Still suffering from the `silo effect`: lingering cultural barriers to collaborative care

This research project sought to draw out the contesting definitions of collaborative care among professional subgroups in maternity services. The paper contrasts medical and social models of knowledge and reports on qualitative evidence from midwives and doctors in Australian hospitals. The evidence indicates that collaborative care is welcomed by both midwives and doctors but that there remains a lingering residue of the ‘silo effect’ of the ‘old’ professionalism, characterized by hierarchical relations, divergent philosophies and competing domains. Although a ‘new professionalism’ has emerged that challenges the old hierarchies and professional dependencies, it too harbours lingering residues of the former dichotomy between midwives and obstetricians. These tensions and enmities will need to be resolved before genuine collaboration may take full effect. The objective is a relationship focused model of care that transcends professional or woman-focused models. The ‘new’ professionalism may be expedited through mediation strategies, a version of which is the ‘sociological intervention method’ discussed in this article.

Creating spaces for pedagogy : research as learning

As teacher-educators, the authors designed and implemented a small study that mapped teacher-education students' understandings of their own identities and how they made sense of ethnicity and class differences among their secondary students while on teaching rounds. While the authors did not set out to 'teach' their research participants, it was during the analysis of data from the research project, that they began to realise the potential of research to create opportunities for learning. In this paper the authors speculate on the 'conditions' of knowledge production and suggest that the dialogic nature of interviews and focus group discussions can offer pedagogical spaces for learning. Research designs that incorporate opportunities for participants to re-tell narratives over periods of time, may position participants as experts in knowledge production and may reposition them and researchers in more equitable power relations. The authors present an example of one participant's narrative together with their interpretations to explore how research potentially offers 'evidence' of learning. While this is tentative only, the authors suggest there is a need to create spaces for pedagogy in the design and execution of educational research.

Teaching and learning in collaborative group design projects

The 200 years of apprentice/master tradition that underpins the atelier studio system is still at the core of much present-day architectural design education. Yet this tradition poses uncertainties for a large number of lecturers faced with changes in the funding of tertiary education. With reductions in one-to-one staff/student contact time, many educators are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain an atelier teaching model. If these deficiencies remain unchecked and design-based schools are unable to implement strategies to reduce the resource intensity of one-to-one studio teaching programmes, then, for many higher-education providers, current architectural education may be based on an untenable course structure. Rather than spreading their time thinly over a large number of individual projects, an increasing number of lecturers are setting group projects. This allows them to coordinate longer and more in-depth review sessions on a smaller number of assignment submissions. However, while the group model may reflect the realities of the design process in professional practice, the approach is not without shortcomings as a teaching and learning archetype for the assessment of individual student skill competencies. Hence, what is clear is the need for a readily adoptable andragogy for the teaching and assessment of group design projects. The following is a position paper that describes – with a focus on effective group structures and assemblage and fair assessment models – the background, methodology and early results of a Strategic Teaching and Learning Grant currently running at the School of Architecture and Building at Deakin University in Australia.

The plasticity of professional boundaries: a case study of collaborative care in maternity services

A case study of twenty-nine midwives and nine obstetricians working in a regional, public sector Australian hospital demonstrates the plasticity of professional boundaries within a post-welfare state. Driven by new discourses of globalisation, marketisation, managerialism and consumerism, professional boundaries in health care are being blurred, reordered and reconstituted. Government policies that call for a new interdisciplinarity between maternity professionals may be seen as responses to the above pressures. However, there remain considerable barriers to achieving collaborative models including conflicting interpretations of risk, of women's bodies and of childbirth; the veto power of decision-making retained by obstetricians; questions of professional accountability; and diversity over appropriate styles of micro-interaction. Collaboration demands a new egalitarianism to eclipse the old vertical system of obstetric dominance and this means that midwives need to create a distinctive professional specialty, or new object of knowledge. Midwives' skill in 'emotion management' could provide this speciality in addition to their rational-technical knowledge and thus elevate midwifery to an equivalent professional status with obstetrics but as yet neither obstetrics nor midwifery have realised its professionalising potential

