The stories that documents tell: changing technology options from Blackboard, Webfuse and the content management system at Central Queensland University

[Abstract]: This paper analyses selected documents written about, and for, three of Central Queensland University's educational technologies and what those documents say about current issues and strategies in the technologies supporting teaching and learning at the university. The paper draws four significant implications from this analysis. Using the stories that documents tell to learn from changing technology options for teaching and learning innovations requires attentiveness to, and an engagement with, these implications

Doctrina perpetua: brokering change, promoting innovation and transforming marginalisation in university learning and teaching [Editors introduction]

Doctrina perpetua—translated variously as “forever learning” (Cryle, 1992, p. 27), “lifelong learning” and “lifelong education”—is the Latin motto of Central Queensland University (CQU), an Australian regional university with campuses in Central Queensland and the metropolitan and provincial cities of Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney and with centres in China, Fiji, Hong Kong and Singapore. During its early development the institution was small and regional; in many ways it was an institution at the margins of higher education. For only a third of its 40-year life has it been recognised as a university. However, the vision of both its founders and its continuing staff has been that of an institution that actively brokers change, promotes innovation and seeks to transform marginalisation— for students, for its community and for itself. Its short life on the edge of the universe of higher education has promoted a culture of innovation and an acceptance that change is a necessary and positive aspect of life on the edge. Embracing change, CQU has become a complex institution, a notion well expressed in a speech in August 1999 by former Vice-Chancellor Lauchlan Chipman on Visioning Our Future: I have often remarked that I do not see CQU as “the last university of the old millennium” but rather as “the first university of the new millennium”. One of our greatest strengths in making the transition is our relative immaturity as a university. The more mature a university, especially if it is successful, the less agile it is when it comes to the need to change. So far as the future of universities and change is concerned, my position is unequivocally Heraclitean: change is the only thing that is permanent. Applying to itself the motto “doctrina perpetua” over its short life, the agile University has become a “complex and diverse organisation” (Danaher, Harreveld, Luck & Nouwens, 2004, p. 13). This overview of CQU seeks to provide readers with a short description of the current state of the institution and the story of its development to provide a context for understanding the chapters that follow, and to assist readers to reflect on how these developments at CQU relate to higher education generally, and to the universities with which they are more familiar

Doctrina perpetua: an initiative to enhance teaching and learning at Central Queensland University

• Proposal for an edited book about evidence and research - based teaching and learning at CQU, with implications for other universities in Australia and overseas. • Proposed publisher is Post Pressed (http://www.postpressed.com.au). • Hopefully to go to press in December 2005

Contesting ‘transitions’ and (re-)engaging with ‘subjectivities’: locating and celebrating the habitus in three versions of ‘the first year experience’ at Central Queensland University

Instead of the homogeneous and undifferentiated view of ‘the first year experience’ implied by the term ‘transitions’, we prefer to emphasise diversity and heterogeneity in mapping multiple experiences of university life, particularly in ‘the first year’. This mapping includes – in the context of Central Queensland University (CQU) – students in a pre-undergraduate preparatory program with rich life experiences but limited formal education; school leavers and mature age students in a first year undergraduate program; and students with industry and professional experience in a pre-service teacher education program with both undergraduate and graduate entry points. Despite the considerable differences among these ‘first year experiences’, they have in common a focus on the habitus (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990) as a framework for locating and celebrating student and staff subjectivities and hence for maximising student (re-)engagements with university life. The paper illustrates these crucial processes in each of these versions of ‘the first year experience’

Strategic enterprises Down Under: engaging drivers of change in Australian universities' open and distance learning provision

Like all fields and forms of education, open and distance learning is complex, contextualized, and contingent (Harreveld and Danaher, in press; Nouwens, Erdinc and Danaher, 2004) – and is attended by a particular and peculiar ambivalence (see also Stronach and MacLure, 1997). On the one hand, open and distance learning is often accompanied by commentaries about access, equity, and social justice, whereby the empowering and libratory potential of learning in one’s own place/ space and at one’s own pace/ timescale is highlighted and lauded. On the other hand, open and distance learning is as subject as any other form of educational provision to the influence of forces associated with late capitalism and globalization, at least some of which are linked with the potential destruction of family, workplace, and community relationships and social capital (Rowan, Bartlett and Evans, 1997)

