A web-based teaching/learning environment to support collaborative knowledge construction in design

A web-based application has been developed as part of a recently completed research which proposed a conceptual framework to collect, analyze and compare different design experiences and to construct structured representations of the emerging knowledge in digital architectural design. The paper introduces the theoretical and practical development of this application as a teaching/learning environment which has significantly contributed to the development and testing of the ideas developed throughout the research. Later in the paper, the application of BLIP in two experimental (design) workshops is reported and evaluated according to the extent to which the application facilitates generation, modification and utilization of design knowledge

Quality Assessment for E-learning: a Benchmarking Approach (Third edition)

The primary purpose of this manual is to provide a set of benchmarks, quality criteria and notes for guidance against which e-learning programmes and their support systems may be judged. The manual should therefore be seen primarily as a reference tool for the assessment or review of e-learning programmes and the systems which support them. However, the manual should also prove to be useful to staff in institutions concerned with the design, development, teaching, assessment and support of e-learning programmes. It is hoped that course developers, teachers and other stakeholders will see the manual as a useful development and/or improvement tool for incorporation in their own institutional systems of monitoring, evaluation and enhancement

Newness Against the Grain: Democratic emergence in organisational and professional practice

What is the nature of democratic innovation in a performative culture? The purpose of this chapter is to help answer this question by giving conceptual substance to the notion of democratic emergence as a specific kind of innovation in the context of contemporary governance trends. It is argued that the performative governance which is the product of these trends is not invulnerable to challenge because of deficiencies in the capacity of managerialism and performative governance to improve services, and the creative spaces for agency and initiative created by the valuing of entrepreneurialism and innovation. The chapter draws on existing conceptual work on democratic approaches to school organisation and innovation, relevant literature on entrepreneurialism, and offers a brief insight into an example of democratic innovation in practice

The influence of the e-tutor on the development of collaborative critical thinking in a students' e-forum: association levels with Cramer’s V

Most courses via Internet use the electronic forum, which allows for cognitive dialogue, namely through critical thinking. The tutor’s support to collaboration, reflection and learning can explore the characteristics of e-forums and contribute to a more positive academic experience. This study aims to identify which of the tutor’s tasks are more influential on higher levels of collaborative critical thinking, with a content analysis of 5200 messages in several on-line Master’s and Post-graduation courses forum. 11 indicators of the tutor’s intervention and four indicators of collaborative critical thing were adopted. Then, a Cramer’s V post-test was used to assess the effect of the tutor’s posts on the highest levels of collaborative critical thinking. The tutor’s tasks which relate more to the students’ highest levels of critical thing were: 1) asking open questions to the students, 2) establishing associations among the students’ messages and 3) modelling the debate. The study provided useful information on the ways of triggering the dialogue and taking it to higher cognitive levels

Enhancing knowledge management in online collaborative learning

This study aims to explore two crucial aspects of collaborative work and learning: on the one hand, the importance of enabling collaborative learning applications to capture and structure the information generated by group activity and, on the other hand, to extract the relevant knowledge in order to provide learners and tutors with efficient awareness, feedback and support as regards group performance and collaboration. To this end, in this paper we first propose a conceptual model for data analysis and management that identifies and classifies the many kinds of indicators that describe collaboration and learning into high-level aspects of collaboration. Then, we provide a computational platform that, at a first step, collects and classifies both the event information generated asynchronously from the users' actions and the labeled dialogues from the synchronous collaboration according to these indicators. This information is then analyzed in next steps to eventually extract and present to participants the relevant knowledge about the collaboration. The ultimate aim of this platform is to efficiently embed information and knowledge into collaborative learning applications. We eventually suggest a generalization of our approach to be used in diverse collaborative learning situations and domains

A programme management approach for ensuring coherence in IS (higher) education

This paper examines IS higher education, concentrating on issues of ‘coherence’ in IS curricula. While curriculum coherence can be jeopardized by poor curriculum design, misalignment between module content and/or misalignment between module or course aims can cause serious coherence issues over time. Misalignment of this type is exacerbated by the traditional processes of curriculum (re)design, which rely heavily on the (singular) interpretation of highly abstract documents, such as module syllabi and course specifications – often produced by curriculum designers in isolation. To improve curriculum coherence, this paper examines the use of a programme management framework as a means of (a) ‘humanizing’ the abstract aims and goals of curricula schemes and (b) managing the delivery and evolution of curricula in relation to the stakeholders in the process of delivery. The practical use of the framework is examined in the context of a Masters-level course in ‘Information Systems Management’. An action research approach is used to demonstrate the practical utility of the framework in terms of (a) improving communication of curricula, (b) improving the coherence between modules and between modules and course and (c) removing content redundancy. Guidelines are presented that generalize the findings in order that key practices may be adopted by others

