Distance Education and the Integration of E-learning in a Graduate Program

Historically, distance education consisted of a combination of face-to-face blocks of time and surface mailed packages. However, advances in information technology literacy and the abundance of personal computers has placed e-learning in increased demand. The authors describe the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the blending of e-learning with face-to-face education in the postgraduate nursing forum. Experiences of this particular student group are also discussed.

An exploratory study of online social networking within a Doctorate of Education program

The professional doctorate is a degree that is specifically designed for professionals investigating real-world problems and relevant issues for a profession, industry and/or the community. The exploratory study on which this paper is based sought to track the scholarly skill development of a cohort of professional doctoral students who commenced their course in January 2008 at an Australian university. Via an initial survey and two focus groups held six months apart, the study aimed to determine if there had been any qualitative shifts in students’ understandings, expectations and perceptions regarding their developing knowledge and skills. Three key findings that emerged from this study were: (i) the appropriateness of using a blended learning approach in this professional doctoral program; (ii) the challenges of using wikis as an online technology for creating communities of practice; and (iii) the transition from professional to scholar is a process that requires the guided support inherent in the design of this particular doctorate of education program.

Teachers’ conceptions of essential knowledge for integrated social education : a middle years of schooling perspective from Australia

Integrated social education in Australia is a divisive educational issue. The last decade has been marked by a controversial integrated social studies curriculum called Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) where history, geography and environmental studies were integrated with civics and citizenship. The introduction of a compulsory K-10 Australian Curriculum from 2011, however, marks the return to history and geography and the abandonment of SOSE. Curriculum reform aside, what do teachers think is essential knowledge for middle years social education? The paper reports on a phenomenographical exploration of thirty-one middle school teachers’ conceptions of essential knowledge for SOSE. Framed by Shulman’s (1986, 1987) theoretical framework of the knowledge base for teaching, the research identified seven qualitatively different ways of understanding essential knowledge for integrated social education. The study indicates a practice-based theorization of integrated social education that justifies attention to disciplinary process and teacher identity in middle school social education.

Pre-service teacher education and the development of middle school teacher identity : an exploratory study

This research study investigated the factors that influenced the development of teacher identity in a small cohort of mature-aged graduate pre-service teachers over the course of a one-year Graduate Diploma program (Middle Years). It sought to illuminate the social and relational dynamics of these pre-service teachers’ experiences as they began new ways of being and learning during a newly introduced one-year Graduate Diploma program. A relational-ontological perspective underpinned the relational-cultural framework that was applied in a workshop program as an integral part of this research. A relational-ontological perspective suggests that the development of teacher identity is to be construed more as an ontological process than an epistemological one. Its focus is more on questions surrounding the person and their ‘becoming’ a teacher than about the knowledge they have or will come to have. Hence, drawing on work by researchers such as Alsup (2006), Gilligan, (1982), Isaacs, (2007), Miller (1976), Noddings, (2005), Stout (2001), and Taylor, (1989), teacher identity was defined as an individual pre-service teacher’s unique sense of self as a teacher that included his or her beliefs about teaching and learning (Alsup, 2006; Stout, 2001; Walkington, 2005). Case-study was the preferred methodology within which this research project was framed, and narrative research was used as a method to document the way teacher identity was shaped and negotiated in discursive environments such as teacher education programs, prior experiences, classroom settings and the practicum. The data that was collected included student narratives, student email written reflections, and focus group dialogue. The narrative approach applied in this research context provided the depth of data needed to understand the nature of the mature-aged pre-service teachers’ emerging teacher identities and experiences in the graduate diploma program. Findings indicated that most of the mature-aged graduate pre-service teachers came in to the one-year graduate diploma program with a strong sense of personal and professional selves and well-established reasons why they had chosen to teach Middle Years. Their choice of program involved an expectation of support and welcome to a middle-school community and culture. Two critical issues that emerged from the pre-service teachers’ narratives were the importance they placed on the human support including the affirmation of themselves and their emerging teacher identities. Evidence from this study suggests that the lack of recognition of preservice teachers’ personal and professional selves during the graduate diploma program inhibited the development of a positive middle-school teacher identity. However, a workshop program developed for the participants in this research and addressing a range of practical concerns to beginning teachers offered them a space where they felt both a sense of belonging to a community and where their thoughts and beliefs were recognized and valued. Thus, the workshops provided participants with the positive social and relational dynamics necessary to support them in their developing teacher identities. The overall findings of this research study strongly indicate a need for a relational support structure based on a relational-ontological perspective to be built into the overall course structure of Graduate Pre-service Diplomas in Education to support the development of teacher identity. Such a support structure acknowledges that the pre-service teacher’s learning and formation is socially embedded, relational, and a continual, lifelong process.

