Compliance cultures and transforming the quality of e-learning

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.

The anecdotal spark will be briefly touched upon in the ASCILITE paper, the quick summary of some literature won’t be due to space constraints. But I do find it increasingly interesting/frightening/sad that these approaches are still being adopted, even with the widespread knowledge of what actually happens.

The anecdotal spark

The spark for this was a chat with a friend who was and is a Senior Lecturer within a Faculty at an Australian University. I was in a central L&T support role. My friend ins one of the few academics who was widely respected and made significant contributions to the institution. He/she, however, was being increasingly frustrated by the “quality assurance” of L&T, especially the recent introduction of a checklist for the minimum service standard for course websites. The nature of the checklist and the technology used to implement and manage it was so pointless that the widespread academic way of dealing with the checklist was captured by this quote

I go in and tick all the boxes, the moderator goes in and ticks all the boxes and the school secretary does the same thing. It’s just like the exam check list.

This was always a bit sad because the intent – at least the published, espoused intent – of the minimum service standards was to act as a starting point for “integrating learning and teaching strategies that could influence students study habits” and to “encourage academic staff to look beyond existing practices and consider the useful features of the new LMS” (Tickle et al., 2009, p. 1042). But the outcome was no great surprise given what is said in the literature.

Some of the literature

Knight and Trowler (2000)

Likewise, attempts to improve teaching by coercion run the risk of producing compliance cultures, in which there is ‘change without change’ , while simultaneously compounding negative feelings about academic work

Harvey and Newton (2004, p. 149)

These studies reinforce the view that quality is about compliance and accountability and has, in itself, contributed little to any effective transformation of the student learning experience.

Radloff (2008, n.p.)

Staff may question the institutional approach to quality which they perceive as
compliance driven creating ‘busy work’ (Anderson 2006; Harvey & Newton 2004; Laughton 2003) with little positive impact on teaching practice and student learning experiences (Harvey 2006). They may therefore try to avoid, subvert or actively reject attempts to implement quality systems and processes. As Jones and de Saram
(2005, p. 48) note, “It is relatively easy to develop a system and sets of procedures for quality assurance and improvement on paper. To produce a situation where staff on campus ‘buy into’ this in an authentic and energetic manner is much more difficult”.

What’s really surprising is that the last author quoted here was the Pro-Vice Chancellor responsible for learning and teaching just before the checklist approach was introduced.

References

Knight, P., & Trowler, P. (2000). Department-level Cultures and the Improvement of Learning and Teaching. Studies in Higher Education, 25(1), 69–83.

Harvey, L., & Newton, J. (2004). Transforming quality evaluation. Quality in Higher Education, 10(2), 149–165.

Radloff, A. (2008). Engaging staff in quality learning and teaching: What’s a Pro Vice Chancellor to do? In Engaging Communities, Proceedings of the 31st HERDSA Annual Conference (pp. 285–296). Rotorua.

Tickle, K., Muldoon, N., & Tennent, B. (2009). Moodle and the institutional repositioning of learning and teaching at CQUniversity. Proceedings ascilite Auckland 2009 (pp. 1038–1047). Auckland, NZ.

The illusion we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future

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

The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future

Earlier in the same paragraph Kahneman writes

As Nassim Taleb pointed out in The Black Swan, our tendency to construct and believe coherent narratives of the past makes it difficult for us to accept the limits of our forecasting ability.

Later in the same chapter, Kahneman writes (my emphasis)

The main point of this chapter is not that people who attempt to predict the future make many errors; that goes without saying. The first lesson is that errors of prediction are inevitable because the world is unpredictable. The second is that high subjective confidence is not to be trusted as an indicator of accuracy (low confidence could be more informative).

The connection to e-learning and the LMS

I read this section of Kahneman’s book while at lunch. On returning I found that @sthcrft had written about “The post-LMS non-apocalypse” in part influenced by @timklapdor’s post from earlier this week Sit down we need to talk about the LMS.

In @sthcrft’s post she tries (and by her own admission somewhat fails) at describing what a “post-LMS” world might look like. She’s being asked to predict the future. Which given the above (and a range of other perspectives) a silly thing to try and do. And this is my main problem with the current top-down, “management science” driven approach being adopted by universities. An approach that is predicated on the assumption that you can predict the future. But, before moving onto management, lets just focus on the management of IT systems and the LMS.

(About to paraphrase some of my own comments on @sthcrft’s post).

I have a problem with the LMS as a product model. It has serious flaws. But in seeking to replace the LMS, most universities are continuing to use the same Process model. The plan-driven process model that underpins all enterprise information systems procurement/development assumes you can predict the future. In this case, that you can predict all of the features that are ever going to be required by all of the potential users of the system.
Not going to happen.

Even though I like @timklapdor’s idea of the environment as a much better product model. It will suffer from exactly the same problems if it is developed/implemented without changing the process model and all that it brings with it. The focus on the plan-driven process model ends up with hierarchical organisations with the wrong types of people/roles with the wrong types of inter-connections between them to deal with the “post-lms” world.

This is one of the reasons why I don’t think the adoption of open source LMSes (e.g. Moodle) are going to show any significant changes in the practice of e-learning.

This is the point I will try to make in an 2012 ASCILITE paper. In that same paper, I’ll briefly touch on an alternative. For the longer version of that story – made significantly inaccessible through the requirements of academic writing – see my thesis.

Management and narratives

On a related note, a conversation with a colleague today reinforced the idea that one of the primary tasks taken on by senior managers (e.g. Vice-Chancellors) of a certain type is the creation of coherent narratives. Creating a positive narrative of the institution and its direction and accomplishments seems to have become a necessary tool to demonstrate that the senior manager has made a positive contribution to the institution. It’s a narrative destined to please all stakeholders, perhaps especially the senior managers set of potential employers.

I wonder about the cause/impact that this increasing emphasis on a coherent institutional narrative has on the belief of those within organisations that you can and should predict the future? I wonder if this type of narrative preventing organisations from preparing to fulfil Alan Kay’s quotation

The best way to predict the future is to make it

Perhaps organisations with certain types of leaders are too busy focused on predicting the future that they can’t actually make it?
Management is all about constructing coherent narratives.

