One ascilite 2009 paper, one to go

Col and I have just put the finishing touches to a paper on research we did into a safe/fail experiment utilising RSS, and web 2.0 technology.  While there are some shortcomings, the aim of the original site was to provide a space for student, staff and industry peers to come together and have career information, current practice, news feeds, stories, and BProfComm news fed out to interested parties.  The original intention was to facilitate a wholeness of communication practice that was not built into BlackBoard 6.3, and therefore we felt that we should build  a system that would see RSS used as the channel for greater engagement.

One of the first things we realised was that it did not work.  The basic premise that we understood at that time was that students were tech savvy, and therefore, they would use RSS feeds and integrate them into their life.  Alas, such is not the case.  “Build it and they will come”, or “Gen Y is tech savvy’ is not quite true.  One or two students used it, but the majority did not as they saw no use for such technology, as they use technology for play.  As one student said to me, “I use a mobile phone, an IPod, and Facebook; other things [by this I think she meant technology] do not interest me.”

The idea is still good though, and I am exploring ways that staff and industry peers can use this site to facilitate some form of engagement with each other.  Perhaps there is some way to utilise the feeds in Facebook?  Will have to explore this option.

Filed under: ascilite , ascilite

Reflective practice, reconceptualising Gonzales in light of Malikowski et al

One of the aspects of teaching I am engaged in is reflective practice though I am trying to think about this in a new way. In a previous post (see also Col’s post on content and communication)I started to explain that student engagement is important in teaching and learning. Researchers seem to look at inherent student qualities which tell part of the story about engagement (see Ainley (2004) though there has been research into involvement (see Krause (2005), Goldspink et al 2008). From my perspective, I am interested in how I interact with my students to create involvement. Fresen (2007) in researching web-based learning identified staff interaction with students as one of the key factors in student engagement.

Reflecting on staff interaction I think that examining Approaches to teaching and Feature adoption will be of some use, though these two need to be allied to ‘use’ of the tolls within the LMS to give some idea of interaction which may explain in some small way staff/student interaction and engagement.

Approaches to teaching + Feature adoption + Use = interaction (a key factor in student engagement)

One way is to look at features within courses examining the features an academic uses within their course, incorporating Malikowski et al’s (2007) model:

Figure 1: Malikowski et al (2007) feature adoption model

and look at what constitutes a basic approach to teaching though with a focus on Gonzales Dimensions:

Dimensions delimiting approaches to online teaching – (Gonzalez, 2009: p311)

	Informative/individual learning focuses	Communicative/Networked learning focused
Intensity of use	Small range on media and tools used to support learnign tasks and activities (mainly sources of information with small opportunities for interaction and communication)	Wide range of media and tools used to support learning tasks and activities (with emphasis on interaction and communication)
Resources	Web pages with information. Lecture notes. Links to websites.	Web pages with information. Lecture notes. Links to web sites. Discussion boards. Chat. Blogs. Spaces for sharing. Animations. Videos. Still images.
Role of the teacher	Select and present information	Design spaces for sharing and communication. Support the process.
Role of the students	Study individually information provided	Participate in a process of knowledge building

Table 1: Gonzales (2009) Approach to teaching online

Placing an academic in an either content oriented or student oriented perspective and utilising feature adoption will aid in categorising the academic although this does not give an indication of the engagement of the academic nor of the student. What I have done is to reconcetpualize Gonzales (2009) using Malikowski et al (2007) so that within Gonzales a more definite distribution of LMS features are shown (Figure 2 below).

Figure 2: Utilisation of Malikowski’s flowchart in line with Gonzales approaches to teaching

Examining the data with student engagement in mind utilising hit counts, as an indicator of engagement will show that engagement is occurring looking at feature adoption through time.

To test the above model a query was run examining content within courses at CQUniversity. One of the interesting findings from preliminary research into Blackboard (Table 2 below) demonstrates that from 2005 to 2009 (Term 1) the courses with content files has grown 28% over those four years, with the average files per course rising by 18. There appears to be an interesting pattern developing, though more research needs to developed in this area, while files per course has increased the hit counts per student has not risen in the same manner as would be indicated by the data. One possible link here is that students are downloading the files, then printing them out to read at a later date.

