCert in E-Learning Design is suitable for students with a background in education, multimedia or computing. This programme provides a means of augmenting their skillsets to fit the needs of the e-learning industry. For those already working in the industry, the 90 credit PGCert in E-Learning Design (Professional Practice) offers opportunities to strengthen and expand existing knowledge and skills, and to demonstrate proficiency in a professional setting. Areas covered by the programme include e-learning design, learning technologies, project management, and theories of learning (60 and 90 credit versions). The full 90 credit PGCert in E-Learning Design (Professional Practice) provides an opportunity to develop effective reflective practice in the workplace. Successful graduates from either version may choose to use credits gained in this course towards an MSc in Learning Technologies offered by the University of Brighton.” (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/publications/pgrad2007/areasofstudy/Computing,%20artificial%20intelligence%20and%20IT/16376)
The Brighton MSc offers the following topics: User-centred Design and Development, Research Design and Evaluation, Project Management, New Media Applications Development, Theories of Learninge, Learning Development, and a Major Project.
As an ex-employee and graduate of both universities I know many of those involved in teaching these courses and can thus highly recommend them. If you are looking for a qualification in E-Learning then these are great courses to investigate. Of course if I have my way they will soon face some additional competition from down under ...
Should we conceptualize learners as tourists in zoologicalgardens curated by educators or as explorers in open environments fraught with danger and reward? In other words do we see ourseves as Johnny Morris or our learners as Steve Irwin?
Rose Luckin and her colleagues Jon Akass, John Cook, Peter Day, Nigel Ecclesfield, Fred Garnett, Matt Gould, Tom Hamilton, Andrew Whitworth have published some interesting and much needed theoretical work to frame discussions of education and web 2.0 grounded in ideas of self-organization and ecology. I think they would opt for Steve Irwin!
In 'Learner-Generated Contexts: Sustainable Learning Pathways Through Open Content' they write: "The proposal of a Learner Generated Context arose initially from the suggestion that an educational context can be described as a learner-centric ecology of resources and that a learner-generated context is one in which a user or group of users collaboratively marshal the available resources to create an ecology that meets their needs (see Luckin, R. 2006; Luckin, du Boulay, Smith, Underwood, Fitzpatrick, Holmberg, Kerawalla, Tunley, Brewster & Pearce, 2005; Luckin, Shurville & Browne, 2007 for more detail on the learnercentric ecology of resources framework and for more detailed examples). Through the discussions of the Learner Generated Context group fresh perspectives on thiscontention have developed. For example, both spatial and process issues emerge. These could be described as Changing the learning context and generating learning spaces, and Changing the learning process and the learning context.” (Luckin et al, 2007 p 90).
Elsewhere writing as the The Learner Generated Contexts Group, Luckin et al provide a nice pithy definition: "“A Learner Generated Context can be defined as a context created by people interacting together with a common, self-defined or negotiated learning goal. The key aspect of Learner Generated Contexts is that they are generated through the enterprise of those who would previously have been consumers in a context created for them." You can find out more and add to discussion at the wiki.
I think that the concept of a Learner-Generated Context helps us to start thinking about personal learning environments from a learning and teaching perspective rather than a purely technical one. Supporting approaches like mode two, participative action learning / research and enquiry-based learning with web 2.0 will require its own ecology of models and frameworks. For example, second order cybernetics becomes a useful tool to study and reflect upon Learner-Generated Contexts once we start to view learners as conscious modelers of their own learnings and learning environments. As educators we can teach reflective practice, perhaps using some form of scaffolding, to help learners to become second order cyberneticians in their own right.
Turning to materiality, I think that the ecological metaphor helps to make it clear that virtual learning environments, personal learning environments and other forms of technology mediated learning are part of a wider and more tangible world of books, museums and coffee bar conversations etc that learners inhabit and animate. Sometimes ‘hidden learning environments’ are only hiding in plain sight. Perhaps learning technologisits should get out more ...
Further reading: You can download a great powerpoint on learner-generated contexts. A smart addition to anyone's ecology.
References
Further reading
Academics with experience of e-learning in the Chinese context are invited to contribute case studies, conceptual papers, research papers, technical papers and viewpoint papers on the above topics for peer review.