On a tension with teaching designs heavy on constructive alignment

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.

Beyond my prior experience, I’m currently teaching a course designed by another academic that has been explicitly informed by constructive alignment. It’s a masters course and the design overall seems quite fitting and it it is certainly aligned. I quite like the design and think it has the potential – all other things being equal – engage the students in some quality learning. However, this alignment is also the apparent source of some tension.

The course is really very hard to get your head around. Trying to understand what a student has to do to complete the course is actually quite complicated. A part of this is the intricate, interconnection between everything. It’s just not a lecture and some assignments. Everything contributes to the end goal. This both reduces the freedom and flexibility of the students, but also means that to feel comfortable in the course they have to understand everything.

The difficulty of intricately, interconnecting all of this has also led to the design of some activities or names for activities which don’t exactly match the common definition for that name. In this case, what is called an online symposium is probably more a writers workshop or peer review session. This leads to students existing understandings creating dissonance with what is actually meant in the course.

Is a course that really tries to follow constructive alignment, destined to have to deal with a tension between difficult for students to understand and generating quality learning outcomes?

People and e-learning – limitations and an alternative

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.

People

The characteristics of the product and process of industrial e-learning (e.g. focus on long periods of stable use and the importance of efficient use of the chosen LMS) directly reinforced by and directly impact the people and roles involved with tertiary e-learning. This section briefly examines just four examples of this impact, including:

1. The negative impact of organizational hierarchies on communication and knowledge sharing.
   The logical decomposition inherent in teleological design creates numerous, often significant, organizational boundaries between the people involved with e-learning. Such boundaries are seen as inhibiting the ability to integrate knowledge across the organization. The following comments from Rossi and Luck (2011, p. 68) partially illustrate this problem:
   

   During training sessions … several people made suggestions and raised issues with the structure and use of Moodle. As these suggestions and issues were not recorded and the trainers did not feed them back to the programmers … This resulted in frustration for academic staff when teaching with Moodle for the first time as the problems were not fixed before teaching started.

2. Chinese whispers.
   Within an appropriate governance structure the need for changes to an LMS would typically need to flow up from the users to a central committee typically made up of senior leaders from the faculties, Information Technology and central learning and teaching. There would normally be some representation from teaching staff and students. The length of the communication chain for the original need becomes like a game of Chinese Whispers as it is interpreted through the experiences and biases of those involved. Leading to this impression reported by Rossi and Luck (2011, p. 69)
   

   The longer the communication chain, the less likely it was that academic users’ concerns would be communicated correctly to the people who could fix the problems.

   The cost of traversing this chain of communication means it is typically not worth the effort of raising small-scale changes.

   Not to mention killing creativity which just came through my Twitter feed thanks to @kyliebudge.

3. Mixed purposes.
   Logical decomposition also encourages different organizational units to focus on their part of the problem and lose sight of the whole picture. An IT division evaluated on its ability to minimize cost and maximize availability is not likely to want to support technologies in which it has limited expertise. This is one explanation for why the leader of an IT division would direct the IT division’s representatives on an LMS selection panel to ensure that the panel selected the LMS implemented in Java. Or a decision to use the latest version of the Oracle DBMS – the DBMS supported by the IT division – to support the new Moodle installation even though it hasn’t been tested with Moodle and best practice advice is to avoid Oracle. A decision that leads to weeks at the start of the “go live” term where Moodle is largely unavailable.
4. The perils of senior leadership.
   Having the support and engagement of a senior leader at an institution is often seen as a critical success factor for an LMS implementation. But when the successful completion of the project is tied to the leader’s progression within the leadership hierarchy it can create the situation where the project will be deemed a success, regardless of the outcome.

As an alternative, the Webfuse system relied on a multi-skilled, integrated development and support team. This meant that the small team was responsible for training, helpdesk support, and systems development. The helpdesk person handling the user’s problem was typically also a Webfuse developer who was empowered to make small changes without formal governance approval. Behrens (2009, p. 127) quotes a manager in CQU’s IT division describing the types of changes made to Webfuse as “not even on the priority radar” due to traditional IT management techniques. The developers were also located within the faculty, so they also interacted with academic staff in the corridors and the staff room. This context created an approach to the support of an e-learning system with all the hallmarks of a social constructivist, situated cognition, or community of practice. The type of collaborative and supportive environment identified by Tickle et al (2009) in which academics learn through attempts to solve genuine educational problems, rather than being shown how to adapt their needs to the constraints of the LMS.

References

Behrens, S. (2009). Shadow systems: the good, the bad and the ugly. Communications of the ACM, 52(2), 124-129.

Rossi, D., & Luck, J. (2011). Wrestling, wrangling and reaping: An exploration of educational practice and the transference of academic knowledge and skill in online learning contexts. Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development, 8(1), 60-75. Retrieved from http://www.sleid.cqu.edu.au/include/getdoc.php?id=1122&article=391&mode=pdf

Tickle, K., Muldoon, N., & Tennent, B. (2009). Moodle and the institutional repositioning of learning and teaching at CQUniversity. Auckland, NZ. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/tickle.pdf

Introducing the alternative

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.

As all this is meant to go into an academic paper, the following starts with a discussion about “research methods” before moving onto describing some of the reasons why this alternative approach might have some merit.

As with the prior posts, this is all still first draft stuff.

Research methods and limitations

From the initial stages of its design the Webfuse system was intended to be a vehicle for both practice (it hosted over 3000 course sites from 1997-2009) and research. Underpinning the evolution of Webfuse was an on-going process of cycle action research that sought to continually improve the system through insights from theory and observation of use. This commenced in 1996 and continued, at varying levels of intensity, through to 2009 when the system ceased directly supporting e-learning. This work has contributed in varying ways to over 25 peer-reviewed publications. Webfuse has also been studied by other researchers investigating institutional adoption of e-learning systems (Danaher, Luck, & McConachie, 2005) and shadow systems in the context of ERP implementation (Behrens, 2009; Behrens & Sedera, 2004).