Table 2: Content files on Blackboard 2005 – 2009, and average hits per student

In line with the model indicated above (see Figure 2) where Gonzales Dimensions have been modified with Malikowskis’ (2007) feature adoption model, the pattern that emerges from the data is that content far outweighs communicative practice on Blackboard across all courses through 2005 /2009 T1. The huge difference between content and communication can be partially explained by the difference between the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences but the fact remains that the majority of academics appear to not utilize the communicative networked focused features within the LMS (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Content vs communicative using the adapted model

The interpretation is that there is a huge difference between content and communication/engagement within sites. Another example of this is seen in the following data (Figure 4) where the simple query was run asking the question, “How many academics post to discussion forums?

Figure 4: Course Coordinators posting to forums

The figure is staggering even taking into account that some courses are placeholders for Honours, and Masters subjects. The sheer volume of Course Coordinators that do not post even when provided with a forum is an interesting fact. Of course, more research would have to be done to see if any internal or external factors are involved, but it appears to be very significant in light of student engagement.

Note: For more information on the Indicators project be sure to check out David’s and Col’s respective blogs.

Reference List

Ainley, M. (2004). “What do we know about student motivation and engagement? “ Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Melbourne, November 29-December 2, 2004. Available http:// www.aare.edu.au/04pap/ain04760.pdf.

Fresen, J. (2007). “A taxonomy of factors to promote quality web-supported learning.” International Journal on E-Learning 6(3): 351-362.

Gonzalez, C. (2009). “Conceptions of, and approaches to, teaching online: a study of lecturers teaching postgraduate distance courses.” Higher Education, 57(3): 299-31

Goldspink, C., Winter, P. & Foster, M. (2008). Student Engagement and Quality Pedagogy. URL http://www.earlyyears.sa.edu.au/files/links/Student_Engagement_and_Qua.pdf

Krause, Kerri-Lee. (2005). “Understanding and promoting student engagement in university learning communities.” Centre for the Study of Higher Education, Available http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/pdfs/Stud_eng.pdf.

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

Filed under: Indicators Project , Indicators Project

Indicator’s Presentation

On Monday 27th July, Col Beer and I gave a presentation for the Centre for Workplace Planning,Professional Development & Organisational Learning at CQUniversity. Both of us were slightly nervous though it was time for the project to start to flow to the wider community. The aim is to achieve some sort of reflective practice for academics, and a way for the organisation to guage past and present user behaviour in the LMS. We are also aiming to establish lead indicator’s so that academics, and the wider univeristy community can see how users’ are utilising the LMS in its current form. Slides from the presentation can be seen at Col’s blog.

Filed under: Indicators Project , Indicators Project

My Master’s Project – Expected outcomes

My outcomes are to better understand what academics do online, and how this can be better managed, this research fits into the broad definition of teacher reflective practice.

Learning Management Systems, in the vast majority of cases, are used only as a data repository. I use the LMS as a convenient mode of delivering lectures in hard copy and then disseminate this to my students. If I had to categorize myself I would have to say that I think of myself as being student focused, and I know that I have put a lot time and effort into the delivery of my courses, aiming to get the best possible outcome for my students that I can, given the limitations of the LMS we are currently using. Yet, looking at my courses, I can see that they are content focused and teacher centred.

Gathering the data to inform me of my teaching approach will help in formulating ways to open up dialogue to enhance the student’s learning journey by providing access to resources that create a sense of community where learning is part of the social sphere.

Data mining is only looking at what has occurred from which, one can make inferences about what may occur in the future if nothing changes. Providing access to course content is not enough, students do not engage with the content, nor with other students, and do not engage with the lecturer. Here I am talking about flexible students only, as it is these students who miss the social aspect of interaction that internal student’s access. The base for my involvement with this is Kearsley and Schneiderman’s (1999) paper that involves what the authors’ call;

engaged learning,… all student activities involve active cognitive processes such as creating, problem-solving, reasoning, decision-making, and evaluation … students are intrinsically motivated to learn due to the meaningful nature of the learning environment and activities.

The most important part of this, for me, is ‘the meaningful nature of the learning environment and activities’. If the environment in which students learn is content focused without consideration of the social aspect of learning then it is doomed to fail. This I believe is part of the reason why we do not retain an adequate percentage of our student cohort. Looking at the data within Blackboard will start the process of seeing whether our academics are content focused or student focused, my supposition is that the majority of academics are content focused.

