This is an abstract for a paper I'm presenting at ALT-C in Manchester this year. Methodology has been my obsession this year. I'm particularly interesting in the way that technology is changing the way we 'know' things, and how it can contribute to collegial decision-making. The paper documents some of the tools we developed on the SPLICE project.
This paper concerns the ways in which technological change entails methodological development in e-learning research. The focus of our argument centres on the subject of evaluation in e-learning and how technology can contribute to consensus-building on the value of project outcomes, and the identification of mechanisms behind those outcomes. We argue that a critical approach to evaluation which harnesses technology in this way is vital to agile and effective policy and strategy making in institutions as they grapple with the challenges of transformation in a rapidly changing educational and technological environment.
With its focus on mechanisms, we identify Pawson and Tilley’s ‘Realistic Evaluation’ as an appropriate methodological approach, and we report on its use within a JISC-funded project on social software, SPLICE (Social Practices, Learning and Interoperability in Connected Environments). The project created new tools to assist the identification of mechanisms responsible for change to personal and institutional technological practice. These tools included collaborative mind-mapping and focused questioning, and tools for the animated modelling of complex mechanisms. By using these tools, large numbers of project stakeholders could engage in a process where they were encouraged to articulate and share their theories and ideas as to why project outcomes occurred. Using the technology, this process led towards the identification and agreement of common mechanisms which had explanatory power for all stakeholders.
We argue that the opportunities for mass collaboration and communication afforded by technology have methodological implications. Given this technology, an approach based on the mass cumulation of stakeholder theories and ideas about mechanisms feasible. A technology-driven realistic evaluation can lead to summative outcomes which are rich in explanatory and predictive power, and useful to sector. Finally, we argue that as well as generating better explanations for phenomena, the evaluation process can itself become transformative for stakeholders.
Monday, 20 July 2009
Monday, 13 July 2009
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Goethe and colour
Reminded of Goethe's colour theory today on a trip to Liverpool. Goethe talks about 'pathological' colours. Very interesting... did he have a rhetorical view of colour? If he did, then there's clearly some resonance with my rhetoric of technical intervention. And of course there are other resonances to rhetorical theories of music too. The improvisation I did for our trip today is here (from the improvisation blog)
Friday, 3 July 2009
What are the governing processes of an educational institution?
It strikes me that both the online and the physical environment help regulate the activity within an educational institution. One requires new habits (online - VLE, institutional systems, etc) but is optional, the other is much more coercive (physical estate - classrooms, coffee bars, corridors) but both serve to increase the probability of successful communication. Cultural regulators are very interesting. They include curricula, timetable, quality regimes, personnel stuff, etc. But I also think they also include less concrete things like 'tradition'. I'm finding tradition very interesting at the moment: it seems to be the 'dark matter' that keeps educational institutions going. I was thinking about tradition when I did this 'edwardian improvisation' on the improvisation blog...
The 'Rhetoric' of Technical Intervention
My current academic work is focussing on what I call the "Rhetoric of Technical Intervention". This is an abstract for a paper I'm currently writing.
Learners increasingly require flexible educational provision which fits the multiple contexts of their lives and personal development paths. In meeting this need educational institutions must balance their own viable operation with the viable individual learning experiences on the part of teachers and students. Technology is increasingly playing a key role in achieving this balance, and Universities are investing in training and technologies to raise staff capacity in using learning technology and encourage pedagogical innovation. Successful implementation of such interventions presents significant challenges to the educational cybernetician.
We cite recent examples of work at the Institute for Educational Cybernetics (IEC) at the University of Bolton. On the one hand, cybernetic tools (for example, Beer’s Viable System Model) allow us to identify effective organisational practices, technologies and structures, or effective pedagogies (for example, Pask’s conversational model). On the other hand, work at IEC shows that the ways in which interventions are made can have a great bearing on their emergent success. To understand differences between the ways interventions are made, we argue that deeper models which link individual learning processes to processes of effective institutional organisation are required. In modelling these processes we have to consider a. Individual practice; b. The social impact of individual action; c. The interventions we make to change people; and d. The ways in which interventions are made.
We present models which relate to these areas of inquiry drawing on the work of Beer on viability, Luhmann on communication, and Harré’s ‘Positioning Theory’. Through computer simulation, we demonstrate how these different modelled perspectives inter-relate to give what we argue is a more ‘realistic’ insight into the university where communication between diverse types of people typifies institutional life, change is slow, politics is rife, and innovation occurs in surprising ways! We argue that these deep models represent not so much a ‘blueprint’ for the organisation of education or the provision of learning, but rather a guide to effective intervention, where different ways of making the same intervention can be considered. As such, we argue, the models represent something akin to a ‘rhetoric’ of technological intervention, where Plato’s definition of rhetoric as “the art of winning the soul by discourse” is expanded to admit technological action as ‘discursive’. With such a ‘rhetoric’, strategic acts can be explored with their likely outcomes in different circumstances. We discuss the implications of this modelling and the promise it holds for educational institutions as they seek to take better control of themselves in a fast-changing world.
Learners increasingly require flexible educational provision which fits the multiple contexts of their lives and personal development paths. In meeting this need educational institutions must balance their own viable operation with the viable individual learning experiences on the part of teachers and students. Technology is increasingly playing a key role in achieving this balance, and Universities are investing in training and technologies to raise staff capacity in using learning technology and encourage pedagogical innovation. Successful implementation of such interventions presents significant challenges to the educational cybernetician.
We cite recent examples of work at the Institute for Educational Cybernetics (IEC) at the University of Bolton. On the one hand, cybernetic tools (for example, Beer’s Viable System Model) allow us to identify effective organisational practices, technologies and structures, or effective pedagogies (for example, Pask’s conversational model). On the other hand, work at IEC shows that the ways in which interventions are made can have a great bearing on their emergent success. To understand differences between the ways interventions are made, we argue that deeper models which link individual learning processes to processes of effective institutional organisation are required. In modelling these processes we have to consider a. Individual practice; b. The social impact of individual action; c. The interventions we make to change people; and d. The ways in which interventions are made.
We present models which relate to these areas of inquiry drawing on the work of Beer on viability, Luhmann on communication, and Harré’s ‘Positioning Theory’. Through computer simulation, we demonstrate how these different modelled perspectives inter-relate to give what we argue is a more ‘realistic’ insight into the university where communication between diverse types of people typifies institutional life, change is slow, politics is rife, and innovation occurs in surprising ways! We argue that these deep models represent not so much a ‘blueprint’ for the organisation of education or the provision of learning, but rather a guide to effective intervention, where different ways of making the same intervention can be considered. As such, we argue, the models represent something akin to a ‘rhetoric’ of technological intervention, where Plato’s definition of rhetoric as “the art of winning the soul by discourse” is expanded to admit technological action as ‘discursive’. With such a ‘rhetoric’, strategic acts can be explored with their likely outcomes in different circumstances. We discuss the implications of this modelling and the promise it holds for educational institutions as they seek to take better control of themselves in a fast-changing world.
recent stuff from the imrovisation blog - this one about the staff conference
This is the presentation video I've prepared for tomorrow.. running at about 10 times it's speed with a 'humorous' improvisation. Very busy few days... Moodle has been officially adopted, and we seem to have minimised the number of people who might have been upset by that. Not upsetting people is very important!
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