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Gathers, Weavers and Augmenters:�Three principles for dynamic and sustainable delivery of quality learning and teaching

Steven Booten

Henry Cook

David Jones

Arts, Education & Law, Griffith University

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CRICOS: 00233E | TEQSA: PRV12076

Griffith University acknowledges the people who are the Traditional Custodians of the land. We pay respect�to the Elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

Together, Sid Domic

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Why (should you care)?
What did we do?
So what?
What’s next?

Overview

We’ll start by explaining why we did the work contained here. A bit of our context. But also link this to the broader fundamental problem that all of higher education – and the folk gathered here are facing – why should you care.

A large chunk of the talk will be in explaining what we did. Not to suggest that what we did was uber original or that the exact things we did should be mirrored – they can probably have been done better. Instead, the focus is using that experience to explain the lessons/principles we learned during that experience. Insights that we think may help others address the fundamental problem in ways appropriate to their context. In ways that are better than many standard approaches.

Why should you care about what we did? Esp. if what we’re talking about may challenge some of what institutions are currently doing, perhaps even quite happily. The “so what” section shows the connections between what we did/what we’re thinking about how to solve this problem and work that is being done both in practice and research within the fields of information technology/systems, learning and teaching, and leadership/strategy.

Lastly, we’ll briefly give some indications what what might happen next? But these are slightly informed extrapoloations. We need to learn more about what you’re doing in this space. What you’re thinking��As such this presentation is more about finding folk facing the same challenge and learning more about what you’re doing to address it.

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Why (should you care)?
What did we do?
So what?
What’s next?

Overview

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(Productivity Commission, 2023, p. 11)

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“Concerns were expressed …about the possibility, if not likelihood, of some HEPs maximising on the economic advantages of online deliveries, while compromising quality.

(Productivity Commission, 2023, p. 11)

(Lodge et al, 2022, p. 42)

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https://tinyurl.com/noteaching

(Smee, 2023)

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“…key issue for contemporary higher education… maintain the quality of teaching, learning and assessment while teaching at scale”

“…called an iron triangle because improvement of one of these… indicators will inevitably deteriorate one of the two or both other… if circumstances and conditions are not changed

(Ryan et al, 2021, p. 1383)

(Mulder, 2013, p. 99)

Scale

Diversity

Accessibility

Cost Efficiency

Quality

Dynamic

Sustainable

What the productivity commission is targeting – the desire to maximise all three of cost efficiency, quality and accessibility (in terms of the number and diversity of access) - is fairly well known in the higher education literature. Ryan and colleagues identified it as the key issue for contemporary higher education.

The challenge – as Ryan, Mulder and others have pointed out – is that these three aims can be said to form an iron triangle. i.e. the connections between these three indicators are iron like. Move one of the indicators and the other will also move – for the worse.

The recent pandemic emergency response is a good example of the iron triangle at work. We and our colleagues had to work hard to radically improve the accessibility of higher education during the pandemic away from face-to-face to safer means. There is significant literature – and I imagine personal experience in this room – that can attest to the fact that doing so only happened at tremendous additional cost to the teachers and support staff involved. Not to mention subsequent impressions that the quality of the learning experience suffered in comparison.

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“…called an iron triangle because improvement of one of these… indicators will inevitably deteriorate one of the two or both other… if circumstances and conditions are not changed

(Mulder, 2013, p. 99)

Scale

Diversity

Accessibility

Cost Efficiency

Quality

Dynamic

Sustainable

How to stretch the iron triangle?

Institution	Group
4500+ courses	1700+ (~38%)

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Why (should you care)?
What did we do?
So what?
What’s next?

Overview

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Standard approach

Gather

Architecture

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Standard approach

Architecture

Staff Information

Learning Modules

Assessment

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Standard approach

Architecture

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Standard approach

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Gather

Gather &�Weave

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

Institution	Group
4500+ courses	1700+ (~38%)

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Learning environments�& experiences

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Gather &�Weave

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

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Actions	Description
Gather	Obtain and make digitally available necessary strands of context, values, design, pedagogy, and technology
Weave	Combine different strands to fit a specific design and context

(Semi-)automate gathering & weaving?

How to stretch the iron triangle?

