Communication Commons^™

Exploring The Development Of Learning Communities In Online Settings, Ron Oliver, Christopher Brook

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper discusses the notion of community as an outcome of working within an online environment. In particular, the paper explores the concept of users' development of a sense of community as an outcome of working within an online environment designed to support the professional and personal development of its users. The paper discusses previous research, which has explored the development of a sense of community and reports a study that investigates the development of a sense of community among users of a community-oriented site supporting teachers' professional development. The data gathered in this inquiry provided evidence that the users …

Online Learning Design For Dummies: Professional Development Strategies For Beginning Online Designers, Ron Oliver, Janice Herrington

Research outputs pre 2011

Much of the conventional development of Web-based learning environments stems from design strategies that are based on providing delivery of the course content. Contemporary courseware delivery systems encourage teachers to see the design of online learning as settings as a process of electronic delivery of content and information. As a consequence Web-based courses have tended to display limited evidence of an underpinning learning design and varying degrees of use of the opportunities and affordances of the new technologies. This paper provides an overview of instructional design principles that can guide beginning designers in the creation of Web-based learning materials that …

Formalising The Description Of Learning Designs, Ron Oliver, Barry Harper, John Hedberg, Sandra Wills, Shirley Agostinho

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper describes an activity being undertaken by researchers involved in the AUTC funded Project: Information and Communication Technologies and Their Role in Flexible Learning. The project is seeking to investigate and develop generic and reusable frameworks for the provision of technology-enhanced high quality learning experiences in higher education. To achieve this, the researchers have been exploring ways to formalise generic descriptions of some learning designs that foster knowledge construction and problem solving. This paper provides a summary of the work that has been undertaken and describes the generic descriptions that have been developed in this process.

Authentic Activities And Online Learning, Ron Oliver, Janice Herrington, Thomas Reeves

Research outputs pre 2011

There has been a renewed interest in the role of student activities within course units as constructivist philosophy and advances in technology impact on educational design and practice. This paper proposes ten characteristics of authentic activities, based on a substantial body of educational theory and research, which can assist teachers to design more authentic activities for online learning environments. The paper includes a short review of the literature, together with the list of characteristics attributed to appropriate authors and theorists. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the affordances of Internet technologies can facilitate the operationalisation of authentic activities …

Open Online Assessment: Keeping The Tutors Honest!, Corri Barrett, Joseph Luca

Research outputs pre 2011

Tutors often find it difficult to mark consistently across all students in their classes. Students will occasionally complain about marking inconsistencies noticed when they compare assignments. The task of maintaining consistency in marking becomes much more difficult when all students can openly see everybody’s solutions, marks and tutors’ comments. This task becomes even more difficult when the marking of tutors from other classes is also available to be seen openly. This case study describes a learning environment that had four tutors in four separate classes with a total of 85 students. Students were required to post solutions to an online …

Satisfying Real Client Requirements Through Student-Centred Coursework, Kenneth Ireland, Pina Tarricone, Joseph Luca

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper outlines a rationale and course design strategy used for creating a course that was student-centred and focused on satisfying the needs of industry clients through project work. The pedagogical underpinnings of the course are based on authentic assessment, which is used to promote motivation and interest of students in a higher education institution. Students were given the opportunity in a multimedia development course to develop real E-commerce business solutions. This is the third evolutionary development of the unit. The design of the unit now reflects contemporary pedagogy, taking into consideration the needs of students and the changing requirements …

Developing Evaluation Frameworks For Assessing Quality Ict-Based Learning In Higher Education, Ron Oliver, John Hedberg, Barry Harper, Sandra Wills, Shirley Agostinho

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper describes the evaluation of high quality learning designs which are being selected for possible redevelopment in a National Project funded by the Australian University Teaching Committee (AUTC). The project focuses on "Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Their Role in Flexible Learning" and is evaluating over 50 projects with a view to developing a range of software tools, templates and/or guidelines based on those that are deemed to be effective ICT-based learning projects. The approach is unique in that it tries to pinpoint the key attributes of ICT-based projects that make them suitable for application in other contexts …

A Typology For Identifying Teachers' Progress In Ict Uptake, Barnard Clarkson, Ron Oliver

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper describes the design of an instrument to help identify teachers' level of ICT uptake. The instrument takes the form of a typology matrix comprising four stages in ICT uptake across a continuum describing teachers' levels of dependence. Identification of teachers' positions in the typology matrix is determined by their affective, cognitive and demonstrated states of ICT application and use. The paper describes the process of determining the position of two elementary school teachers within the typology and discusses the reliability and validity of the instrument and the placement process.

