Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning by George Veletsianos

Author:George Veletsianos [Veletsianos George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Published: 2016-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

7 The Emergence of Practice

Two Case Studies of Moodle in Online Education

Andrew Whitworth and Angela D. Benson

This chapter discusses how practices, as well as technologies, can be studied as “emerging” and why such a perspective is essential if both researchers and practitioners are to understand how a technology emerges into a specific workplace context, whether in higher education institutions (HEIs) or elsewhere. As with the original version of this chapter (Whitworth and Benson, 2010), we base these discussions on some results from our “Technology at the Planning Table” (TPT) project, which ran from 2005–2007 and conducted qualitative case studies of several distance learning programs from universities in the UK and US. These cases used a variety of course management systems (CMSs), including commercial, open access/open source, homegrown, and ad hoc (academic-created) systems. We then focused particularly on the two cases that used an open access/open source CMS, namely Moodle, to construct and deliver their distance learning programs. Since the original chapter was published, one of these cases, the Public Administration Program (or PAP), has also been discussed in detail in Benson and Whitworth (2014). We have also elaborated on our ideas of “responsiveness” and “directiveness,” first mooted in Benson and Whitworth (2007) then explored in more detail in Whitworth and Benson (2014b). We use those expanded ideas here to reinterpret the analysis of the Moodle cases, which forms the second part of this chapter.

The original chapter (Whitworth and Benson 2010) presented the project’s theoretical framework, derived from activity theory (such as Engeström, Miettinen & Punamäki, 1999), and recognized that CMSs, rather than simply being technological tools, also constituted rules and divisions of labor (roles) for the subjects of the activity system. Some of that prior discussion has been retained in this revised chapter. But there is also a need to consider work on the theory of e-learning, and technology within organizations more broadly that has been published since we originally wrote the chapter in 2009, particularly that which considers the nature of practice. We have therefore rewritten much of the theoretical part of this chapter in order to give more detailed consideration to the question of practice, as it is this that can be considered the truly emergent factor here. Wenger, whose ideas regarding communities of practice (Wenger, 1999) have been so influential, collaborated a decade later with White and Smith in their book Digital Habitats (Wenger, White, & Smith, 2009), and we draw on insights from that work, particularly the notion of stewarding, to better conceptualise the divisions of labour that exist within the course teams we studied.

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