Developing creativity and innovation in management education : an artful event for transformative learning

This paper argues that management education needs to consider a trend in learning design which advances more creative learning through an alliance with art-based pedagogical processes. A shift is required from skills training to facilitating transformational learning through experiences that expand human potential, facilitated by artistic processes. In this paper the authors discuss the necessity for creativity and innovation in the workplace and the need to develop better leaders and managers. The inclusion of arts-based processes enhances artful behaviour, aesthetics and creativity within management and organisational behaviour, generating important implications for business innovation. This creative learning focus stems from an analysis of an arts-based intervention for management development. Entitled Management Jazz the program was conducted over three years at a large Australian University. The paper reviews some of the salient literature in the field. It considers four stages of the learning process: capacity, artful event, increased capability, and application/action to produce product. One illustrative example of an arts-based learning process is provided from the Management Jazz program. Research findings indicate that artful learning opportunities enhance capacity for awareness of creativity in one’s self and in others. This capacity correlates positively with a perception that engaging in artful learning enhances the capability of managers in changing collaborative relationships and habitat constraint. The authors conclude that it is through engagement and creative alliance with the arts that management education can explore and discover artful approaches to building creativity and innovation. The illustration presented in this paper will be delivered as a brief workshop at the Fourth Art of Management Conference. The process of bricolage and articles at hand will be used to explore creative constraints and prototypes while generating group collaboration. The mini-workshop will conclude with discussion of the arts-based process and capability enhancement outcomes.

Introduction and Epilogue to Special Issue: Re-conceiving the artful in management development and education

The editorial focus of this issue is on artful, aesthetic and artistic endeavours in management. Being artful is not about arts-based quick fixes. In the context of this Special Issue, to be artful is to transform self through profound learning experiences that expand human consciousness, often facilitated by artistic processes. In management education and development this suggests a shift from instrumental management towards a paradigm of artful creation. Why the arts and artfulness? And why now? In what ways can the arts inform, inspire and leverage management development and education?

Developing new alliances in higher education leadership and governance : autopoietic application of the “arts” creative capacities

This paper, underpinned by a framework of autopoietic principles of creativity/innovation and leadership/governance, argues that open forms of creativity in ‘arts’ provide opportunity for impact upon concepts of development, leadership and governance. The alliance of creativity and governance suggests that by examining various understandings of artistic experiences, readers may perceive new understandings of alliance, application and assessment of such experiences. This critical understanding would include assessing whether such experience supports people changing their aspirations as they become what they want to be. Such understanding may also suggest that different applications of the creative capacity of the ‘arts’ offers relevance in alleged ‘non-creative’ areas of academe, particularly in areas of management, leadership and governance. This alliance also offers the possibility of new staff development programs that facilitate learning and building of individual capacity, as well as facilitate congruent development process and policy, particularly within academic organisational structures.