For my project I would like to enhance my own teaching by:

1. Mining the data according to the Dimensions as outlined by Gonzalez (2009)
2. Look at the importance of the social sphere on learning and teaching, for this I will peruse appropriate research, then look at the data as shown by the data above
3. Examine a series of courses using data mining and the Gonzalez’s Dimensions to get some form of baseline
4. Then look at my course using the Dimensions, and seeing if I am content oriented or student oriented.
5. Make changes to the courses to engage students, and create a sense of community within the LMS.
6. In the process of the above to allow peers to review what I am doing, and to see if the study proposed has a wider context within the university context.

Filed under: Indicators Project , Indicators Project, Masters

More on Learner/Teacher Paradigm

In my previous post I asked four broad questions to do with Gonzalez’s (2009) paper. These were:

• Can we make anything of this by looking at the data alone?
• Given that the design of the course is limited by the LMS, and that data suggests that LMS’ are basically a data repository, what are academics doing to enhance the social aspect of learning, given that research shows this is important?
• How does the data on academics fit with the concept that “learning is defined as a consequence of members of a community engaging in a given activity?” (Lave and Wënger, 1991, cited in Dyson & Campello, 2003)
• Does the academic, in the way that they develop the course, content/lecturer focus, learning oriented/student centred, or somewhere in between create the locus for enriching social learning?

Using the Table as outlined by Gonzalez (see previous post), it should be possible to data mine Blackboard for courses which fit into the two broad dimensions by examining the content of the courses as to media tools present, resources allocated by lecturer, lecturer involvement with course and discussion forum (if any), and student involvement with content, discussion forum and other media tools used.

There is ample evidence that LMS systems are not being used to their best advantage. They are, in the vast majority of cases, used only as a data repository. Academics use the LMS as a convenient mode of delivering lectures in hard copy and then disseminate this to their respective students. If I had to categorize the academics in these sort of courses I would have to say that they are very much content centred. Yet I know that a lot of academics put time and effort into the delivery of their courses, aiming to get the best possible outcome for their students that they can, given the limitations of the management systems we are currently using.

Getting the data to inform us of a lecturer’s teaching approach will help in formulating ways to open up dialogue to enhance the student’s learning journey by providing lecturers, myself included, access to resources that create a sense of community where learning is part of the social sphere.

For my project I would like to enhance my own teaching by :

1. Mining the data according to the Dimensions as outlined by Gonzalez (2009)
2. Look at the importance of the social sphere on learning and teaching, for this I will peruse appropriate research, then look at the data as shown by the data above
3. Examine a series of courses using data mining and the Gonzalez’s Dimensions to get some form of baseline
4. Then look at my course using the Dimensions, and seeing if I am content oriented or student oriented.

Data mining is only looking at what has occurred from which, one can make inferences about what may occur in the future if nothing changes. Providing access to course content is not enough, students do not engage with the content, nor with other students, and do not engage with the lecturer. Here I am talking about flexible students only, as it is these students who miss the social aspect of interaction that internal students access. The base for my involvement with this is Kearsley and Schneiderman (1999) paper which involves what the authors call;

engaged learning,… all student activities involve active cognitive processes such as creating, problem-solving, reasoning, decision-making, and evaluation … students are intrinsically motivated to learn due to the meaningful nature of the learning environment and activities.

The most important part of this, for me, is ‘the meaningful nature of the learning environment and activities’. If the environment in which students learn is all content focussed without consideration of the social aspect of learning then it is doomed to fail. This I believe is part of the reason why we do not retain an adequate percentage of our student cohort. Looking at the data within Blackboard will start the process of seeing whether our academics are content focused or student focused, my supposition is that the majority of academics are content focused.

References

Gonzalez, C. (2009). “Conceptions of, and approaches to, teaching online: a study of lecturers teaching postgraduate distance courses.” Higher Education 57(3): 299-314.

Kearsley, G and Schneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Naval Seas System Command, Available http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm.