Starting in 2001 the design of Webuse became the focus of a PhD thesis (Jones, 2011) that made two contributions towards understanding e-learning implementation within universities: the Ps Framework and an Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT). The Ps Framework arose out of an analysis of existing e-learning implementation practices and as a tool to enable the comparison of alternate approaches (Jones, Vallack, & Fitzgerald-Hood, 2008). The formulated ISDT – An ISDT for emergent university e-learning systems –offers guidance for e-learning implementation that brings a number of proposed advantages over industrial e-learing. These contributions to knowledge arose from an action research process that combined broad theoretical knowledge – the principles of the ISDT are supported by insights from a range of kernel theories – with empirical evidence arising from the design and support of a successful e-learning system. Rather than present the complete ISDT – due primarily to space constraints – this paper focuses on how three important components of e-learning can be re-conceptualised through the principles of the ISDT.

The ISDT – and the sub-set of principles presented in this paper – seek to provide theoretical guidance about how to develop and support information systems for university e-learning that are capable of responding to the dominant characteristics (diversity, uncertainty and rapid change) of university e-learning. This is achieved through a combination of product (principles of form and function) and process (principles of implementation) that focus on developing a deep and evolving understanding of the context and use of e-learning. It is through being able to use that understanding to make rapid changes to the system, which ultimately encourages and enables adoption and on-going adaptation. It suggests that any instantiation built following the ISDT will support e-learning in a way that: is specific to the institutional context; results in greater quality, quantity and variety of adoption; and, improves the differentiation and competitive advantage of the host institution.

As with all research, the study described within this study has a number of limitations that should be kept in mind when considering its findings. Through its use of action research, this work suffers the same limitations, to varying degrees, of all action research. Baskerville and Wood-Harper (1996) identify these limitations as: (1) lack of impartiality of the researcher; (2) lack of discipline; (3) mistaken for consulting; and (4) context-dependency leading to difficulty of generalizing findings. These limitations have been addressed within this study through a variety of means including: a history of peer-reviewed publications throughout the process; use of objective data sources; the generation of theory; and, an on-going process of testing. Consequently the resulting ISDT and the principles described here have not been “proven”. This was not the aim of this work. Instead, the intent was to gather sufficient empirical and theoretical support to build and propose a coherent and useful alternative to industrial e-learning. The question of proof and further testing of the ISDT in similar and different contexts provides – as in all research aiming to generate theory – an avenue for future research.

On the value of Webfuse

This section aims to show that there is some value in considering Webfuse. It seeks to summarise the empirical support for the ISDT and the principles described here by presenting evidence that the development of Webfuse led to a range of features specific to the institution and to greater levels of adoption. It is important to note that from 1997 through 2005 Webfuse was funded and controlled by one of five faculties at CQUniversity. Webfuse did not become a system controlled by a central IT division until 2005/2006 as a result of organizational restructures. During the life-span of Webfuse CQU adopted three different official, institutional LMS: WebCT (1999), Blackboard (2004), and Moodle (2010).

Specific to the context

During the period from 1999 through 2002 the “Webfuse faculty” saw a significant increase in the complexity of its teaching model including the addition of numerous international campuses situated within capital cities and a doubling in student numbers, primarily through full-fee paying overseas students. By 2002, the “Webfuse faculty” was teaching 30% of all students at the University. Due to the significant increased in complexity of teaching in this context, a range of teaching management and support services were integrated into Webfuse including: staff and student “portals”, an online assignment submission and management system, a results upload application, an informal review of grade system, a timetable generator, student photo gallery, academic misconduct database, email merge facility, and assignment extension systems.

The value of these systems to the faculty is illustrated by this quote from the Faculty annual report for 2003 cited by Danaher, Luck & McConachie (2005, p. 39)

[t]he best thing about teaching and learning in this faculty in 2003 would be the development of technologically progressive academic information systems that provide better service to our students and staff and make our teaching more effective. Webfuse and MyInfocom development has greatly assisted staff to cope with the complexities of delivering courses across a large multi-site operation.

By 2003 the faculties not using Webfuse were actively negotiating to enable their staff to have access to the services. In 2009 alone, over 12,000 students and 1100 staff made use of these services. Even though no longer officially supported, it is a few of these services that continue to be used by the university in the middle of 2012.

Quotes from staff using the Webfuse systems reported in various publications (Behrens, 2009; Behrens, Jamieson, Jones, & Cranston, 2005; Jones, Cranston, Behrens, & Jamieson, 2005) also provide some insights into how well Webfuse supported the specific context at CQUni.

my positive experience with other Infocom systems gives me confidence that OASIS would be no different. The systems team have a very good track record that inspires confidence

The key to easy use of OASIS is that it is not a off the shelf product that is sooooo generic that it has lost its way as a course delivery tool.

I remember talking to [a Webfuse developer] and saying how I was having these problems with uploading our final results into [the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system] for the faculty. He basically said, “No problem, we can get our system to handle that”…and ‘Hey presto!’ there was this new piece of functionality added to the system … You felt really involved … You didn’t feel as though you had to jump through hoops to get something done.

Beyond context specific systems supporting the management of learning and teaching, Webfuse also included a number of context specific learning and teaching innovations. A short list of examples includes:

• the course barometer;
  Based on an innovation (Svensson, Andersson, Gadd, & Johnsson, 1999) seen at a conference the barometer was designed to provide students a simple, anonymous method for providing informal, formative feedback about a course (Jones, 2002). Initially intended only for the authors courses, the barometer became a required part of all Webfuse course sites from 2001 through 2005. In 2007/2008 the barometers were used as part of a whole of institution attempt to encourage formative feedback in both Webfuse and Blackboard.
• Blog Aggregation Management (BAM); and
  BAM allowed students to create individual, externally hosted web-logs (blog) and use them as reflective journals. Students registered their external blog with BAM, which then mirrored all of the students’ blog posts on an institutional server and provided a management and marking interface for teaching staff. Created by the author for use in his own teaching in 2006, BAM was subsequently used in 26 course offerings by 2050+ students and ported to Moodle as BIM (Jones & Luck, 2009). In reviewing BAM, the ELI guide to blogging (Coghlan et al., 2007) identified as
  One of the most compelling aspects of the project was the simple way it married Web 2.0 applications with institutional systems. This approach has the potential to give institutional teaching and learning systems greater efficacy and agility by making use of the many free or inexpensive—but useful—tools like blogs proliferating on the Internet and to liberate institutional computing staff and resources for other efforts.
• A Web 2.0 course site.
  While it looked like a normal course website, none of the functionality – including discussion, wiki, blog, portfolio and resource sharing – was implemented by Webfuse. Instead, freely available and externally hosted Web 2.0 tools and services provided all of the functionality. For example, each student had a portfolio and a weblog provided by the site http://redbubble.com. The content of the default course site was populated by using BAM to aggregate RSS feeds (generated by the external tools) which were then parsed and displayed by Javascript functions within the course site pages. Typically students and staff did not visit the default course site, as they could access all content by using a course OPML file and an appropriate reader application.