The modulation of outdoor running speed : the influence of gradient

This thesis aimed to investigate the way in which distance runners modulate their speed in an effort to understand the key processes and determinants of speed selection when encountering hills in natural outdoor environments. One factor which has limited the expansion of knowledge in this area has been a reliance on the motorized treadmill which constrains runners to constant speeds and gradients and only linear paths. Conversely, limits in the portability or storage capacity of available technology have restricted field research to brief durations and level courses. Therefore another aim of this thesis was to evaluate the capacity of lightweight, portable technology to measure running speed in outdoor undulating terrain. The first study of this thesis assessed the validity of a non-differential GPS to measure speed, displacement and position during human locomotion. Three healthy participants walked and ran over straight and curved courses for 59 and 34 trials respectively. A non-differential GPS receiver provided speed data by Doppler Shift and change in GPS position over time, which were compared with actual speeds determined by chronometry. Displacement data from the GPS were compared with a surveyed 100m section, while static positions were collected for 1 hour and compared with the known geodetic point. GPS speed values on the straight course were found to be closely correlated with actual speeds (Doppler shift: r = 0.9994, p < 0.001, Δ GPS position/time: r = 0.9984, p < 0.001). Actual speed errors were lowest using the Doppler shift method (90.8% of values within ± 0.1 m.sec -1). Speed was slightly underestimated on a curved path, though still highly correlated with actual speed (Doppler shift: r = 0.9985, p < 0.001, Δ GPS distance/time: r = 0.9973, p < 0.001). Distance measured by GPS was 100.46 ± 0.49m, while 86.5% of static points were within 1.5m of the actual geodetic point (mean error: 1.08 ± 0.34m, range 0.69-2.10m). Non-differential GPS demonstrated a highly accurate estimation of speed across a wide range of human locomotion velocities using only the raw signal data with a minimal decrease in accuracy around bends. This high level of resolution was matched by accurate displacement and position data. Coupled with reduced size, cost and ease of use, the use of a non-differential receiver offers a valid alternative to differential GPS in the study of overground locomotion. The second study of this dissertation examined speed regulation during overground running on a hilly course. Following an initial laboratory session to calculate physiological thresholds (VO2 max and ventilatory thresholds), eight experienced long distance runners completed a self- paced time trial over three laps of an outdoor course involving uphill, downhill and level sections. A portable gas analyser, GPS receiver and activity monitor were used to collect physiological, speed and stride frequency data. Participants ran 23% slower on uphills and 13.8% faster on downhills compared with level sections. Speeds on level sections were significantly different for 78.4 ± 7.0 seconds following an uphill and 23.6 ± 2.2 seconds following a downhill. Speed changes were primarily regulated by stride length which was 20.5% shorter uphill and 16.2% longer downhill, while stride frequency was relatively stable. Oxygen consumption averaged 100.4% of runner’s individual ventilatory thresholds on uphills, 78.9% on downhills and 89.3% on level sections. Group level speed was highly predicted using a modified gradient factor (r2 = 0.89). Individuals adopted distinct pacing strategies, both across laps and as a function of gradient. Speed was best predicted using a weighted factor to account for prior and current gradients. Oxygen consumption (VO2) limited runner’s speeds only on uphill sections, and was maintained in line with individual ventilatory thresholds. Running speed showed larger individual variation on downhill sections, while speed on the level was systematically influenced by the preceding gradient. Runners who varied their pace more as a function of gradient showed a more consistent level of oxygen consumption. These results suggest that optimising time on the level sections after hills offers the greatest potential to minimise overall time when running over undulating terrain. The third study of this thesis investigated the effect of implementing an individualised pacing strategy on running performance over an undulating course. Six trained distance runners completed three trials involving four laps (9968m) of an outdoor course involving uphill, downhill and level sections. The initial trial was self-paced in the absence of any temporal feedback. For the second and third field trials, runners were paced for the first three laps (7476m) according to two different regimes (Intervention or Control) by matching desired goal times for subsections within each gradient. The fourth lap (2492m) was completed without pacing. Goals for the Intervention trial were based on findings from study two using a modified gradient factor and elapsed distance to predict the time for each section. To maintain the same overall time across all paced conditions, times were proportionately adjusted according to split times from the self-paced trial. The alternative pacing strategy (Control) used the original split times from this initial trial. Five of the six runners increased their range of uphill to downhill speeds on the Intervention trial by more than 30%, but this was unsuccessful in achieving a more consistent level of oxygen consumption with only one runner showing a change of more than 10%. Group level adherence to the Intervention strategy was lowest on downhill sections. Three runners successfully adhered to the Intervention pacing strategy which was gauged by a low Root Mean Square error across subsections and gradients. Of these three, the two who had the largest change in uphill-downhill speeds ran their fastest overall time. This suggests that for some runners the strategy of varying speeds systematically to account for gradients and transitions may benefit race performances on courses involving hills. In summary, a non – differential receiver was found to offer highly accurate measures of speed, distance and position across the range of human locomotion speeds. Self-selected speed was found to be best predicted using a weighted factor to account for prior and current gradients. Oxygen consumption limited runner’s speeds only on uphills, speed on the level was systematically influenced by preceding gradients, while there was a much larger individual variation on downhill sections. Individuals were found to adopt distinct but unrelated pacing strategies as a function of durations and gradients, while runners who varied pace more as a function of gradient showed a more consistent level of oxygen consumption. Finally, the implementation of an individualised pacing strategy to account for gradients and transitions greatly increased runners’ range of uphill-downhill speeds and was able to improve performance in some runners. The efficiency of various gradient-speed trade- offs and the factors limiting faster downhill speeds will however require further investigation to further improve the effectiveness of the suggested strategy.

Technological talespinning : new media and higher education in the USA : an examination of technological determinism

This thesis examines the theory of technological determinism, which espouses the view that technological change drives social change, through an analysis of the impact of new media on higher education models in the United States of America. In so doing, it explores the impacts of new media technologies on higher education, in particular, and society in general. The thesis reviews the theoretical shape of the discourse surrounding new media technologies before narrowing in on utopian claims about the impact of new media technologies on education. It tests these claims through a specific case study of higher education in the USA. The study investigates whether 'new' media technologies (eg the Internet) are resulting in new forms of higher education in the USA and whether the blurring of information and entertainment technologies has caused a similar blurring in education and entertainment providers. It uses primary data gathered by the author in a series of interviews with key education, industry and media representatives in North America in 1997. Chapter 2 looks at the literature and history surrounding several topics central to the thesis - the discourses of technological determinism, the history of technology use and adoption in education, and impacts of new media technologies on education. Chapter 3 presents the findings of the American case study on the relationship between media and higher education and Chapter 4 concludes and synthesises the investigation.