Lave, J. and Wënger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, cited in Dyson, M. and Campello, S. (2003). “Evaluating Virtual Learning Environments: what are we measuring?” Electronic Journal of e-Learning. 1 (1): 11-20

Filed under: Uncategorized , Learner teacher, Teaching

Teacher/learner paradigm

I have been reading back over Gonzalez’s (2009) paper looking at conceptions of teaching, and approaches to teaching examining academics teaching postgraduate courses at an Australian university. Gonzalez came to the conclusion that there are two broad approaches to teaching, what he classed as “‘informative/individual learning focused’ and ‘communicative/networked focused’” (see Table 1 below). David in his blog post also gave a possible way forward with part of the Indicator Project.

What I am interested in, especially for the Master’s project is the role of the Academic/Teacher in the LMS.

Questions:

• Given that the design of the course is limited by the LMS, and that data suggests that LMS’ are basically a data repository, what are academics doing to enhance the social aspect of learning, given that research shows this is important?
• How does the data on academics fit with the concept that “learning is defined as a consequence of members of a community engaging in a given activity” (Lave and Wënger, 1991, cited in Dyson & Campello, 2003).?
• Can we make anything of this by looking at the data alone?
• Does the academic, in the way that they develop the course, content/lecturer focus, learning oriented/student centred, or somewhere in between create the locus for enriching social learning?

References

Gonzalez, C. (2009). “Conceptions of, and approaches to, teaching online: a study of lecturers teaching postgraduate distance courses.” Higher Education 57(3): 299-314.

Lave, J and Wënger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, cited in Dyson, M. and Campello, S. (2003). “Evaluating Virtual Learning Environments: what are we measuring?” Electronic Journal of e-Learning. 1 (1): 11-20

Table 1

Dimensions delimiting approaches to online teaching – (Gonzalez, 2009: p311)

	Informative/individual learning focuses	Communicative/Networked learning focused
Intensity of use	Small range on media and tools used to support learnign tasks and activities (mainly sources of information with small opportunities for interaction and communication)	Wide range of media and tools used to support learning tasks and activities (with emphasis on interaction and communication)
Resources	Web pages with information. Lecture notes. Links to websites.	Web pages with information. Lecture notes. Links to web sites. Discussion boards. Chat. Blogs. Spaces for sharing. Animations. Videos. Still images.
Role of the teacher	Select and present information	Design spaces for sharing and communication. Support the process.
Role of the students	Study individually information provided	Participate in a process of knowledge building

Filed under: Uncategorized , Learning, Project, Ruminations

Learning is social? How dow we examine ‘the social’ aspects of learning in the Indicators Project.

I came across this quote in Dyson & Campello’s paper on ‘Evaluating Virtual Learning Environments’.

Using the concept of Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave and Wënger, 1991), learning is defined as a consequence of members of a community engaging in a given activity. It is assumed that while engaged in the activity the group develops and incorporates knowledge. However, there must be a purpose or motive for such activity. Members take part in the activity because they have mutual objectives they believe will be achieved.

The concept then is similar in many respects to what Col states about the limitations of the LMS

For me learning is about interactions and there are three categories of interactions involved.
Learner – Content. This is the interaction between the learner and the content.
Learner – Instructor. Conversations and correspondance between the learner and the instructor.
Learner – Learner. Conversations, collaboration and correspondence between learners .

Most of my learning is, I believe, based on the last two or the social aspects of learning and it’s these two that I believe are lacking in your typical LMS

Locating these social aspects of learning, and then looking at the data we can gather from the Indicator’s Project, we can then mine the data for interactions between the Learner-instructor and Learner-learner. I have not yet worked out in my own head how we can do this. Looking at the post that David provided there is a way forward that can identify the social aspects of learning and quantify what we have used in the past, for instance the current LMS, Blackboard, and then look at the future of the LMS here at CQUniversity with the roll out of Moodle.

The other thing that Col and I are trying to do is submit Indicators as a Master’s project. As this is individual study, and not a collegial effort, then we have to start to think in what way we can approach the Indicator’s Project in such a way that we can do our own study but builds on what the other person is doing. One way around this is for me to examine the role of the Teacher in the three type of interaction outlined by Moore 1996, Learner-Instructor. If I look at that for my Master’s project and Col looks at another aspect then we can build on each other’s knowledge. As well as this we can start to build the questions to interrogate the data around the Seven Principles as Col has outlined here.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Learning, Project

Indicators of Quality/take two

The Teaching and Learning committee overlooking the grants have rejected the application by Col and I, though the reasons were not given. Within the submission the following comments were made by the committee:

· The data does have broader implications

· Should ensure that Moodle is considered as part of the project, due to phasing in as LMS

. We have been asked to resubmit for Round two of the application process.