Even within the constraints placed on the development of Webfuse it was able to develop an array of e-learning applications that are either not present in industrial LMSes, were added much later than the Webfuse services, or had significantly reduced functionality.

Greater levels of adoption

Encouraging staff adoption of the Webfuse system was one of the main issues raised in the original Webfuse paper (Jones & Buchanan, 1996). Difficulties in encouraging high levels of quality use of e-learning within universities has remained a theme throughout the literature. Initial use of Webfuse in 1997 and 1998 was not all that successful in achieving that goal, with only five – including the designer of Webfuse who made 50% of all edits using the system – of 60 academic staff making any significant use of Webfuse by early 1999 (Jones & Lynch, 1999). These limitations were addressed from 1999 onwards by a range of changes to the system, how it was supported and the organizational context. The following illustrates the success of these changes by comparing Webfuse adoption with that of the official LMS (WebCT 1999-2003/4; Blackboard 2004-2009) used primarily by the non-Webfuse faculties. It first examines the number of course sites and then examines feature adoption.

From 1997 Webfuse automatically created a default course site for all Faculty courses by drawing on a range of existing course related information. For the official institutional LMS course sites were typically created on request and had to be populated by the academics. By the end of 2003 – 4 years after the initial introduction of WebCT as the official institutional LMS – only 15% (141) of courses from the non-Webfuse faculties had WebCT course sites. At the same time, 100% (302) of the courses from the Webfuse faculty had course sites. Due to the need for academics to populate WebCT and Blackboard courses sites, the presence of a course website doesn’t necessarily imply use. For example, Tickle et al (2009) report that 21% of the 417 Blackboard courses being migrated to Moodle in 2010 contained no documents.

Research examining the adoption of specific categories of LMS features provides a more useful insight into LMS usage. Figures 1 through 4 use the research model proposed by Malikowski, Thompson, & Thies (2007) to compare the adoption of LMS features between Webfuse (the thick continuous lines in each figure), CQUni’s version of Blackboard (the dashed lines), and range of adoption rates found in the literature by Malikowski et al (2007) (the two dotted lines in each figure). This is done for four of the five LMS feature categories identified by Malikowski et al (2007): content transmission (Figure 1), class interaction (Figure 2), student assessment (Figure 3), and course evaluation (Figure 4).

(Click on the graphs to see large versions)

Figure 1: Adoption of content transmission features: Webfuse, Blackboard and Malikowski	Figure 2: Adoption of class interactions features: Webfuse, Blackboard and Malikowski (missing archives of most pre-2002 course mailing lists)
Figure 3: Adoption of student assessment features: Webfuse, Blackboard and Malikowski	Figure 4: Adoption of course evaluation features: Webfuse, Blackboard and Malikowski

The Webfuse usage data included in Figures 1 through 4 only include actual feature use by academics or students. For example, from 2001 through 2005 100% of Webfuse courses contained a course evaluation feature called a course barometer, only courses where the course barometer was actually used by students are included in Figure 4. Similarly, all Webfuse default course sites contained content (either automatically added from existing data repositories or copied across from a previous term). Figure 1 only includes data for those Webfuse course sites where teaching staff modified or added content.

Figures 2 and 3 indicate Webfuse adoption rates of greater than 100%. This is possible because a number of Webfuse features – including the EmailMerge and online assignment submission and management applications – were being used in course sites hosted on Blackboard. Webfuse was seen as providing services that Blackboard did not provide, or that were significantly better than what Blackboard did provide. Similarly, the spike in Webfuse course evaluation feature adoption in 2008 to 51.6% is due to a CQU wide push to improve formative feedback across all courses that relied on the Webfuse course barometer feature.

Excluding use by non-Webfuse courses and focusing on the time period 2003-2006, Figures 2 and 3 show that adoption of Webfuse class interaction and student assessment features significantly higher than the equivalent Blackboard features at CQU. It is also significantly higher than the adoption rates found by Malikowski et al (2007) in the broader literature. It also shows adoption rates that appear to be somewhat higher than that found amongst 2008, Semester 1 courses at the University of Western Sydney and Griffith University by Rankine et al (2009). Though it should be noted that Rankine et al (2009) used different sampling and feature categorization strategies that make this comparison tentative.

References

Behrens, S. (2009). Shadow systems: the good, the bad and the ugly. Communications of the ACM, 52(2), 124-129.

Behrens, S., Jamieson, K., Jones, D., & Cranston, M. (2005). Predicting system success using the Technology Acceptance Model: A case study. 16th Australasian Conference on Information Systems. Sydney. Retrieved from http://cgit.nutn.edu.tw:8080/cgit/PaperDL/tkw_090717140108.pdf

Behrens, S., & Sedera, W. (2004). Why do shadow systems exist after an ERP implementation? Lessons from a case study. In C.-P. Wei (Ed.), (pp. 1713-1726). Shanghai, China.

Coghlan, E., Crawford, J., Little, J., Lomas, C., Lombardi, M., Oblinger, D., & Windham, C. (2007). ELI Discovery Tool: Guide to Blogging. EDUCAUSE. Retrieved from http://www-cdn.educause.edu/eli/GuideToBlogging/13552

Danaher, P. A., Luck, J., & McConachie, J. (2005). The stories that documents tell: Changing technology options from Blackboard, Webfuse and the Content Management System at Central Queensland University. Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development, 2(1), 34-43.