Fashion Education in Sustainability: Change Through Experiential Crossings

Sustainability is distinguished by its multidimensional, messy, big and small transformational change processes that impact the world on all scales and timelines that are both short and long. This is, whilst challenging, full of diverse possibilities. To be path makers and navigators through this complexity requires us to teach and learn skills, knowledge and understanding of our relationships with each other and with our natural world. It requires us to hone our skills of imagination as well as our practical skills of creation and communication. Education for sustainability offers us a means to unlock the current fashion educational paradigm, which has become, in many cases, a service led model of educational provision for current business functions. It offers the means to change towards education that is based on a nurturing of culture, creativity and critical thinking, so that we are capable of responding to global and local contexts to contribute towards thriving societies, cultures and economies. The places, players, and their roles in this process differ substantially from traditional fashion education hierarchical models. This paper explores this changing paradigm through a case study at London College of Fashion, guided by Dilys Williams, Director Centre for Sustainable Fashion. The project worked with thirty undergraduate students across disciplines in fashion design and communication, their tutors, and a world leading sportswear brand’s design, communication and education teams. The author has developed an experiential and reflexive learning process through a number of iterations to explore design for sustainability (DfS) through teaching and learning methods that visualize our interdependence, support a mutual learning environment, and begin to explore cause and effect of our actions and interactions. This project engages this approach to explore ways in which the business could de-couple success from the throughput of material goods through this project based in the UK and the US

Trust as a virtue in education

As social and political beings, we are able to flourish only if we collaborate with others. Trust, understood as a virtue, incorporates appropriate rational emotional dispositions such as compassion as well as action that is contextual, situated in a time and place. We judge responses as appropriate and characters as trustworthy or untrustworthy based on these factors (namely context, intention, action as well as consequence). To be considered worthy of trust, as an individual or an institution, one must do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons, and the action should have its intended effect. By focusing on character, including a moral agent’s emotional disposition, virtue ethicists offer a more holistic account of trust than that explained by a deontic adherence to one’s duty as governed by a social contract. I will apply this understanding to educational institutions, particularly primary and secondary schools that serve a vital role in society. One of the main roles schools perform is to assist in character formation so that students, through practice, learn to be trusting and trusted citizens of society. I offer the philosophy in schools’ methodology of the community of inquiry as one example of how such practice may be facilitated in the classroom

Mathematical practice, crowdsourcing, and social machines

The highest level of mathematics has traditionally been seen as a solitary endeavour, to produce a proof for review and acceptance by research peers. Mathematics is now at a remarkable inflexion point, with new technology radically extending the power and limits of individuals. Crowdsourcing pulls together diverse experts to solve problems; symbolic computation tackles huge routine calculations; and computers check proofs too long and complicated for humans to comprehend. Mathematical practice is an emerging interdisciplinary field which draws on philosophy and social science to understand how mathematics is produced. Online mathematical activity provides a novel and rich source of data for empirical investigation of mathematical practice - for example the community question answering system {\it mathoverflow} contains around 40,000 mathematical conversations, and {\it polymath} collaborations provide transcripts of the process of discovering proofs. Our preliminary investigations have demonstrated the importance of "soft" aspects such as analogy and creativity, alongside deduction and proof, in the production of mathematics, and have given us new ways to think about the roles of people and machines in creating new mathematical knowledge. We discuss further investigation of these resources and what it might reveal. Crowdsourced mathematical activity is an example of a "social machine", a new paradigm, identified by Berners-Lee, for viewing a combination of people and computers as a single problem-solving entity, and the subject of major international research endeavours. We outline a future research agenda for mathematics social machines, a combination of people, computers, and mathematical archives to create and apply mathematics, with the potential to change the way people do mathematics, and to transform the reach, pace, and impact of mathematics research.Comment: To appear, Springer LNCS, Proceedings of Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics, CICM 2013, July 2013 Bath, U

Teachers as the Gravediggers of Neoliberalism: Promoting Dialectical Individualism from the Ruins of the Neoliberal State

Neoliberalism will not die naturally, it must be killed through relentless criticism. However, as criticism of neoliberalism expands, scholars must not reify the term. Scholars must begin to disentangle the historical antecedents that comprise neoliberalism in order to expose it for the sham that it is. Perhaps the biggest sham of neoliberalism is its call for individual freedom. Specifically, by paying attention to the more revolutionary conceptions of individualism contained in some strands of Eighteenth century liberalism, the contradictions of neoliberalism can be exposed. If education, and society in general, is to move past neoliberalism, neoliberalism cannot simply be discarded or wished away, rather, it must be dialectically negated by superseding its unjust elements and retaining and transforming any of its more revolutionary elements to lay a new foundation for education in a post-neoliberal world. Drawing off this dialectical negation of neoliberalism, this paper argues for a new conception of individualism called dialectical individualism. This is not a return to some idealized form of liberalism however, but a new phase in human history with a new conception of individualism. The dialectical movement should not be seen as the product of some otherworldly force, but rather, it should be viewed as centered in the individual and driven by volunteerism in the context of the historical situation. Students can be taught to be dialectical in their actual school work, by writing challenging papers, by writing vision statements, and by partaking in collaborative assignments, and through their understanding of history and the present.Educatio