The envisaged timeline is as follows:Authors need to send a copy of their manuscripts in the form of an MS Word file attached to an email to the following:
Dr. Qiyun Wang
Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University
1 Nanyang Walk
Singapore 637616
Tel: 65-67903267
Fax: 65-68968038
E-mail: qiyun.wang@nie.edu.sg
And cc to:
Prof. Zhiting Zhu
Distance Education College
East China Normal University
3663 North Zhongshan Road,
Shanghai, China
Email: mailto:ztzhu@dec.ecnu.edu.cn
I think that action learning and action research are natural partners to web 2.0. I have also found action learning/research to be really useful for mode two knowledge production in higher education. So here is a small introduction for people who have not come across the terms.
Action learning is a radical style of collaborative learning defined by The International Foundation for Action Learning as follows:
“Action learning involves working on real problems, focusing on learning and actually implementing solutions. It is a form of learning by doing that provides a well-tried method of accelerating learning to enable people to handle difficult situations more effectively.”[http://www.ifal.org.uk/nutshell.html.]
While that definition describes the technical side of action learning, its inventor Professor Revans interwove philosophical/religious threads into the practice. The following quote from an interview with Revans illustrates some of these threads:
“Though it runs against conventional educational wisdom, action learning's ancestry is ancient. Revans peppers his papers and conversation with an array of inspirations - from Buddhism to the bible. He can trace his advocacy of action learning to the sinking of the Titanic when he was nearing his fifth birthday. His father was a navel architect who was on the enquiry into disaster. ‘He said to me years later that what the enquiry proved was that we must train people in such a way that they understand the difference between cleverness and wisdom’[http://www.tafe.sa.edu.au/institutes/para/ftf/facnet/Article%202.doc]”.
The group or the society rather than the individual, one can argue, is the appropriate yardstick for wisdom. Hence a social practice like action learning encourages the individual to accommodate and respond to the group’s wisdom. And vice versa.
Wadsworth has a nice definition of Participatory Action Research, which can be found on Wikipedia: "Essentially Participatory Action Research (PAR) is research which involves all relevant parties in actively examining together current action (which they experience as problematic) in order to change and improve it. They do this by critically reflecting on the historical, political, cultural, economic, geographic and other contexts which make sense of it. … Participatory action research is not just research which is hoped will be followed by action. It is action which is researched, changed and re-researched, within the research process by participants. Nor is it simply an exotic variant of consultation. Instead, it aims to be active co-research, by and for those to be helped. Nor can it be used by one group of people to get another group of people to do what is thought best for them - whether that is to implement a central policy or an organisational or service change. Instead it tries to be a genuinely democratic or non-coercive process whereby those to be helped, determine the purposes and outcomes of their own inquiry." (Wadsworth, 1998).
Gibbons et al (1995) have described a new way in which research is being conducted in the global economy and dubbed this ‘mode two’. Mode two research carries the following hallmarks: “it is trans-disciplinary, problem-oriented, application-based, team-driven, multi-site, partnership-based, socially useful, heterogeneous, quality controlled, reflective and responsive, and less hierarchical than disciplinary knowledge of the kind produced in universities” (Jansen, 2000 p113). Mode two can be contrasted to mode one, which is the traditional approach that universities—and other academies—have taken to research.
In mode one, problems are set and solved in a context governed by the interests of a largely academic community. The primary customers are the researcher herself and her community of practice. Other customers may come to use the research for their own purposes e.g. industry, government or society generally.
In mode two, research is carried out within the wider community. It is intended to be useful to someone other than the practitioner and his or her community of practice. Likely customers include industry, government or society in general.
Mode two knowledge production has been widely embraced as a burning issue for academic debate and an ingredient for policy makers (c.f. Clark 1998, Kraak 2000, Starkey 2001). Some major foreseeable consequences of this dash for mode two should include:
I am impressed by the Australian government's attitude that research needs to be meaningful to the community and disseminated in formats other than academic journals. Of course some research must remain ‘pure’ and mode one and should be published in refereed journals. I just like the idea of a bit of biodiversity in what constitutes research.