Jones, D. (2002). Student Feedback, Anonymity, Observable Change and Course Barometers. In S. R. Philip Barker (Ed.), (pp. 884-889). Denver, Colorado: AACE.

Jones, D. (2011). An Information Systems Design Theory for E-learning. Philosophy. Australian National University. Retrieved from http://davidtjones.wordpress.com/research/phd-thesis/

Jones, D., & Buchanan, R. (1996). The design of an integrated online learning environment. In P. J. Allan Christie Beverley Vaughan (Ed.), (pp. 331-345). Adelaide.

Jones, D., Cranston, M., Behrens, S., & Jamieson, K. (2005). What makes ICT implementation successful: A case study of online assignment submission. Adelaide.

Jones, D., & Luck, J. (2009). Blog Aggregation Management: Reducing the Aggravation of Managing Student Blogging. In G. Siemns & C. Fulford (Eds.), World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2009 (pp. 398-406). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/31530

Jones, D., & Lynch, T. (1999). A Model for the Design of Web-based Systems that supports Adoption, Appropriation and Evolution. In Y. D. San Murugesan (Ed.), (pp. 47-56). Los Angeles.

Jones, D., Vallack, J., & Fitzgerald-Hood, N. (2008). The Ps Framework: Mapping the landscape for the PLEs@CQUni project. Hello! Where are you in the landscape of educational technology? ASCILITE’2008. Melbourne.

Malikowski, S., Thompson, M., & Theis, J. (2007). A model for research into course management systems: bridging technology and learning theory. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 36(2), 149-173.

Rankine, L., Stevenson, L., Malfroy, J., & Ashford-Rowe, K. (2009). Benchmarking across universities: A framework for LMS analysis. Ascilite 2009. Same places, different spaces (pp. 815-819). Auckland. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/rankine.pdf

Svensson, L., Andersson, R., Gadd, M., & Johnsson, A. (1999). Course-Barometer: Compensating for the loss of informal feedback in distance education (pp. 1612-1613). Seattle, Washington: AACE.

Tickle, K., Muldoon, N., & Tennent, B. (2009). Moodle and the institutional repositioning of learning and teaching at CQUniversity. Auckland, NZ. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/tickle.pdf

The e-learning process – limitations and an alternative

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.

Process

It has become a maxim of modern society that without objectives, without purpose there can be no success, the setting of goals and achieving them has become the essence of “success” (Introna, 1996). Many, if not most, universities follow, or at least profess to follow, a purpose driven approach to setting strategic directions (Jones, Luck, McConachie, & Danaher, 2005). This is how institutional leaders demonstrate their strategic insight, their rationality and leadership. This is not a great surprise since such purpose driven processes – labeled as teleological processes by Introna (1996) – has dominated theory and practice to such an extent that it has become ingrained. Even though the debate between the “planning school” of process thought and the “learning school” of process thought has been one of the most pervasive debates in management (Clegg, 2002).

Prior papers (Jones et al., 2005; Jones & Muldoon, 2007) have used the nine attributes of a design process formulated by Introna (1996) to argue that purpose driven processes are particularly inappropriate to the practice of tertiary e-learning. The same papers have presented and illustrated the alternative, ateleological processes. The limitations of teleological processes can be illustrated by examining Introna’s (1996) three necessary requirements for teleological design processes

1. The system’s behaviour must be relatively stable and predictable.
   As mentioned in the previous section, stability and predictability do not sound like appropriate adjectives for e-learning, especially into the future. Especially given the popular rhetoric about organizations in the present era no longer being stable, and instead are continuously adapting to shifting environments that places them in a state of constantly seeking stability while never achieving it (Truex, Baskerville, & Klein, 1999).
2. The designers must be able to manipulate the system’s behaviour directly.
   Social systems cannot be “designed” in the same way as technical systems, at best they can be indirectly influenced (Introna, 1996). Technology development and diffusion needs cooperation, however, it takes place in a competitive and conflictual atmosphere where different social groups – each with their own interpretation of the technology and the problem to be solved – are inevitably involved and seek to shape outcomes (Allen, 2000). Academics are trained not to accept propositions uncritically and subsequently cannot be expected to adopt strategies without question or adaptation (Gibbs, Habeshaw, & Yorke, 2000).
3. The designers must be able to determine accurately the goals or criteria for success.
   The uncertain and confused arena of social behaviour and autonomous human action make predetermination impossible (Truex, Baskerville et al. 2000). Allen (2000) argues that change in organizational and social setting involving technology is by nature undetermined.

For example, Tickle et al (2009) offer one description of the teleological process used to transition CQUni to the Moodle LMS in 2009. One of the institutional policies introduced as part of this process was the adoption of Minimum Service Standards for course delivery (Tickle et al., 2009, p. 1047). Intended to act as a starting point for “integrating learning and teaching strategies that could influence students study habits” and to “encourage academic staff to look beyond existing practices and consider the useful features of the new LMS” (Tickle et al., 2009, p. 1042). In order to assure the quality of this process a web-based checklist was implemented in another institutional system with the expectation that the course coordinator and moderator would actively check the course site met the minimum standards. A senior lecturer widely recognized as a quality teacher described the process for dealing with the minimum standards checklist as

I go in and tick all the boxes, the moderator goes in and ticks all the boxes and the school secretary does the same thing. It’s just like the exam check list.

The minimum standards checklist was removed in 2011.

A teleological process is not interested in learning and changing, only in achieving the established purpose. The philosophical assumptions of teleological processes – modernism and rationality – are in direct contradiction to views of learning meant to underpin the best learning and teaching. Rossi and Luck (2011, p. 62) talk about how “[c]onstructivist views of learning pervade contemporary educational literature, represent the dominant learning theory and are frequently associated with online learning”. Wise and Quealy (2006, p. 899) argue, however, that

while a social constructivist framework may be ideal for understanding the way people learn, it is at odds not only with the implicit instructional design agenda, but also with current university elearning governance and infrastructure.

