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In recent years, Australian universities have been driven by a diversity of external forces, including funding cuts, massification of higher education, and changing student demographics, to reform their relationship with students and improve teaching and learning, particularly for those studying off-campus or part-time. Many universities have responded to these forces either through formal strategic plans developed top-down by executive staff or through organic developments arising from staff in a bottom-up approach. By contrast, much of Murdoch University's response has been led by a small number of staff who have middle management responsibilities and who have championed the reform of key university functions, largely in spite of current policy or accepted practice. This paper argues that the "middle-out" strategy has both a basis in change management theory and practice, and a number of strengths, including low risk, low cost, and high sustainability. Three linked examples of middle-out change management in teaching and learning at Murdoch University are described and the outcomes analyzed to demonstrate the benefits and pitfalls of this approach.

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The paper argues that the Australian university system is unstable. There will be significant change as government implements its reform agenda and even more radical change if it moves to new deregulation. The role of distance education in university education needs to be analyzed against this "market" agenda of government in terms of characteristics of markets and market behavior. After a scan of the current role, the paper looks at two scenarios (regulated and deregulated) for distance education in university teaching and learning in Australia.

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Open and distance education has integrated quality assurance processes since its inception. Recently, the increased use of distance teaching systems, technologies, and pedagogies by universities without a distance education heritage has enabled them to provide flexible learning opportunities. They have done this in addition to, or instead of, face-to-face instruction, yet the practice of quality assurance processes as a fundamental component of distance education provision has not necessarily followed these changes.

This paper considers the relationship between notions of quality assurance and open and distance education, between quality assurance and higher education more broadly, and between quality assurance and the implementation of recent quality audits in Australian universities. The paper compares quality portfolios submitted to the Australian Universities Quality Agency by two universities, one involved in distance education, the other not involved. This comparison demonstrates that the relationship is variable, and suggests that reasons for this have more to do with business drivers than with educational rationales.

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Managing quality processes become critically important for higher education institutions generally, but especially for institutions involved in open and distance learning. In Australia, managers of centers responsible for open and distance learning have identified two frameworks that potentially offer ways of conceiving of the application of quality processes: the Quality Framework published in Inglis, Ling, and Joosten (1999); and the Benchmarking Framework published in McKinnon, Walker, and Davis (2000). However, managers who have been considering applying one or other framework within their institutional contexts have had to face the issue of how they should choose between, or combine the use, of these frameworks. Part of their dilemma lies in distinguishing among the related functions of quality improvement, quality assurance, and benchmarking. This article compares the frameworks in terms of their scope, institutional application, structures, and method of application, and then considers what implications the similarities and differences between the frameworks have for their use.

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Since 1999, the University of Southern Queensland has embarked on a range of initiatives designed to improve the infrastructure and systems used to support its widely ranging activities in teaching and learning and research and its expansion into new international markets. This has involved the careful selection and implementation of various enterprise systems, together with the use of horizontal process teams. The results of this approach are now being realized, with demonstrable improvements to many university services, together with significant cost efficiencies. This paper discusses the reasons for the changes, the processes used to drive the changes through the various university committee structures, and the outcomes of the implementation of the enterprise systems.

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Central Queensland University (CQU) is a highly complex institution, combining campuses in Central Queensland and distance education programs for Australian domestic students with Australian metropolitan sites for international students and a number of overseas centres, also for international students. In common with many other universities, CQU has recently reviewed its course management systems (CMSs). In doing so, CQU has signalled its desired strategic position in managing its online learning provision for the foreseeable future.

This paper analyzes that strategic position from the perspective of the effectiveness of CQU’s engagement with current drivers of change. Drawing on online survey results, the authors deploy Introna’s (1996) distinction between teleological and ateleological systems to interrogate CQU’s current position on CMSs – one of its most significant enterprises – for what it reveals about whether and how CQU’s CMSs should be considered an accelerator of, or a brake on, its effective engagement with those drivers of change. The authors contend that a more thorough adoption of an ateological systems approach is likely to enhance the CMS’s status as an accelerator in engaging with such drivers.