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AEL approach - Analysis

Course �sites

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

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AEL approach - Analysis

Course �sites

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

Gather

Migration dBase

Course site pickles

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AEL approach - Analysis

Course �sites

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

Gather

Migration dBase

Course site pickles

How many echo360 embeds does each Bb course contain?

How many Bb courses include echo360 embeds?

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AEL approach - Analysis

Course �sites

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

Gather

Migration dBase

Course site pickles

Detailed Report

Weave

Augment

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AEL approach - Analysis

Course �sites

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

Gather

Migration dBase

Course site pickles

Detailed Report

Weave

Augment

Breakdown of all iframes in Bb course site

Table of echo360 embeds that would work in Canvas – automatically provided

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Actions

“Ideas of using information technologies to augment human cognitive and perceptual abilities have been stated by visionaries of the last century”

(Schmidt, 2017, p. 7)

Actions	Description
Gather	Obtain and make digitally available necessary strands of context, values, design, pedagogy, and technology
Weave	Combine different strands for some purpose
Augment	Provide artefacts that augment human capabilities

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AEL approach - Analysis

Course �sites

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

Gather

Migration dBase

Course site pickles

Detailed Report

Weave

Augment

Collated Report

How many echo360 embeds does each Bb course contain?

How many Bb courses include echo360 embeds?

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AEL approach - Analysis

Course �sites

Course �profiles

AEL �course �list

Context & design�knowledge

Architecture

Gather

Migration dBase

Course site pickles

Detailed Report

Weave

Augment

Collated Report

How many echo360 embeds does each Bb course contain?�

How many Bb courses include echo360 embeds?

105 out of 604

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https://tinyurl.com/gatherWeaveAugment

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Migrate via Word doc

https://tinyurl.com/gatherWeaveAugment

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Quality assurance

https://tinyurl.com/gatherWeaveAugment

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+

Course design - visual design & findability

https://tinyurl.com/gatherWeaveAugment

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How to stretch the iron triangle?

Use digital technologies to automate and augment gathering & weaving

How was it done?

Institution	Group
4500+ courses	1700+ (~38%)

All this is a long way of saying that we stretched the iron triangle because by using digital technologies to automate and augment gathering and weaving. That’s kind of an obvious statement. That’s one of the key applications of digital technologies.

Why were we able to do it when the other groups didn’t? Lots of reasons, perhaps because we had more courses and greater diversity. We felt the pressure of the iron triangle more.

Why did it work? Well the following provides an initial answer to that question. There is more work to it, but the following principles provide a bit more practice advice about how we think we were somewhat successful in automating/augmenting gathering and weaving.

"Thank you Captain Obvious" flickr photo by johnscotthaydon https://flickr.com/photos/johnhaydon/5042881685 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

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Three Principles

On-going activity focused (re-)entanglement��No such thing as greenfield. Work with what’s there.��Focus on activity. Not specific technology.��Start small. Learn, respond to new requirements, improve.

Analysis

Migration

Quality assurance

Course Design

The first and perhaps most important is to focus on the activity and continue refining what you are doing.

Our focus wasn’t on Common Cartridge, Blackboard, Canvas, Echo360 or the individual technologies. Our focus was on the activities we had to perform – analysis, migration, quality assurance and design of course sites. In an AEL context. Such an activity is a complex and contextual entanglement of disparate bits and pieces. The overall focus, however, was on how can maximise the cost efficiency, quality, and accessibility of these activities now and into the future.

Which picks up another important point. We didn’t go into this knowing how to do this. Canvas and the act of migrating to Canvas was entirely new to us. We had to explore, experiment, learn and explore, experiment and learn some more. Just when you think you’ve seen everything that someone could do in a Blackboard site, you see something completely unexpected and novel.

This git commits give some inkling of the evolutionary/emergent nature of this. This was not a one and done project. This was an on-going process of refinement. Whilst the Canvas migration initiated a lot of this work, we always tried not to see this work as a migration project. i.e. we weren’t keen on doing work that we would simply throw away when the migration would finish. That’s not very sustainable. All of the activities we focused on – save perhaps migration a touch – are tasks we will continue to help with and hopefully continue to refine.