Collaborative knowledge creation in electronic mail

With organisational work increasingly performed by the collaboration of distributed groups, an improved understanding is needed of the co-creation of knowledge in emerging virtual structures. We explore the potential of the ubiquitous organisational tool, electronic mail (e-mail), for supporting collaborative knowledge creation in such settings. This research draws on a case study of knowledge creation occurring in e-mail conversations in a large Australian university and adopts a discourse analysis research approach. We describe a model of collaborative knowledge creation derived from the study and identify a preliminary set of key factors for organisational knowledge tools and their use by groups to support collaborative knowledge creation. The paper also provides insights into the role of e-mail in collaborative knowledge creation, not only in facilitating this process, but in shaping a participatory, multi-perspective, team-based approach to knowledge building. Organisational implications arising from this type of knowledge creation are also discussed in the paper.

Educational partnerships on-line: global collaborative learning through an on-line student exchange programme

Deakin University and the University of Calgary have used the internet to provide workplace-based learners with the possibility of a student exchange programme which does not disrupt their careers, lives or families.  The programmes involved in this on-line exchange were both developed in response to the needs of workplace learners and are representative of the role of universities in the field of life-long learning.  This paper describes the first phase of the exchange and discusses the shared pedagogical philosophies and shared implementation of on-line groupware which provided a rationale for the exchange.  The paper will explore the cross-cultural implications of the educational experience and the possibilities such an exchange opens up for life-long learners.

A focus on teaching in online pedagogy

As the Internet continues to grow in popularity and educational institutions feel the need to have a presence online, 'learning and teaching online' has become somewhat of an IT cliché. In many cases course material is made available online and it is left up to the learner to learn. The claims made for online courses promise considerable cost savings after the initial establishment period, and opportunities to provide education to a larger, globalised marketplace. For students, online learning is thought to allow more flexible study options, and the opportunity to work and study at the same time (Bell, et al 2002, p. 27).

In this paper we question the assumption that online teaching is merely making course material available on the World Wide Web. We report on our study of what is involved in the act of teaching online and on the research that led to the development of the 'mobile teaching facility' to enable a focus on teaching in the online environment. We reflect on how a group of academic staff are responding to online teaching. Details of professional development workshops, hardware and software solutions and working with the complexities of pedagogy will also be discussed. This paper is about our findings, recommendations and plans for future explorations.

Globalisation and reflexivity: some challenges for research into quality education mediated by ICTs

Globalisation can be characterised, Giddens (1994) suggests, as a process of 'intensified reflexivity' that creates the conditions for 'a world of clever people'. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are fundamental to globalisation and they have also been incorporated into the new educational technologies deployed by educators to (re)create 'a world of clever people'. Together, education and the ICTs are strong forces for globalisation where both curriculum and pedagogy shape the knowledge and values of the rising generation of 'clever people'. This chapter posits some research issues and questions that might be usefully pursued in transnational collaborative research or are germane to its conduct and contexts. These matters include: the place of ICTs in research work; the challenge of globally inclusive curricula and the impact of English as the global language; and ICTs decentring the research centre.

Mapping pedagogy to technology - a simple model

As academics we are often encouraged to “go online” by our institution, by either moving or supplementing our teaching in an online environment. We have several options. We could simply attempt to replicate our face-to-face teaching, in effect changing nothing; we can enhance our face-to-face teaching with the available technology; or we can transform our face-to-face teaching by the available technology. The approach we choose will be determined by several factors, one of which will be our existing knowledge of the technological environment we are using. In this paper I propose a simple framework which provides novice eTeachers in particular with a simple mapping from classroom activity to technological functionality, reducing the need to have extensive technological literacy of the learning environment when designing online activities initially.