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Preparing and developing e-learning materials is a costly and time consuming enterprise. This paper highlights the elements of effective design that we consider assist in the development of high quality materials in a cost efficient way. We introduce six elements of design and discuss each in some detail. These elements focus on paying attention to the provision of a rich learning activity, situating this activity within an interesting story line, providing meaningful opportunities for student reflection and third party criticism, considering appropriate technologies for delivery, ensuring that the design is suitable for the context in which it will be used, and bearing in mind the personal, social, and environmental impact of the designed activities. Along the way, we describe how these design elements can be effectively utilized by contextualizing them with examples from an e-learning initiative.

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The first section of this report examines the CourseCompass learning management system (LMS), made available to educators by the Pearson publishing group as a vehicle for the company’s extensive content library. The product’s features are discussed, and the implications of Pearson’s software/ textbook “bundling” policy for the integrity of course design. The second section of the report reviews Wordcircle, an open source (OS) LMS provided as a free hosted service or as source code downloadable for installation on the user’s own server. The contrasting marketing approaches of these two products are discussed in the light of the increasing move by distance educators from proprietary to open source LMS products. As in previous reports in the series, the reviews are based on the six evaluation criteria of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD): cost, complexity, control, clarity, common technical framework, and features.

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The ILIAS learning management system (LMS) was evaluated, following its favourable rating in an independent evaluation study of open source software (OSS) products. The current review found ILIAS to have numerous features of value to distance education (DE) students and teachers, as well as problems for consideration in the system’s ongoing development. The current findings were compared with DE students’ reactions to a similar LMS product, ATutor, also rated highly in the independent OSS evaluation. In comparing an ATutor course website with a simple HTML-based version of the same site, the ten students voted unanimously to retain the simpler site. This result is consistent with previous evaluation findings in the current series of reports, and indicates that increasing integration of product features does not necessarily improve a product’s ease of use or educational effectiveness.

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The traditional packaging of electronic learning — the learning management system (LMS) — is progressively being regarded as a hindrance to effective online learning. Its design, functionality, complexity, price, and value are being questioned. A new generation of Web-based tools and approaches is evolving that are better suited to meet the need for dynamic online learning content, interaction, collaboration, and networking. Whereas traditional LMS approaches traditionally tend to relegate students to the role of passive recipients of information, these new tools and collaborative approaches allow learners to take proactive control of their own learning. This paper will discuss how the LMS has affected the design and delivery of e-learning, and the emerging technologies that are better suited to current learning and performance needs.

“All in all it was just a brick in the wall. All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.” (Pink Floyd, November 30, 1979)

The Internet is independent of device (hardware or platform), distance, and time, and is well-suited for open, flexible, and distributed learning. Yet traditional online, distributed learning methods are anything but flexible, open, or dynamic. What went wrong? Parkin (2004a, b) believes that we failed to appreciate that the Internet is a vehicle for connecting people with each other. We implemented LMS methods that imposed bureaucratic control, diminished learner empowerment, and delivered static information. “In a world hurtling toward distributed internetworking, e-learning was still based on a library-like central-repository concept.” Parkin suggests it is time to explore the true promise of e-learning, and to rework our ideas about how learning should be designed, delivered, and received. It is time to stop letting the LMS vendors tell us how to design learning. It is time to stop the tail from wagging the dog.

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The previous report in this series (Report #44) discusses current attitudes to distance education technology, with specific reference to the counter-productive effects of learning management systems. The current paper pursues this theme in relation to the evolution of online audio-conferencing systems in DE, and revisits the notion of the “productivity paradox” proposed by Solow (1987). It also considers the slow evolution of DE technologies in comparison with the rapid rates of development predicted by Moore’s Law (1965). The paper concludes by outlining the human factors that distance educators must consider in order to harness online audio-conferencing technologies to full advantage.

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The current report provides an update on Report #11 and Report #40 in this series, describing the increasing range of international uses of the CanCore metadata for the indexing of learning objects.