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On-going activity focused (re-)entanglement

Redesign for use in BAU

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Three Principles

On-going activity focused (re-)entanglement
Contextual digital augmentation��Context and design specific knowledge is embedded digitally into processes and products

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Contextual digital augmentation

Canvas

Only way to embed design and context knowledge is manually naming modules & items

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Contextual digital augmentation

+

Design specific collections of modules

Design specific labels, visual images and descriptions

Knowledge of Griffith academic calendar

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Three Principles

On-going activity focused (re-)entanglement
Contextual digital augmentation
Meso-level focus��Fill the gap between the bespoke/manual & universal��Be able to sustainably & dynamically support diverse contexts��

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Meso-level focus

Dates and calendars are a good example of meso-level focus. As you may know, the notion of there being a single academic calendar for an institution is silly. I’ve listed here just four of the academic calendars at play in our group that can be found on the main university website. There are others. Other groups have more.

Given this variety, standard advice for course sites is to choose between

Don’t provide specific calendar dates, use generic dates instead (Wed, Week 8)
Make sure you manually check and correct specific calendar dates every time you reuse content

Generic dates annoy busy students. Why should they have to memorise the unique academic calendar for their course?

Hence, as originally designed, Collections supports the ability to provide bespoke calendars. It embeds that contextual knowledge into the tool and actively supports the disparate practices. If you’re looking to maximise accessibility – in particular diversity of offerings – you need to be able to support a meso-level focus.

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Why (should you care)?
What did we do?

Products, Actions & Principles

So what?
What’s next?

Overview

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Challenges existing assumptions & practices

Mirrors alternate existing & emerging assumptions & practices

Couldn’t be done using existing assumptions and practices

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Digital Technology

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Digital Technology

Buy

Adopt

Build

Use

Orchestrate

Sell

Share

Organisational�Context

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Digital Technology

Buy

Adopt

Build

Use

Orchestrate

Sell

Share

Citizen development

(Inside Track Staff, 2022)

From Project to Product�(Philip & Thirion, 2021)

Lightweight vs Heavyweight�IT development�(Bygstad, 2017)

And we’re not alone in doing this.

Canvas for example uses a RESTful architecture. It’s explicitly designed and Canvas explicitly markets their LMS as being open and extensible. We’re meant to use the RESTful API to orchestrate Canvas with other aspects of our institutions “NGDLE”.

Dwarfing Canvas is the massive Robotic Process Automation industry. An industry that is explicitly built on the obvious need to orchestrate existing services in order to be more efficient. Expenditure apparently reaching $2.9 billion in 2022 appears to be highly suggestive of a real need there. A quick Google search on the weekend revealed at least four Australian universities with significant institutional projects looking to apply RPA to their core business – administrative processes. What about L&T?

And this must all be a think because Microsoft are doing a big push with Citizen Development.

There’s also work in the agile/dev ops community about moving from project to product which resonates with our work. As does research in information systems talking about lightweight and heavyweight IT development.

staff, I. T. (2022, October 19). Citizen developers use Microsoft Power Apps to build an intelligent launch assistant. Inside Track Blog. https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/citizen-developers-use-microsoft-power-apps-to-build-intelligent-launch-assistant/

Philip, M., & Thirion, Y. (2021). From Project to Product. In P. Gregory & P. Kruchten (Eds.), Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops (pp. 207–212). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88583-0_21

Bygstad, B. (2017). Generative Innovation: A Comparison of Lightweight and Heavyweight IT. Journal of Information Technology, 32(2), 180–193. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2016.15

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Learning and Teaching

Technology is “…the orchestration of �phenomena for some purpose”�(Arthur, 2009, p. 51)

(Fawns, 2022, p. 719)

entangled pedagogy…encapsulates the mutual shaping of technology, teaching methods, purposes, values and context

(Fawns, 2022, p. 711)

Human-enacted technologies like organizational processes…are as much technologies as cars or factories

(Dron, 2022, p. 156)

At least some of the L&T literature is moving beyond the unhelpful separation of pedagogy and technology into more useful conceptualisations.