Keeping An Anchor Watch: Industry Partnership A Basis For Learning, Catherine E Mcloughlin, Joseph Luca

Research outputs pre 2011

During the 1990’s Australia has heard the call for graduates equipped with generic skills as a key theme in the development appropriate curriculum and pedagogy. In tertiary contexts, skills and knowledge are often decontextualised and transferable, and work-related skills are not accorded sufficient emphasis in teaching and assessment. The present study is an example of industry involvement on tertiary learning and assessment enhances the student experience and contextualises the curriculum. The context of the study is a project management unit at tertiary level that utilising online learning and self-directed learning pedagogies. The design of the environment is presented within a …

Successful Teamwork: A Case Study, Pina Tarricone, Joseph Luca

Research outputs pre 2011

Why are some teams successful and others unsuccessful? What criteria or attributes are needed for success? Contemporary teaching and learning practice over the past few years in higher education institutions has seen a proliferation of open-ended constructivist learning designs that incorporate collaboration. This has promoted the need for identifying essential attributes needed for successful teamwork. This study reviews the literature with a view of identifying a framework that educators can use to help promote effective teamwork in their classes. A case study is used to investigate two teams of final year multimedia students completing a project-based unit, in which teamwork …

Designing For Reflection In Online Courses, Ron Oliver, Janice Herrington

Research outputs pre 2011

Reflection can be described as both an individually-mediated and a socially-mediated process. In this paper we describe an online unit in a Graduate Certificate of Online Learning that has been designed to enhance the opportunities for students to reflect on their learning. Rather than being promoted as a learning strategy to supplement the unit curriculum, reflection has been integrated fully within the course design. Students are encouraged to reflect as they complete their chosen project (reflection-in-action) and in a more sustained and extended manner (reflection-on-action) as they write up their experiences in an article of publishable quality. The technology and …

Experiential Learning On-Line: The Role Of Asynchronous Communication Tools, Catherine E Mcloughlin, Joseph Luca

Research outputs pre 2011

The needs of learners are changing rapidly and continually in response to an environment that is characterised by change at economic, political and technological levels. There is greater pressure on universities to work more closely with employers in contributing to the process of economic development through the creation of a skilled workforce. Universities are becoming increasingly flexible in their responses to meeting the lifelong learning agenda. Online experiential learning is an essential element in the move towards more situated and professional orientations and with the drive to providing students with real world working knowledge. Asynchronous communication tools and tasks are …

Enhancing The Quality Of The Student Experience Online: Revisiting The Imperative Of Learning As Socially Based, Catherine E Mcloughlin, Joseph Luca

Research outputs pre 2011

Delivery of quality educational services and opportunities is becoming increasingly more complex as Web-based learning tools and support structures continue to evolve. Although much effort is devoted to examining the use of technology to teach course content, an emerging area of some importance in online teaching is how to enhance the student experience of learning and communicating online. Associated with this is the creation of social and supportive environments for learning when there is little face-to-face contact between distance learners and their teachers. This paper provides a framework and a set of strategies that can be used to create a …

From Impartial Objectivity To Responsible Affectivity: Some Ethical Implications Of The 9/11 Attacks On America And The War On Terror, Lelia Rosalind Green, Steven Maras

Research outputs pre 2011

In this paper we trace same of the ways a responsibility to affect might be thought of in the wake of the events of 9/11, and examine what it might mean to shift the orientation of journalistic ethics away from an ethics based on objectivity to an ethics of affectivity.