Staff development sessions become focused on helping the institution achieve the efficient and effective use of the LMS, rather than quality learning and teaching. This leads to staff developers being “seen as the university’s ‘agent’” (Pettit, 2005, p. 253). There is a reason why Clegg (2002) references to teleological approaches as the “planning school” of process thought and the alternative ateological approach the “learning school” of process.

The ISDT abstracted from the Webfuse work includes 11 principles of implementation (i.e. process) divided into 3 groups. The first and second groupings refer more to people and will be covered in the next section. The second grouping focused explicitly on the process and was titled “An adopter-focused, emergent development process”. Webfuse achieved this by using an information systems development processes based on principles of emergent development (Truex et al., 1999) and ateleological design (Introna, 1996). The Webfuse development team was employed and located within the faculty. This allowed for a much more in-depth knowledge of the individual and organizational needs and an explicit focus on responding to those needs. The quote early in this paper about the origins of the results uploading system is indicative of this. Lastly, at its best Webfuse was able to seek a balance between teleological and ateleological processes due to a Faculty Dean who recognized the significant limitations of a top-down approach.

This process, when combined with a flexible and responsive product, better enabled the Webfuse team to work with the academics and students using the system to actively modify and construct the system in response to what was learned while using the system. It was an approach much more inline with a social constructivist philosophy.

References

Allen, J. (2000). Information systems as technological innovation. Information Technology & People, 13(3), 210-221.

Clegg, S. (2002). Management and organization paradoxes. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing.

Gibbs, G., Habeshaw, T., & Yorke, M. (2000). Institutional learning and teaching strategies in English higher education. Higher Education, 40(3), 351-372.

Introna, L. (1996). Notes on ateleological information systems development. Information Technology & People, 9(4), 20-39.

Jones, D., Luck, J., McConachie, J., & Danaher, P. A. (2005). The teleological brake on ICTs in open and distance learning. Adelaide.

Jones, D., & Muldoon, N. (2007). The teleological reason why ICTs limit choice for university learners and learning. In R. J. Atkinson, C. McBeath, S. K. A. Soong, & C. Cheers (Eds.), (pp. 450-459). Singapore. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/jones-d.pdf

Pettit, J. (2005). Conferencing and Workshops: a blend for staff development. Education, Communication & Information, 5(3), 251-263. doi:10.1080/14636310500350505

Rossi, D., & Luck, J. (2011). Wrestling, wrangling and reaping: An exploration of educational practice and the transference of academic knowledge and skill in online learning contexts. Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development, 8(1), 60-75. Retrieved from http://www.sleid.cqu.edu.au/include/getdoc.php?id=1122&article=391&mode=pdf

Tickle, K., Muldoon, N., & Tennent, B. (2009). Moodle and the institutional repositioning of learning and teaching at CQUniversity. Auckland, NZ. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/tickle.pdf

Truex, D., Baskerville, R., & Klein, H. (1999). Growing systems in emergent organizations. Communications of the ACM, 42(8), 117-123.

Wise, L., & Quealy, J. (2006). LMS Governance Project Report. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne-Monash Collaboration in Education Technologies. Retrieved from http://www.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/telars/talmet/melbmonash/media/LMSGovernanceFinalReport.pdf

The LMS Product – limitations and an alternative

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.

It’s a first draft, so comments and suggestions more than welcome.

Product

One of the defining characteristics of the industrial e-learning paradigm is the reliance on the Learning Management System (LMS) as the product for organizational e-learning. Despite the associated complexities and risks almost every university seems compelled to have an LMS (Coates, James, & Baldwin, 2005). The LMS is an example of an integrated or monolithic information system. This type of information system brings with it a set of advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, an integrated system offers cost efficiencies and other benefits through standardization but, at the same time, such systems constrain flexibility, competitiveness, autonomy and increase rigidity (B Light, Holland, & Wills, 2001; Lowe & Locke, 2008). Such systems are best suited to circumstances where there is commonality between organizations and stable requirements with low uncertainty. This does not seem to be a good description of tertiary e-learning, either over the last 10 years or the next 10. This section looks at two of the repercussions of this mismatch – 1) organizations and people must adapt to the system; and, 2) the single vendor limitation – before describing the alternate principles from the ISDT.

The first repercussion of an integrated system is captured by this comment (Sturgess & Nouwens, 2004, n.p.)

we should seek to change people’ behaviour because information technology systems are difficult to change.

This is a comment from a technical staff member participating in CQUni’s 2003 LMS selection process. This comment, rather than being isolated, captures the accepted industry best practice recommendation to implement integrated systems in their “vanilla” form because local changes are too expensive (Robey, Ross, & Boudreau, 2002). Maintaining a vanilla implementation constrains what is possible with the system, limiting change, innovation and differentiation and perhaps being a contributing factor in the poor pedagogical outcomes observed in industrial e-learning.

For example, in 2007 an instructional designer working on a redesign of a CQUni course in Nutrition informed by constructive alignment was stymied by the limitations of the Blackboard LMS. Blackboard could not support the required number of group-based discussion forums required by the new course design. Normally, with an integrated system the pedagogical approach would have to be changed to fit the confines of the system. Instead the implementation of the course site was supplemented with use of one of the Webfuse discussion forums that allowed the fulfillment of the original educational design. Academic staff teaching large first year courses using the Webfuse BAM functionality faced a similar situation when CQUni adopted Moodle. Since Moodle did not provide similar functionality these staff would be forced to change their pedagogical approach to fit the capabilities of the integrated system.

The regular forced migration to another version of an LMS is the extreme example of the organization being forced to change in response to the technology, rather than the technology fitting to the organizations needs. It is not uncommon to hear Universities being forced to adopt a new LMS because the vendor has ceased supporting their current system. The cost, complexity and disruption caused by an LMS migration contributes to this “stable systems drag” (Truex, Baskerville, & Klein, 1999) as the institution seeks a long period of “vanilla” use to recoup the cost.