Fawns concept of entangled pedagogy includes the mutual shaping of all the required elements – technology, teaching methods etc – to achieve specific contextual purposes. Echoing Arthur’s definition of technology as the orchestration of phenomena – which can include other technologies – for a purpose.

As pointed about by Dron, this is a definition that means the processes that we enact – e.g. a teaching method/pedagogy – is a type of technology. Meaning that none of us in higher education work in a technology free zone. Meaning that arguments about pedagogy or technology first. Or, distinctions between technology and pedagogy are pointless. What’s important is how effectively we can orchestrate the different phenomena to achieve our purpose

Fawns, T. (2022). An Entangled Pedagogy: Looking Beyond the Pedagogy—Technology Dichotomy. Postdigital Science and Education, 4(3), 711–728. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00302-7

Ellis, R. A., & Goodyear, P. (2019). The Education Ecology of Universities: Integrating Learning, Strategy and the Academy. Routledge.

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Learning and Teaching

“Management cannot focus on the needs�of every student…Taking activity systems�as fundamental units of analysis & action�makes management problems more tractable�and alignment across functional areas more�feasible.” (Ellis & Goodyear, 2019, p. 241)

“…take an activity systems’ view �towards capabilities to foreground�teaching as a distributed activity”�(Markauskaite et al, 2023, p. 186)

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Learning and Teaching

Four key dimensions

Combination and integration of different kinds of knowledge;
Coordination and weaving different ways of knowing;
Creating tools and assembling productive environments;
Constructing a conscientious and conscious self

(Markauskaite, Carvalho & Fawns, 2023)

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Strategy

Smooth users

Digital nomads

Collective agents

“Global challenges… call for further radical changes in university teaching, requiring an even richer convergence of ‘natural’, ‘human’ and ‘digital’ (Markauskaite et al, 2023)

Higher ed’s role as

Societal leader
Shaper & exemplar of best practice
Influence on local & national policy
Educator of the next generation

�(Bessant, Robinson, Omerod, 2015)

Will students become?

(Macgilchrist, Allert, & Bruch, 2020)

In terms of strategy and leadership, one relevant perspective arises about the increasing importance placed on sustainability. There’s various literature exploring if and how that focus will influence learning and teaching within Universities. This is important because Universities are seen to play various important roles in relation to society and sustainability.

In terms of “education and (digital) technologies”, Macgilchrist and colleagues explore three very different possible futures of what our students (ourselves) might be. Of those futures, the collective agents future is the one best positioned to deal effectively with societal/global issues like sustainability. They then work back to describe the history of “education and technology” that creates those future. At least for me, the standard approach in higher education at the moment appears to be positioning as smooth users and perhaps digital nomads. Whereas the type of approach we’ve been using seems to position us more as collective agents.

Macgilchrist, F., Allert, H., & Bruch, A. (2020). Students and society in the 2020s. Three future ‘histories’ of education and technology. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(0), 76–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1656235

Markauskaite, L., Carvalho, L., & Fawns, T. (2023). The role of teachers in a sustainable university: From digital competencies to postdigital capabilities. Educational Technology Research and Development, 71(1), 181–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-023-10199-z

Bessant, S. E. F., Robinson, Z. P., & Ormerod, R. M. (2015). Neoliberalism, new public management and the sustainable development agenda of higher education: History, contradictions and synergies. Environmental Education Research, 21(3), 417–432. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2014.993933

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Why (should you care)?
What did we do?
So what?
What’s next?

Overview

https://tinyurl.com/gatherWeaveAugment

Vendors

Communities

Institutions

Groups

Teachers

Students

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Arthur, W. B. (2009). The Nature of Technology: What it is and how it evolves. Free Press.

Bessant, S. E. F., Robinson, Z. P., & Ormerod, R. M. (2015). Neoliberalism, new public management and the sustainable development agenda of higher education: History, contradictions and synergies. Environmental Education Research, 21(3), 417–432. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2014.993933

Bygstad, B. (2017). Generative Innovation: A Comparison of Lightweight and Heavyweight IT. Journal of Information Technology, 32(2), 180–193. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2016.15

Cassidy, C. (2023, April 10). ‘Appallingly unethical’: Why Australian universities are at breaking point. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/10/appallingly-unethical-why-australian-universities-are-at-breaking-point

Ellis, R. A., & Goodyear, P. (2019). The Education Ecology of Universities: Integrating Learning, Strategy and the Academy. Routledge.