Autotopography: Graffiti, Landscapes, & Selves, Deirdre Heddon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

For some time now I have been interested in autobiographical performance -- some form of the theatrical, in which performers explicitly use personal material in their work. Within this general field of autobiography and performance, one area of research concerns performances that are dependent on being located in personalised space -- what could be called, then, site-specific autobiographical performance. A recent example of this would be the performance Bubbling Tom (2000), by the UK based performer Mike Pearson, which saw Pearson return to the village of his childhood, to reflect upon and re-enact certain memories, events and persons …

The Mind Museum: Rudolf Schwarzkogler And The Vienna Actionists, Philip Barnes

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Sixth paragraph]

In the following essay I discuss the Austrian artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler. I have enjoyed the process of ferreting out articles and references to him, although these are seemingly as scarce as his own artistic output. Schwarzkogler spent just 2 years staging performance-actions in his apartment in the 1960s. These methodically photographed scenes involved sliced fish, bandages, light bulbs, razor blades, foodstuffs and surgical apparatus, all manipulated by anonymous figures. The photographs, works of art in their own right, have since toured internationally. Schwarzkogler was the least outgoing of a group called the Viennese Actionists, whose orgiastic, bloody Happenings …

Being-There And Being-From-Elsewhere: An Existential-Analytic Of Exile, Farhang Erfani

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragrap]

I find myself in an unsettling position, as I do not know where to begin to talk about a philosophically neglected topic: exile. I cannot hide behind the famous names of the tradition; I cannot speak through them about exile in order to make my inquiry sound more legitimate since most of them did not address the topic. Isn't it interesting though that my inability to know where to start and the lack of legitimacy that I feel are in themselves two typical symptoms of the exiled? In all fairness, exile has become a buzzword and is fashionable …

Remembering Dehlie: A Chrono-Topo-Graphy Of Imagination, Subhash Jaireth

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In a few weeks I shall be going to India to see my daughter. This will be our first meeting after she went back to India with her mother five years ago. She is fifteen now, and, in a way, a complete stranger to me. You don't know me, she tells me often on the phone, Neither do I know you. The little girl whom you carried on your shoulders and played hopscotch with, is nothing but a shadow. Come and see what has become of me. I have made up my mind to go but I know …

The Cyborgian Self: Toward A Critical Social Theory Of Cyberspace, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Contemporary social theory currently remains at a virtual standstill, quivering over the decision to radically leave the past behind or to continue within the historical narrative of the Enlightenment. Postmodern social theorists, advocating the position that we have, in fact, entered a new historical epoch, pose serious challenges to our perception of modernity and cultural identity. As an influential strategy that has infiltrated both the humanities and the social sciences for more than thirty years, postmodernism can no longer be dismissed as merely a fad or trend. In a world where the use of complex, and often mobile, …

Solaris, America, Disneyworld And Cyberspace: Salman Rushdie's Fairy-Tale Utopianism In Fury, Justyna Deszcz

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In this paper, I discuss the figure of professor Malik Solanka, the protagonist of Salman Rushdie's latest novel, Fury (2001), and his attempts at constructing a fairy tale utopia as a means of establishing his identity. I try to elucidate this problem referring to the concepts of the fairy tale utopian as formulated by J. R. R. Tolkien, Ernst Bloch, and Jack Zipes, as their propositions can be regarded as the most effective exponents of the utopian imagination and seem very applicable to Rushdie's utopian attempts. On the basis of such a reading, I also reflect on the …

Rich Earth Below The Sand' And The Origins Of The Thames Embankments, Stuart Oliver

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This essay explores the designing of the Thames embankments that were built between 1866 and 1874 for the Metropolitan Board of Works. In particular it concentrates on the origins of what might be called the production of the conditions of production of the embankments. By looking at the motivation of those advocating embanking as a means of exerting literal and figurative control over the river, and the ways in which society influenced such advocacy and determined its effectiveness, the essay explores modernity's construction of a regulated natural in the context of an analysis that is sensitive to the …

Supposing A Space: The Detecting Subject In Paul Auster’S City Of Glass, Richard Swope

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Rorty's Complicit American Neo-Pragmatism, Haidar Eid

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Despite the obvious French origin of poststructuralism, its paradigmatic resonance can be found in the American philosophical scene, an essential part of which is Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism -- the theoretical basis of American (post)modernism. However, different from poststructuralism's apparent antagonism to the authoritarian establishments, Rorty adopts the Derridean poststructuralist motifs of the decentering of the subject, and the disappearance of meaning and truth in order to defend the establishment -- or rather, the status quo.