Asher Rospigliosi and I used action learning and action research in a blended mode 2 environment when we taught courses in 'digital entrepreneurship' at City University (Shurville, Rospigliosi and Scott, 2005). These courses applied action learning and research to authentic work-based e-business projects. They were accredited by and delivered from City University’s Department of Continuing Professional Development and built upon previous undergraduate level courses developed and externally examined by the authors. Bernard Scott was the external examiner.
To compete in increasingly hostile climates, entrepreneurs need to implement innovative yet realistic solutions that maximize productivity, broaden reach, manage customer relationships and control costs. In larger firms such competitive advantage is often won by incorporating Information Systems (IS) for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Knowledge Management (KM). Our recent experience of intervening with entrepreneurs in SMEs indicates that, given appropriate support and training, implementing such technologies is becoming feasible for SMEs. For example, one learner recently use the course to upgraded a Chamber of Law’s web site from an information source to an IS with full CRM capability. Another transformed an office leasing company into a provider of virtual office services by introducing call centre services using voice over IP integrated with an online KM system.
Personal development was core curriculum throughout the courses. The curriculum also included a range of businesses topics, such as change and innovation management, as well as traditional IT related topics, such as rapid prototyping and project management. Formative assessment was via a sequence of mini-project reports, presentations and peer critiquing. Summative assessment was via a substantial report on a work-based project where evidence of critical thinking and reflection were key assessment criteria.
During each module, work-based reflective learning was assured because the learners authored personal development plans, learning journals, project plans and other artifacts. These were peer-critiqued by members of the action learning sets and checked by the tutors to provide business-focused reality-checks. The assessment was a mixture of radical ‘critique and be critiqued’ and traditional ‘submit and mark’. Learners first delivered a presentation on their progress for each module. Next they placed this presentation online where it was peer critiqued.
Passing a module required writing a minimum of two substantial peer critiques. Each assessment had broad guidelines about appropriateness and format with the details being negotiated between tutor and learner. Learners received formative feedback on each assignment before the assignments were resubmitted together in the form of a plan or research report. In the summative assessment the tutors utilized academic and business expertise to formally accredit the learners’ construction of knowledge and their personal development.
The Certificate and Diploma have provided around a hundred entrepreneurs with access to education and training in both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills associated with embedding IS in SMEs. The outcomes indicate that taking work experience into account to provide relatively open access to blended learning supported M-level courses is rewarded by ample evidence of critical thinking, personal reflection and business transformation. In our experience, entrepreneurs can be highly motivated by an M-level qualification and will often produce reports of genuine work-based projects that surpass our assessment criteria.
When we taught these courses we were 'faking' web 2.0 using an institutional virtual learning environment. I think we might have engaged the learners more with social networking software like Elgg. Asher is busy editing a special issue of Campus-Wide Information Systems on long term use of Elgg at the University of Brighton. Always more to do and more to be done ...
ReferencesHenk Eijkman added the following, which I agree with completely (so much so that I expanded the original post):
I really like the Action Learning dimension but in the extension to our ICICTE 2007 paper (Eijkman & Clarke) I'm proposing what is in effect an extension of this idea as well as another dimension linked to the pedagogy 2.0 concept. First, in keeping with the participatory ideal of Web 2.0 I use a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach. I have in fact used this to teach a unit in UNE's Grad Cert. in Higher Education last semester. PAR predates action learning (in fact one could apply nearly the same definition) is widely used in a range of community and educational settings. it takes action learning further by specifically focusing on the participative dimension - a key design feature of Web 2.0.
Personally I think PAR is Mode Two knowledge production per excellence.Also, and again following the ICICTE 2007 paper (Eijkman & Clarke) I would argue that Web 2.0 invites a social constructionist reframing of learning in which academics are no longer the guardians of second order (abstracted) knowledges.
Web 2.0 takes us irrevocably into transcultural learning because it enables individuals anywhere to easily form rich and decentralised social networks based on common interests and to collaboratively create, distribute, share and recreate content from multiple sources. While this does not mean that we ignore psychological theories of learning, it does mean that we are invited to come to grips with a decidely social theory of learning to challenge the hegemony of eurocentric psychologism in educational thinking and practice.