Fawns, T. (2022). An Entangled Pedagogy: Looking Beyond the Pedagogy—Technology Dichotomy. Postdigital Science and Education, 4(3), 711–728. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00302-7

Hagler, B. (2020). Council Post: Build Vs. Buy: Why Most Businesses Should Buy Their Next Software Solution. Forbes. Retrieved April 15, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/03/04/build-vs-buy-why-most-businesses-should-buy-their-next-software-solution/

Inside Track Staff. (2022, October 19). Citizen developers use Microsoft Power Apps to build an intelligent launch assistant. Inside Track Blog. https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/citizen-developers-use-microsoft-power-apps-to-build-intelligent-launch-assistant/

References

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Lodge, J., Matthews, K., Kubler, M., & Johnstone, M. (2022). Modes of Delivery in Higher Education (p. 159). https://www.education.gov.au/higher-education-standards-panel-hesp/resources/modes-delivery-report

Macgilchrist, F., Allert, H., & Bruch, A. (2020). Students and society in the 2020s. Three future ‘histories’ of education and technology. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(0), 76–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1656235

Markauskaite, L., Carvalho, L., & Fawns, T. (2023). The role of teachers in a sustainable university: From digital competencies to postdigital capabilities. Educational Technology Research and Development, 71(1), 181–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-023-10199-z

Mulder, F. (2013). The LOGIC of National Policies and Strategies for Open Educational Resources. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(2), 96–105. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v14i2.1536

Philip, M., & Thirion, Y. (2021). From Project to Product. In P. Gregory & P. Kruchten (Eds.), Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops (pp. 207–212). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88583-0_21

Ryan, T., French, S., & Kennedy, G. (2021). Beyond the Iron Triangle: Improving the quality of teaching and learning at scale. Studies in Higher Education, 46(7), 1383–1394. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1679763

Schmidt, A. (2017). Augmenting Human Intellect and Amplifying Perception and Cognition. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 16(1), 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1109/MPRV.2017.8

Smee, B. (2023, March 6). ‘No actual teaching’: Alarm bells over online courses outsourced by Australian universities. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/07/no-actual-teaching-alarm-bells-over-online-courses-outsourced-by-australian-universities

References

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Slides 14 and 15: "boxes" flickr photo by zaziepoo https://flickr.com/photos/zazie/8604711982 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

Slide 16: "Broken from moving van" flickr photo by CoreyPud https://flickr.com/photos/coreyp/2240570443 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

"Thank you Captain Obvious" flickr photo by johnscotthaydon https://flickr.com/photos/johnhaydon/5042881685 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

Slide 44: "Weirdo graffiti, Barcelona" flickr photo by duncan cumming https://flickr.com/photos/duncan/52623102628 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

Image attribution

A slight improvement but still rough visualisation of the entire landscape of what might be possible/preferable in terms of what’s next. Needs more work in terms of content and visualisation. The “assembly and sharing” phrase is intended to be a placeholder for the type of stuff we do. What’s a better name?

The idea being to show a map of the different things we could do next. But something showing that the work we’ve been doing is in the very narrow slice of learning designers. With more work to do

Below or past us;�i.e. at the level of programs, courses, teachers and students.
Above or before us;�i.e. at the level of groups, central teams, institutions, society etc.

i.e. “what’s next” covers work refining what we’re doing at our level, but also connecting up with work that is being done at other levels. E.g.

Below or past us

Academics/Students

The ability for academics and students to gather/weave (students as partners)

Our level

BAU and CASA – ACAD, Ellis & Goodyear small set of activities
Easier and quicker approach to assemble

Above or before us

Sharing and shared development of CASA within the institution
Notions of sustainable universities, sustainable development goals,
open practice and open infrastructure - https://homonym.ca/uncategorized/open-infrastructure-and-open-education-practices/

Currently we’re the only ones engaging in the three processes – what could be done to expand/improve

Multiple groups at Griffith doing this
Multiple institutions – broader sector
Individual CASA development

Need to include teacher, student etc.