On Guillermo Gomez-Peña's El Mexterminator And Cyber Vato, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While attending Bowling Green State University in 1997 I had an experience that changed my worldview. I was a teaching assistant in the Popular Culture department and part of my responsibilities included teaching Introduction to Popular Culture (POPC 100) and Introduction to Mass Media (POPC 165). I had been struggling to engage my students in examining the way in which social reality is represented to them through popular entertainments [2]. The majority of my students were white, middle class students from the surrounding Northern regions of Ohio. My students were well-versed in the ongoing controversy over whether or …

Review Of Up, By Peter Gabriel, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Passaic Boys Are Hell: Robert Smithson's Tag As Temporal And Spatial Marker Of The Geographical Self, Felicity Colman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Robert Smithson seductively created stories about his activities as an artist with attention to his duration; his time of existence. Born in 1938 in the New Jersey suburb of Passaic, Smithson lived in the New Jersey suburbs of Rutherford and Clifton with his family until 1957 when he moved to live in downtown Manhattan, New York (Hobbs 1981, 231-232; Tsai 1991, 6). Smithson's adult life was undeniably shaped by his Pascalian/Sopranos awareness of engaging the circumference by which to navigate the centre of everyday life. In 1972 Smithson described New Jersey as: a kind of destroyed California, …

The Ruse Of The Social: Human Waste And The Gated Community, Liam Mcnamara

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

One of the central problems of contemporary society is that of “the social”: how it is defined, constituted, conjured into existence, and supported. Jean Baudrillard has employed the term “the social” in his work, but it is never explicitly defined; it is best understood as a form of simulation that has sprung into existence in the absence of symbolic social relations. The social is constituted of all the phenomena that are generally studied by sociology, so is therefore ideologically conceived of as an organic structure that is waiting for analysis. The “social” is society, both as it stands …

On Steven Duncombe's Cultural Resistance Reader (2002), Adam Reed

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While the debates over the dis/connections between theory and practice have become essentially metaphysical, it is still useful to distinguish between micro, grassroots struggles and macro, ideological political agendas. In a world in which one of the Left's (old, new and contemporary) main achievements has been to merge the micro and macro in the popular imaginary, this distinction helps one appreciate the myriad of forces affecting social change that are condensed in primarily ideological narratives. A similar perspective is called for when one turns to cultural forms of resistance, which are usually erased by political narratives or mystified …

On Bell Hooks' Feminism Is For Everybody, David Alan Sapp

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Taking a decidedly radical feminist position, bell hooks, the writing voice of Gloria Watkins, promotes the learning of feminist theory and history as essential parts of the process of self-actualization and the practice of freedom. In Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, hooks provides an overview targeted to readers new to interdisciplinary feminism. Importantly, hooks argues in strong opposition to the anti-feminist public voice in contemporary culture. In particular, she speaks to young female readers who know little about feminism, many of whom falsely assume that sexism is no longer a problem or is no longer relevant since …

A Review Of Dr. Holmberg's Work, Gary Hoppenstand

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editor's Introduction]

Dr. Carl Holmberg, a beloved member of Bowling Green State University's department of Popular Culture and father of two daughters, Lily and Erin, passed away September 29, 2002 at his home in Bowling Green, Ohio. In addition to what you will find highlighted below, Dr. Holmberg was in the process of extensive research into Japanese popular culture and was loved by the students he taught at the graduate and undergraduate level. Below, we have decided to publish a review of Carl's work by friend and colleague Dr. Gary Hoppenstand, so that the members of our community might realize …