The major problem, it seems to me is the move that CQUni is having away from BB to Moodle, and the implications for this in our grant application. What I, and Col, need to do is look at the proposal again in light of Moodle, and perhaps come up with some way of using BB as a benchmark (in terms of what I do not know yet) and then be able to use the same qualifiers to come to some idea as to Moodle being better (in what way I do not now yet) then BB. CQUni is spending vast amounts of money in the introduction of Moodle, in terms of cost and time spent) but there is no data available that will keep track of its effectiveness as a LMS, its use to CQUni, its role in the transfer of learning from the LMS to the students. or in the way that staff will use it to transfer learning through Moodle to students.

Of course, as far as I can see the same can be said for the incumbent LMS, BB. There has been little study done on the way that it has effectively, or otherwise, facilitated the above either. Col and I need to benchmark BB so that we can then come to some understanding of what Moodle is, will do, for CQUni and the students of the same.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Indicators of quality: a study into LMS user behaviour at CQUniversity

This is the basis for a Teaching an Learning Grant at CQUni 2009. It is based on research initially carried out by Col Beer, see his blog.

Background:
Course management systems (CMS) are important tools in the university context and much money, time and resources have been spent in developing, utilizing and maintaining the CMS. These systems assist instructors to administer courses by providing access to content, discussion forums, assignment uploads, grade entry, and other features. The Blackboard management system has been used by staff to facilitate the teaching and learning for their students. While this has been the case there has been little use of the data to aid in the improvement of pedagogy, administration or in future orientation. Data like hit counts, resource utilization, discussion participation, uptimes etcetera can be obtained by applying some simple scripts to the LMS backend database. This data can be utilized to aid in the reflection of pedagogical practices in alignment with usage statistics while at CQUni it could potentially be used to inform some aspects of the LMS replacement project (Heathcoate & Dawson 2005).

The Problem:
Data is hidden away in the Blackboard database and accessed via the Blackboard user interface, which is difficult to interpret and often does not work at all. So what? What use is this data?

• Pedagogical:
• What features of the LMS are used and in what pattern are the students using them?
• What content is being viewed? When? By whom?
• Is there a correlation between student grades and click rate? Is there a correlation between grades and time on site?
• How is the LMS being used? By whom? When?

• Administrative: What features are used and to what extent does this justify the cost?
• Technological: What forecasting is done with the data so that future needs are met?

Discussion:
The Indicators project proposes to use statistical analysis of previously untapped data sources to assist in the design and evaluation of courses and programs at CQUni in a framework defined by Chickering and Gamson (1987). The project will attempt to gather data from sources such as Learning Management System logs and tallies, administration system data and web server logs in order to devise a system that will assist in the evaluation and design of courses by identifying patterns of behavior in staff and students in the CQUni context. It is also hoped that we can, via a process of comparative analysis, identify aspects of online courses that may require attention based on patterns of staff and student behavior when compared to other courses within the CQUni context.

The understanding is that there is no magic bullet for course evaluation (Oliver & Conole 1998), and the quantitative basis for the indicators project has some limitations that mean it should not be viewed in isolation from other evaluation methods but may serve as an early indicator of possible issues. As Dawson & Heathcote (2005) state, “Policy interventions, staff development activities and discipline culture all contribute to shaping designer and user behavior within the online environment. Therefore, utilizing a systems view to codify designer and user behavior is ‘indistinct’, but can play in the refinement, ratification and benchmarking of broader evaluation strategies”. On top of this we have multiple cohorts of students such as flex, on campus and international campus students. Using an instrument to measure the online interactions of an on campus student who has the opportunity to regularly liaise with teaching staff face-to-face is obviously not going to generate accurate data when compared to a student whose engagement is wholly online. However, we are able to filter on campus and the contrast between the flex and on-campus students will also produce additional data that can be analysed (see Appendix 1).