To fully utilize the educational potential of Web 2.0 we need a new paradigm one that takes us beyond individual atomistic theories of learning and even beyond social constructivism. The key point is that social constructionism is based on a non-foundational epistemology which enables us to recognise and negotiate more equitably with multiple knowledge systems. The latter are ignored or overwhelmed by the dominant Western take in international higher education while our student base, and others using Web 2.0 increasingly come from culturally and linguistically diverse social groups. For instance it questions the traditional notion that academics are the arbiters of true and tested (usually meaning Western, urbanised white, middle/upper class) knowledges.
See Bruffee, K.A. (1999) Collaborative Learning. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press for an interesting introduction to social constructionism, or my PhD thesis University of Canberra (but I wouldn't inflict that lengthy tome on anyone). {co-incidentally this one of my all time favorite books - Simon}
Dr Henk Eijkman, all round good guy, ICICTE fellow traveler and non-foundationalist epistemologist supreme, has just moved to be Academic Learning and Teaching Fellow (Senior Lecturer level) at the University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy. So Henk is officially now Our Man in Canberra. Henk is also one of the authors for the upcoming special issue of Campus-Wide Information Systems on Australasian E-Learning. Congratulations Henk and good luck in the new job!
I am interested in the relationship between second-order cybernetics, learning design and design theory/methods. In the future I would like to see more programs to support reflective learning design and for these to be based on sound design theory and ethical practice (see below). LAMS is a great beginning and I would like to see further programs with repositories and technologies such as case-based reasoning to help educators make best use of existing resources. The following paragraphs are an adapted extract from a paper by Bernard Scott, Simon Shurville, Piers Maclean and Chunyu Cong, which is due for publication in Kybernates.In the discourse of second-order cybernetics, von Foerster coined the term ‘metaphysical’ to describe domains whose navigation requires participant observers to perform value judgements in selecting a problem-setting framework and a set of guiding principles (von Foerster, 1991). Such metaphysical domains contrast to more trivial domains where apparently objective agents can navigate via deterministic problem-solving methodologies (von Foerster, 1991). This distinction has a parallel in design research, where Rittel and Webber (Rittel and Webber, 1973) drew a distinction between ‘tame’ and ‘wicked’ domains. In tame domains, problems come pre-framed such that an apparently objective agent can apply deterministic procedures to solve them. In wicked domains, the framing of a problem by participant observers is a fundamental part of addressing it. Further, a genuinely wicked problem contains irreducible moral, political and professional dimensions which participant observers must take into account. This distinction between tame and wicked problems was re-invented by others working in adjacent domains, such as the systems thinkers Ackoff (1974) and Checkland (1981).
Design researchers such as Archer (1979), Broadbent and Ward (1969) and Jones (1977) appreciated the distinction between tame and wicked problems. They also recognized that the majority of design methods that had been developed during a well-funded period of research following the Second World War were aimed at tame domains (Cross, 1984). These researchers rose above these highly procedural first-generation design methods and began to develop second-generation design methods, which were structured yet acknowledged the personal values and histories of socially situated designers (for further history, see Cross, 1984). Hence, we suggest that there are many design-domains, which can, depending on the observer’s context, equally well be described as metaphysical or wicked. This is useful because it provides a cross-disciplinary bridge and enables research and praxis to be ported to and fro between cybernetics and design.
In a forthcoming paper Bernard Scott, Piers Maclean, Chunyu Cong and I argue that learning design for TEL constitutes a metaphysical domain which yields wicked problems that require second-order sensibilities and second generation design methods. We have two reasons to make this claim. First, learning design for TEL is extremely complicated. It requires “interdisciplinary collaboration across the disciplines of learning, cognition, information and communication technologies (ICT) and education, and the broader social sciences” (TLRP, 2006) and hence requires diligent professionalism (MacLean and Scott, 2006). Second, since learning design ultimately involves the education of real people, its moral, political and professional dimensions cannot be eliminated. So addressing problems in learning design for TEL in an ethical fashion (c.f. von Foerster, 1991) requires learning designers to recognise that they are socially situated, participant observers who need to tame problems with well-founded and appropriately structured methodologies.
I explored design theory and artificial intelligence in depth in my thesis (Shurville, 1998) and would like to return to the area in the context of information systems to support learning design.
The new web site