Collaborative online projects in a global community

What is evident in recent literature reviews of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Education is the lack of accessible documentation on the development of, and participation in, collaborative online projects by educationalists. (Blackmore et. al. 2002, Downes et. al. 2001). The major source of information comes in the form of anecdotal evidence from teachers, project facilitators and organisations (Gragert 2000, Carr 2001, Tate 1998, Robertson 1999). Other literature reviews and research that focus on the use of ICT in education have significant gaps in this area and yet it is increasingly promoted in educational policy and supported and promoted by education systems.

This paper identifies and explores the extent and impact of educational technology in the context of collaborative online projects in a global educational community. A general identification of a wide range of local and international collaborative online projects and the groups/communities in which they operate, is followed by a closer look at a selection of case study projects. The case study projects have been selected for their potential to provide new perspectives on the role of technology in education and its potential impact on teaching and learning in a global context.

This paper provides definitions and examples of collaborative online projects, their history and their diversity. It explores the level of participation afforded by the projects and presents a detailed section that focuses on a sample of projects. The collaborative online projects in the case study section are The Environmental Mystery Competition, The First People's Project, Lewin - an Anthology of Children's' Writing and The Teddy Bear Project. The case study projects will be looked at from the perspective of the project facilitators and project participants. In many of the projects items such as books and calendars are products of the projects. Examples of these items will be shown in the presentation.

Establishing best-practice principles for the teaching of group design projects

As student-to-staff ratios escalate, increasing numbers of undergraduate architects are finding the reduction of ‘one-to-one’ studio supervision an impediment to learning. Group design projects are becoming a widespread solution to this problem. However, little analysis has been undertaken as to their effectiveness both in terms of student assessment and as a design teaching methodology.
The two hundred years of apprentice/master tradition that underpins the atelier studio system is still at the core of much present day architectural design education. Yet this tradition today poses uncertainties for a large number of co-ordinating lecturers faced with current changes in the nature of tertiary education and its funding structure. In particular, with reductions in staff/student contact time, in sessional funding sources and in the relative weighting of design-based subjects with respect to other subject areas, many design teachers are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain an atelier system that has shaped both their learning and, more pointedly, their teaching. If these deficiencies remain unchecked and design-based schools are unable to implement strategies that successfully overcome the resource intensive one-to-one teaching program, then architecture may prove to be an untenable course structure for many institutions.
Rather then spreading their time thinly, many co-ordinating lecturers are setting group projects in order to review less assignments but at greater depth. However, while this learning model better reflects design teams in practice, this approach may pose other pedagogical and assessment questions. What is clear is the urgent need for structured research into the teaching and assessment problems experienced by design teachers, and for a readily adoptable pedagogy for group design projects. At Deakin University, research is underway aimed at establishing best-practice principles for group design projects by analysing students’ performance and recording and implementing their feedback to adjustments made to the pedagogical fundamentals of assessment, group configuration, and program structure. There are after two years of preliminary studies already clear indications of what changes can be made to these to encourage more effective team learning. This paper will present the findings of these studies.

Awareness support in a component-based collaborative environment

The awareness support for activities in collaborative environments is important for effective collaboration and coordination. It helps people know who else is doing what in a shared workspace. The amount of awareness needed varies due to specific roles users undertake during collaboration. While emphasizing the importance of roles, we introduced related research on awareness and a component-based collaboration metamodel. Based on that metamodel, several awareness elements were discussed and implemented in a collaborative environment LiveNet4. Model view controller pattern used to construct the Web-based interface of LiveNet4 was also introduced at the end of this paper.

Supporting awareness in asynchronous collaborative environments

One of the major challenges in asynchronous collaborative environment is to provide a sense of awareness of other users actions. The amount of awareness needed varies due to specific roles users undertaking during collaboration. While emphasizing the importance of roles, this paper discusses awareness-role relationship and proposes a role-based approach to specifying the awareness characteristics in asynchronous collaborative environment. An example of implementation of role-based awareness supporting system LiveNet4 is also illustrated at the end of this paper.