Another characteristic of an integrated system is that the quality of the tools available is limited to those provided by a single vendor or community. For example, a key component of the recent disquiet about the Curt Bonk MOOC hosted within a Blackboard LMS was the poor quality of the Blackboard discussion forum (see Lane, 2012). Reservations about the quality and functionality of the Wiki and Blog tools within Moodle are also fairly common. LMS-based tools also tend not to fare well in comparisons with specialist tools. For example, when LMS-based blog tools are compared with tools like WordPress. In addition, integrated systems tend to support only one version of every given tool. Leading to the situation where users can pine for the previous version of the tool because it suited their needs better.

The ISDT formulated from the experience of developing Webfuse proposes 13 principles for the form and function of the product for emergent e-learning. These principles were divided into 3 groups:

1. Integrated and independent services.
   Rather than a system or platform, Webfuse was positioned as glue. It was used to “fuse” together widely different services and tools into an integrated whole. Webfuse was an example of a best-of-breed system, a type of system that provides more flexibility and responsiveness to contextual needs (Ben Light, Holland, & Wills, 2001). For example, when the existing discussion forum tool was seen as limited, a new discussion forum tool was selected and integrated into Webfuse. At the same time the old discussion forum tool was retained and could be used by those for whom it was an appropriate fit. While new tools could be added as required, the interface used by staff and students remained essentially the same. There was no need for expensive system migrations.
2. Adaptive and inclusive architecture.
   Almost all LMS support some form of plugin architecture where external users can develop new tools and services for the LMS. This architecture, however, is generally limited to tools specifically written for the LMS and its architecture and thereby limiting what tools can be integrated. The Webuse “architecture” was designed to support the idea of software wrappers (Sneed, 2000) enabling the inclusion of a much broader array of applications.
3. Scaffolding, context-sensitive conglomerations.
   Most e-learning tools provide a collection of configuration options that can be used in a variety of ways. Effective use of these tools requires a combination of skills from a broad array of disciplines and significant contextual knowledge that the majority of academic staff do not possess. The most obvious example is in the overall design of a course website. Webfuse had a default course site conglomeration that combined a range of institutional data sources and Webfuse tools to automatically create a course site. A key aspect of the Webfuse wrappers placed around integrated tools was the addition of institutional specific information and services. There are significant, unexplored opportunities in adding scaffolding to e-learning tools that enable distributed cognition.

Writing about the need for universities to embrace diversity Thomas (2012) talks of Procrustes who

would stretch and sever the limbs of his guests to fit the size of his bed. We, too, are continuing to stretch and shape our higher education to a particular standard to the detriment of students and society alike.

In terms of e-learning, that “particular standard” is defined by the products we are using to implement industrial e-learning.

References

Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G. (2005). A Critical Examination of the Effects of Learning Management Systems on University Teaching and Learning. Tertiary Education and Management, 11(1), 19-36. Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/r21987609l3g1h58/

Lane, L. M. (2012). Leaving an open online course. Retrieved from http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/2012/04/leaving-an-open-online-class/

Light, B, Holland, C. P., & Wills, K. (2001). ERP and best of breed: a comparative analysis. Business Process Management Journal, 7(3), 216-224.

Lowe, A., & Locke, J. (2008). Enterprise resource planning and the post bureaucratic organization. Information Technology & People, 21(4), 375-400.

Robey, D., Ross, W., & Boudreau, M.-C. (2002). Learning to implement enterprise systems: An exploratory study of the dialectics of change. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19(1), 17-46.

Sneed, H. (2000). Encapsulation of legacy software: A technique for reusing legacy software components. Annals of Software Engineering, 9(1-4), 293-313.

Sturgess, P., & Nouwens, F. (2004). Evaluation of online learning management systems. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 5(3). Retrieved from http://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde15/articles/sturgess.htm

Thomas, J. (2012). Universities can’t all be the same – it’s time we embraced diversity. The Conversation. Retrieved June 28, 2012, from http://theconversation.edu.au/universities-cant-all-be-the-same-its-time-we-embraced-diversity-7379

Truex, D., Baskerville, R., & Klein, H. (1999). Growing systems in emergent organizations. Communications of the ACM, 42(8), 117-123.

The life and death of Webfuse: lessons for learning and leading into the future

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.

Abstract

Drawing on the 14-year life and death of an integrated online learning environment used by tens of thousands of people, this paper argues that many of the principles and practices underpinning industrial e-learning – the current dominant institutional model – are inappropriate. The paper illustrates how industrial e-learning has been a significant drag on the current practice of tertiary e-learning in terms of quantity and quality and argues that it will actively prevent universities from being able to respond to uncertainty and effectively create and explore the future of learning. The paper proposes one alternative set of successfully implemented principles and practices and argues that this alternative will better enable institutions to lead in a climate of change, rather than following along behind.

Paper structure

The introduction will briefly

• re-connect this paper with the 1996 ascilite paper that outlined the initial design of Webfuse;
• set that in the broader history of LMS (i.e. every institution had its own LMS) which then during the noughties got replaced by one of the big 2 or 3 enterprise LMS;
• illustrate the problems and limited outcomes of industrial e-learning;
• link this trend with the broader pushes toward strategic/top-down/rational management practices within universities;
• explain how Webfuse lived through this phase and move further and further away from the industrial e-learning trend;
• outline the structure of the paper
  • Research method
  • On the value of Webfuse
  • Product
  • People
  • Process
  • Conclusions and future work

The Research method section (in “proving” the academic credentials of this work) will talk about

• the cycle of action research over 14 years;
• the formulation of the Ps Framework and the ISDTs;
• link this back to DBR.

The On the value of Webfuse will seek to argue that the system based on the principles outlined in the paper was a “success” on a number of fronts. In doing so

• Talk about the complex nature of what “success” means in terms of Information Systems implementation.
• draw on quotes from the literature showing the value of the system as percieved by others.
• summarise the greater levels of adoption and use of this system as compared to other systems both within and outside the institution.
• Talk about features of the system which were not present in other systems for years if not ever.

The next three sections – Product, People, Process – will follow the same basic structure but will focus on a different essential component of e-learning. The structure will go something like

• Explain the nature of the component as implemented in industrial e-learning.
• Illustrate the problems that arise because of those principles.
• Present the alternative set of principles and practices.

