when harry met sally: can a bricolage approach integrate with a systems informed modular design? dr...

When Harry met Sally: Can a bricolage approach integrate with a systems informed modular design?

Dr Carmel de NahlikDr John Beech JISC Rococo project, Coventry University

ALT-C 2009CF de Nahlik /J G Beech

Extract from THES last week: “Winning the war of independence” 3 September 2009

• “A strange mode of cognitive dissonance exists among UK academics …... You are encouraged to strive to be an internationally recognised scholar, but your day-to-day working life is dominated by bureaucratic procedures designed by people who sometimes fail to be recognised on their own corridor. You are encouraged to deliver cutting-edge, research-informed teaching, but ..it can take 18 months to get a new module past various Masonic administrative cabals…”

• How true is this for all of us?


What this short paper is aiming to do:

• Consider the possibility of reconciliation two different views on content and learning objects by key university stakeholders.

• How does this engage with content and learning object reuse agendas currently in fashion?

• It is a preliminary study at the moment !


Systems approaches

• Systems approaches offer a way of conceptualising situations and looking for ways to optimise them or reconfigure them in order to improve process outputs

• Hard systems looks at relationships through defined relationships – may include cybernetics e.g. de Neufville and Stafford (1971) (Beer, 1972); Espejo (1997).

• Soft systems takes a structured approach to resolving complex “messy” problems that have multiple stakeholders and political contexts e.g. Checkland and Holwell (1997).

• Key words: logic, structure, hierarchy.


Bricolage

• Lévi-Strauss’s (1967) defines “bricolage” as as making do with “whatever is at hand” (Lévi-Strauss, 1967: 17; Miner, Bassoff, and Moorman, 2001;Weick, 1993a).

• Linked to this is creative adaptation e.g. Baker & Nelson 2005 who looked at entrepreneurs.

• Hamilton et al. (2004) suggest “theory bricolage” in their application of this approach to online distance education.

• Key words: strategic; adapting; re-using.


The Tension

• Systems• Positivist /Realist • Generic• Replicable • Can reuse • Harry

• Bricolage• Post-Modernist• Contextual• Idiosyncratic • Can’t reuse • Sally


The good …

So logic suggests that in a resource constrained environment such as today’s university, the possibility of content or learning object re-use would be attractive to both key stakeholder groups – senior management and module leaders…

but possibly for different reasons .


The case study - how this might work in practice ?


Designing the research project

• Tension once more between different approaches – mirrors the fundamental debate;

• Essentially Action Research/Participant Observation at the moment;

• Move to more systematic approach?• Different journals – different

expectations;• WHO IS THIS FOR?


The preliminary exploratory findings on reuse

• Institution• No problem - there

are sector benchmark statements;

• Economies of scale and scope if broken down into small enough bites;

• Poor understanding of IT complexities;

• We can use it in distance learning so extract more value out of it.

• Individual• Ownership issues –

not mine = not invented here = not loved here;

• May not like part of it – doesn’t understand the design logic or have time to do so;

• Too complex/takes too long to change;

• Concerns about transferability to different student groups.


Using a model as a sense-making tool (Balogun & Hope-Hailey, 2003)


Preliminary Findings

• How small does an object need to be to be valuable to a reuser?

• Complexity of packages uploaded in to repository and ease of reengineering versus JIT timetabling;

• IP – not just a local issue?• Uncertainty about re-use in different

contexts – concepts of “craft” and discipline boundaries.


More to come …

• Move from exploratory to larger research project

• Larger systematic evaluation• Design of data capture and analysis materials• Any partners out there?

• THANKS • Questions please?

when harry met sally: can a bricolage approach integrate with a systems informed modular design? dr...

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