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Orchestrating entangled relations to break the iron triangle: Observations from an LMS migration#

Early work on developing an actual poster

Broad design#

Serious of broad sections

Why?#

  • iron triangle quote
  • Ellis scalability quote
  • why “most of the effort by L&T centres is directed to a small minority of willing academics” and such “centres are not equipped or motivated to operate strategically, at scale” (Ellis & Goodyear, 2019, p. 202).
  • Research question

How?#

  • Conceptual Framework

(Dron, 2022, p. 157)

To orchestrate is to intentionally bring different things - actions, tools, methods, processes etc. - together in an organised form, and an orchestration is the result of doing so.

  • Method & Case

What?#

  • Case studies

So What?#

see evaluating-orchestration

  • Findings
  • Generic technologies require significant manual orchestration to be fit for purpose
    • esp. context and learning design specific purposes - because they can't handle this level of detail
  • Existing emphasis is on integration of tec, rather than orchestration (i.e. building new and different things)
  • Limits ability to break the iron triangle
    • accessibility (as many people as possible)
    • quality (it's good)
    • cost efficiency (it's cheap)
    • manual labour that needs repeating
    • Just acknowledging this - let alone taking action - appears to require a different mindset
  • Implications
    • need to support lightweight
    • orchestrations should be generative - i.e. enable further orchestration

Quotes etc#

Collection of quotes that may be of use

Ellis & Goodyear (2019) - to infrastructures and service interfaces for a manageably small set of particularly valued activity systems (p. 188). - it is fair to suggest that there is much more to be done to understand and effectively use educational technologies in higher education. (Lodge et al, 2022, p. 4)

Complexity and simplicity#

Ideas that are intuitive and that reduce a complex reality into a simple heuristic have great appeal, particularly in higher education. (Lodge et al, 2022, p. 3) Some (e.g. Teräs et al., 2020) have pointed to consulting firms and technology vendors as nefarious actors who use intuitive notions about learning and technology to make sales. (Lodge et al, 2022, p. 3)

Difficulty of designing learning#

One hundred years of debate about appropriate evidence and expertise for designing and enhancing education leaves us with a complex problem to overcome. (Lodge et al, 2022, p. 4)

References#

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

Lodge, J. M., Thompson, K., & Corrin, L. (2022). The concerning persistence of weird ideas about learning and educational technology and their influence on the future directions of higher education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 38(3), 1--5. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.8226