Met up Tuesday night with Scott Wilson, Stephen Downes, Josie Fraser, Juliette White and Theresa Welch at Lass O'Gowerie for an edublogger meet up. We minded our collective p's and q's and had good time discussing events and such. A couple of other folks came and went but I didn't catch their names (much apologies).
I had a family meet up in York on Wednesday but was back in Manchester for Thursday's sessions.
Researching the cognitive cultures of e-learning was a fantastic presentation by Drew Whitworth. He discussed how the nature of e-learning innovations were failure-prone. (Say what!?! cried several audience members.) That is, given the environmental culture of higher education institutions and their resistance to change and self-reflection, e-learning will regularly suffer to capture the hearts and minds of many faculty and administrators. He spoke of how institutions (like other environments) shape our world view and how the increased divisions of labor and the increased pace of change and competition reduces the amount of time researchers have to study and analyze e-learning (as well as the values embedded within our learning environments). Drew suggested that the research agenda should take a critical approach to looking at these underlying assumptions present in all forms of teaching and learning, perhaps even from a political/organizational perspective. (His ppt can be found here.)
Carol Russell presented a paper on Disciplinary patterns in adoption of educational technologies where she likened higher educational institutions to borgs! Her research analyzed how different organizational stakeholders view teaching and learning quality and the innovative use of technology. She cited the work of Becher & Trowler on Academic Tribes and Territories which provided a helpful way to frame the perspectives of how different disciplines within the academy view teaching/learning/technology. Carroll concluded with the notions that one type of educational design does not fit all disciplines and that the balance of disciplines in an institution could influence what support is best developed and centralized. In other words, if engineering or business is bringing all the money for the university, then those departments might be the one's dictating how much and what kind of support will be available for elearning. (A ppt version of Carol's presentation is available here.)
Keywords: academic technology, ALT-C, e-learning, edubloggers, politics of organizations, social change
