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Title

At the limits of social constructivism: moving beyond LMS to re-integrate scholarship

Author(s)

Wise, Lisa;  Quealy, James

Abstract

After more than a decade, the early claims that elearning would transform university teaching are yet to be realised. As elearning, with learning management systems as the centrepiece, becomes entrenched in the mainstream, there is growing demand for a solid theoretical research base to inform elearning practice. We argue that the lack of a solid research base is in part due to the inherent difficulties with cross-disciplinary research where shared terminology does not always equate to shared meaning, and in part due to the dominant applied research approach emphasising a case-based approach over research aimed at addressing specific hypotheses derived from educational theory. We use the popular social constructivist theoretical framework to illustrate a lack of theoretical rigour in elearning research. We examine traditional university teaching as portrayed through a social constructivist lens and argue that academics already adopt the 'reflective practitioner' model in their teaching practice. We then examine the concept of adaptive self-organising learning networks in elearning. We argue that, while a social constructivist framework may be ideal for understanding the way people learn, it is at odds not only with the implicit instructional design agenda, but also with current university elearning governance and infrastructure.

Publication type

Conference paper

Source

Who's learning? Whose technology? Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite) Conference, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 03-06 December 2006 / Lina Markauskaite, Peter Goodyear and Peter Reimann (eds.), pp. 899-907

Publication year

2006

Keyword(s)

Collaborative learning;  Educational paradigms;  Educational technologies;  Learning communities;  Learning management systems;  Organisational change;  Research methods and approaches;  Social constructivism

Publisher

Sydney University Press

ISBN

9781920898472, 1920898476

Publisher URL

http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/html_abstracts/158.html

Copyright

Copyright © 2006 Lisa Wise and James Quealy. Published version of the paper reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. The authors assign to ascilite and educational non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to ascilite to publish this document on the ascilite web site (including any mirror or archival sites that may be developed) and in electronic and printed form within the ascilite Conference Proceedings. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author.

Full text

Peer reviewed