References:
Chichering, A & Gamson, Z 1987, “Seven Principles for good practice in Undergraduate Education”, The American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, March 1987, URL: http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/7princip.htm.

Heathcoate, E & Dawson, S 2005, “Data Mining for Evaluation, Benchmarking and Reflective Practice in a LMS”, E-Learn 2005: World conference on E-Learning in corporate, government, healthcare and higher education.

Oliver, M. & Conole, G 1998, “Evaluating Communication and Information Technologies: A toolkit for practitioners”, Active Learning, 8, 3-8.

Appendix 1

The graph shows the hit counts of students grouped by grade. The different colours represent the different years the course was delivered. The large increase in 2008 was due to a course redesign that was engineered to promote student engagement. The vertical range is hit count while the horizontal is grade.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Bachelor of Professional Communication Learning Network

Col Beer and I are working on a performance project for the GradCertFlexLearning at CQUniversity, and our proposal is based on creating a Learning Network that creates a sense of ownership, gives space, and builds a network where students, staff, and industry members can interact.

Henze, Dolog and Nejdi (2004) proposed that adaptive hyper media systems be built taking into account the different needs of the students to facilitate learning.

Adaptive educational hypermedia systems are able to adapt various visible aspects of the hypermedia systems to the individual requirements of the learners and are very promising tools in the area of e-Learning. Especially in the area of e-Learning it is important to take the different needs of learners into account in order to propose learning goals, learning paths, help students in orienting in the e-Learning systems and support them during their learning progress.

At the moment this technology is only in its infancy at CQUniversity. Learning portals are built as part of the Learning Management Systems within a defined academic learning space, creating duplication of data within a particular degree structure such as the Bachelor of Professional Communication. Utilising the idea of an adaptive dynamic space is one way that can be found to avoid duplication and to create a learning space that is specific to a program, not just one that links to individual subjects. The main concept originated in the examination of the CDDU collaborative website (Wiki) at CQU and the main focus of that Wiki can be enlarged to incorporate program offerings, and subsidiary data flows, within those programs.

Tim O’Reilly (2005) states that, ‘hyperlinking is the foundation of the web. As users add new content, and new sites, other users discover the content and link to it binding it into the structure of the web. Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity, the web of connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all web users.’ What O’Reilly is highlighting is the web’s power, and our power, as web users, to harness the collective wisdom that resides in hyperspace.

CQUniversity has, as part of its online learning and teaching responsibilities, adopted Blackboard and Webfuse as the Learning Management Systems (LMS). While these are good for the delivery of most courses, the systems do not offer the flexibility and dynamism that is current in web development and course delivery. One situation that has arisen is that there is a lot of duplication of data into the Bachelor of Professional Communication (BProfComm). The disciplines that teach into the BProfComm are Public Relations, Journalism, Multimedia, Visual Media, Film Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Marketing and Human Resource Management. Each of these disciplines is fundamentally different from other disciplines within the university, but have similarities with each other. Each of these disciplines create their own space on the Learning Management System with their own teaching and learning environment. Each discipline, duplicates to some extent, the way that students collect data, and transmit data within the discipline and within the degree. For instance, Public Relations, Journalism, Visual Media, Media and Cultural Studies, Marketing and Human Resource Management utilise news feeds from the varying media around the world, but there is no central place within the degree’s online space where all students enrolled in the BProfComm can go to access this data. Duplication like this is wasteful for students, it is time-consuming for staff, and it is a simplistic way to build a learning centred environment that is not student centred.

Learning centres are dispersed within their own discipline, they are basic and built on Web 1.0 technology, and there is little dynamic interaction with the vast networks, media outlets, weblogs, and social communities that have developed over the last couple of years. As Beer and Jones (2008, p. 3 of 6) argue, “…if a student or staff member wishes to engage in any form of e-learning they must use the system that has been selected by the institution … the technology available to individuals has been outstripping the functionality and usability of the technology provided by institutions.” There is currently no sense of ownership of place, or space, for learning, or ‘for guiding the development of a learning centred learning environment’ (Clark & Maher, 2001, p, 2) in the current system.

The current LMS is basically a static page, and while it can have RSS feeds incorporated into its structure it does not have the look and feel of a dynamic learning space that has real world counterparts. The difficulty is in incorporating current Web 2.0 technology such as podcasts, RSS feeds, social blogging, Wikis, social bookmarking, and other web appliances in the above LMS.