Course management systems: innovation versus managerialism

[Abstract]: This paper examines the introduction of Blackboard as the designated course management system at Central Queensland University, Australia. The authors use the results of a focus group with a course team using Blackboard as the basis for a set of propositions about, and criteria for assessing the effectiveness of, course management systems. The authors draw on Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990, 1993) notions of autonomous and heteronomous forces and the habitus to frame their argument about the most likely means of navigating between the blue skies of innovation and the pragmatism of managerialism in relation to learning technologies in contemporary Australian universities

Central Queensland University's course management systems: accelerator or brake in engaging change?

Central Queensland University (CQU) is a highly complex institution, combining campuses in Central Queensland and distance education programs for Australian domestic students with Australian metropolitan sites for international students and a number of overseas centres, also for international students. In common with many other universities, CQU has recently reviewed its course management systems (CMSs). In doing so, CQU has signalled its desired strategic position in managing its online learning provision for the foreseeable future. This paper analyzes that strategic position from the perspective of the effectiveness of CQU’s engagement with current drivers of change. Drawing on online survey results, the authors deploy Introna’s (1996) distinction between teleological and ateleological systems to interrogate CQU’s current position on CMSs – one of its most significant enterprises – for what it reveals about whether and how CQU’s CMSs should be considered an accelerator of, or a brake on, its effective engagement with those drivers of change. The authors contend that a more thorough adoption of an ateological systems approach is likely to enhance the CMS’s status as an accelerator in engaging with such drivers

Challenging enterprises and subcultures: interrogating 'best practice' in Central Queensland University's course management systems

[Abstract]: The notion of ‘best practice’ when applied to university teaching and learning confronts a difficult challenge: to raise the minimum educational standard in society without diluting the diversity constituting any university. This challenge is particularly evident at Central Queensland University (CQU), whose diversity of student demographics and characteristics, teaching modes and organisational structures exerts pressure on its perceived institutional unity and identity. This challenge of ‘best practice’ is exacerbated when applied to the examination of course management systems, which are commercial software packages that provide Web-based tools, services and resources to support the teaching and learning process for both online and blended delivery. The implementation of these systems at CQU has highlighted fault lines in the worldviews and priorities of different groups and individuals in the institution. It is the intersection of these enterprise systems – or “packages of computer applications that support many, even most, aspects of a company’s information needs” (McConachie, 2001, p. 194) – and subcultures and the impact of that intersection on understanding ‘best practice’ in CQU’s teaching and learning activities with which this paper is concerned. This intersection between enterprise systems and subcultures is illustrated by an analysis of the results of an online survey questionnaire completed between August and October 2003 by 91 respondents, representing academic and general staff members, managers and students from eight campuses and seven faculties/divisions. The authors argue that the survey results contain significant lessons for conceptualising ‘best practice’ in CQU’s teaching and learning, including the urgent need for strategies to make visible the aforementioned fault lines between enterprise systems and subcultures

Who benefits from exploratory business research? The effect of sub-cultures on the implementation of an enterprise system: an Australian regional university perspective

Research into the implementation of the PeopleSoft administrative systems at Central Queensland University demonstrates that all subcultures, except the Academics themselves, perceive that the Academic sub-culture holds the power to influence the success or failure of transformational change. Many participants asserted that the anticipated benefits from the recently implemented PeopleSoft system will be achieved not through autocratic leadership but through the Executive's ability to drive a common vision and empower staff. To address the question of who benefi'ts from this study, it is necessary to look at the research from three levels: the researcher, the university and the broader business sector. Firstly, from a narrow perspective, the researcher stands to benefit personally from this research