The conclusions and future work will probably cover some of the following (this is perhaps the section most likely to evolve)

• The principles here are not a perfect solution – as a wicked design problem there is no such thing – there are problems and limitations with this approach. Not the least of which is the familiarity gap. It rejects many of the taken for granted assumptions of existing practice. Perhaps list these. Perhaps the biggest message of this approach is that institutions need to have practices that engage with these challenges rather than seek to abstract them out of existence.
• That said glimmers of these very different principles is increasingly visible in a range of movements within the host disciplines. e.g. agile management practices, agile development etc.
• Perhaps talk about the limitations of the research – impartiality, discipline/rigor, context-dependency.
• A call for more design work and design theory in this area to test/refine the principles here or develop entirely different alternatives.
• That testing of this design theory is going to be extremely hard given the established nature of industrial e-learning within higher education organisations. In particular, the spread of senior management staff who have a sense of ownership. This tends to rule out the possibility of doing much to address the People and Process aspects, at least at an institutional level. It tends to leave the Product aspect. Where tinkering with open source LMSes may be a productive area for future work. Though at the same time providing its own sense of inertia. Some examples may be in exploring how distributed cognition can improve these systems, but also exploring technical workarounds to improve the adaptability of these systems.

Expanding out Product, People, Process

The following are an initial attempt to expand out the three main sections. Completing this has highlighted the need to think about how to present/structure the problems.

For product, this will include :

• Current nature – is the LMS.(supporting blog posts one, two
  An enterprise system that has little or no capacity for change or customisation at the institutional or individual level (changing look and feel doesn’t count). Even open source LMS suffer problems here.
• The problems include
  • Having to change the behaviour of people, because technology is hard to change (must include the Sturgess and Nouwens quote mentioned here
  • More broadly the need for institutions to engage in large scale change projects because of new versions of the software.
  • Separation of data and services into separate systems (e.g. student records etc.)
  • Software that is generic and not specific to the institutional needs, the lowest-common denominator.
  • e.g. assignment management functionality in most LMS in 2011/2012 that is behind what Webfuse had 10 years ago
  • A focus on one tool. e.g. one discussion forum.
• The alternative

For process – will draw on a few prior publications (thesis-base process posts one and two, OODLA paper, prior ascilite paper, posts (procurement models, role of people in LMS selection)

• Current nature – i.e. teleological, plan-driven
  Need to not limit this solely to strategic management or IT process selection. Need to engage with the learning design folk who adopt this model for the design of teaching and see if there’s an argument to make this better.
• Limitations – drawn from the publications above.
  Also perhaps mention how it clashes with how people learn.
• The alternative – ateleological.
  Draw on insights from the thesis, but also other work e.g. Laurillard and others’ calls for teachers to be action researchers and the need for the organisation to engage with this. Perhaps even bring in Bigg’s quality model.

  In particular, see if arguments/suggestions can be developed to enhance “course design” in ways that are more ateleological.

  Mention Cavallo and the idea that any sort of change is learning and needs to connect to how people learn.

For people the focus will likely be on the (techno-)rational model as it is applied to how people think/respond and also how they are organised. (A people blog post from the thesis)

• Current situation – people are assumed to be rational and the application of logical decomposition that splits people up into sub-groups. Also an emphasis on cheapness in support rolls. There’s also the problem raised towards the end of this post where the innovative central staff are trying to get people to use what’s been provided. Perhaps linked to the chasm.
• Problems.
  Politics caused by organisational structures. The frontline support tasks being taken on by roles that are amongst the lowest paid in the organisation and focused tightly on the products being used rather than broad skills. The chasm and how most approaches are targeting (intentionally or not) the early adopters. Chinese whispers. Starvation of requirements. Gaming of the system to fit the teleological constraints
• Alternative.
  Cross-disciplinary, high-skilled, distributed teams close to the users..

A CRM for the LMS?

I’m definitely in need of a “customer relationship management” (CRM) system for the Learning Management System (LMS). Any suggestions?

I’m back teaching at University for the first time in a while. For the course I’m teaching there are 200+ students for whom I’m the “teacher”. 170 of these are “online” students, which means they rarely come on campus to lectures/tutorials. Supporting these students means covering questions about both the course and the administrative processes around it. Keeping track of 200+ students and the conversations we’ve had is hard when the interactions are spread across email, discussion forums, LMS instant messaging, the phone and other systems and medium. Not to mention student information being spread across the student records system, the LMS, the assignment submission system, the prac placement system etc. And being busy with other tasks doesn’t help recall.

In the last couple of days a student has had to remind me about a prior email conversation because I’d forgotten about it and didn’t actively search through the various archives.

I’m likely to be in this situation for the foreseeable future, so I need to think about ways to prevent this from happening again. Not to mention the benefits that could arise from knowing the students better.

On the inertia of systems

For various reasons I am feeling frustrated with the inertia of systems.

I work at a place where the Managed Operating Environment must retain an old version of the Internet Explorer web browser because their massive, expensive, not so user friendly Enterprise Resource Planning System has a web interface that isn’t compatible with more recent Web browsers.

Continuing on with the software perspective, I see software supporting e-learning that similarly can’t keep up with modern web development practices because it’s entire development model is based on earlier practices. Making it extremely difficult to adopt processes and services that would radically improve the experience of teachers and students.

More importantly and fundamentally I see an education system burdened by an accepted way of working that is disenfranchising kids. A system that is actively turning kids off education, and worse, almost turning them off learning. This is not something that has happened recently. It’s possible to see generations of families showing symptoms of this malaise.

And the grand solutions of the day are all examples of first-order change. They accept the present system and just try to improve it. e.g. the “teach for Australia” article in one of the Australian newspapers this weekend. We’ll put “better qualified” people into schools for a couple of years, that will solve the problem.

And I’m complicit in this first-order change. I’m helping enable this inertia.

Mainly because it’s easier. It’s hard enough to do tasks well with existing systems, let alone do something different within existing systems.

I worry about university programs and courses that are closely tied with professional groups or governments, because they help create almost crushing inertia. How do you prepare future educators – whose primary focus often tends to be how to survive the first fives years in the “system” (which the majority don’t) – when you think the entire system is broken?

And on that positive note, it’s off to think about what I’m going to teach next week.