One of the main issues is to provide a place, a virtual centre, where the students have a sense of ownership, and have control over their learning environment. Clark and Maher (2001, p. 2) state that:

Today, we have the ability to create very sophisticated and complex interactive virtual environments … These virtual environments are populated by communities, which are able to interact and communicate with each other in many forms. These virtual environments have the shapes, form, structures and functionality that are akin to the physical world.

If they have the shape, form and functionality of the physical world then they should have the immediacy of the physical world as well, with the feel of that immediacy. The network envisages the interaction of students, and the wider public, in its growth and development providing the site in which learning can occur. We propose a framework that is built on what Maher and Clark (2001. p. 6) describe as ‘model for virtual learning … [where] the technology aspect of a learning environment can be supported by a virtual worlds, the learning theory … is constructivist, and the design model … is situatedness.’

The theory behind the model is constructivist, making explicit the learning experience of students and takes into account the situational context in which learning takes place. What is envisaged is a place for interaction, where the learning is authentic and meaningful, where data is gathered to form collaborations between the teacher, student, graduates, industry, and the wider community (Maher & Clark 2001). The ProfComm network, as it will be called, is designed specifically for the context in which the students find themselves.

Instead of students, and staff, utilising static web pages and links to construct learning spaces, the concept is to construct a Learning Network where the information for all BProfComm students is brought to the one place, building a portal for guiding and developing the construction of lifelong learning driven by Web 2.0 technology, such as RSS feeds, social bookmarking (folksonomies), blogging, and other formal and informal learning supports on the one page, making that page a dynamic collection accessible for everyone in the BProfComm. Staff can, for instance, create a collection of tagged pages via Del.icio.us and feed them through Pipes (a data aggregator) to sort and deliver them to the Network in a custom feed. The intriguing notion is that one web portal can facilitate the bringing together of independent disciplines into a transdisciplinary place which is learning centred and designed specifically for the context.

As well as this, and much more importantly, it provides a space where students can become the researchers, teachers, and disseminators of their own creations. What the Network has the capacity to do is to,

… imbue students with a sense of intellectual purpose, instill in them a desire to make a difference, provide them with opportunities to reach a wider audience, and furnish them with the tools to break new ground. By recasting students as researchers and teachers, we invite them to participate in what is arguably the most exciting and fulfilling aspect of university life: the production of new knowledge’ ( Sword & Leggott 2007, p. 1).

Journalism students can feed their stories, photo-media students can feed their portfolios, PR students can start to develop their own PR kits, and it can be the one place where students can control what happens to their intellectual outputs.

One of the hardest parts about this, from an academics perspective, is the relinquishing of authority, and control, by the academics themselves. While we know more about certain things then they do thay also know things that we do not. We must back away from out insistence on being seen as the ‘experts’ and instead be seen as both learner and teacher. In the same way, or students should be encouraged to see themselves as both teacher and student. At one end of the scale we have students who are poor at what they do and at the other end we have students who excel at what they do. The aim is to get students, and staff, to surpass what they thought they could do, and become exemplars of lifelong-learning (Sword and Leggott 2007).

This, we suggest, is the way forward for this learning network, a place, a learning environment where both staff and students are able to surpass what they previously thought they could do.

References
Beer, C & Jones. D 2008, Learning Networks: Harnessing the Power of Online Communities for Discipline and Lifelong Learning, Paper presented at the Lifelong Learning Conference 2008: Reflecting on Successes and Framing Futures, CQU, Rockhampton.

Chickering, A.W and Gamson, Z.F 1991, Applying the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 47, Fall 1991, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

Clark, S., & Maher, M 2001, The Role of Place in Designing a Learner Centered Virtual Learning Environment, Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures Conference, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Holland, 8-11July.

Henze, N., Dolog, P., & Nejdl, W 2004, Reasoning and Ontologies for Personalized E-Learning in the Semantic Web, Educational Technology & Society, 7 (4), 82-97),

O’Reilly, T (2005), What Is Web 2.0 Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, O’Reilly.com.

Sword, H and Leggott, M 2007, Backwards into the Future: Seven Principles for Educating the Ne(x)t Generation, Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 3 (2),

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