Abstract
In this chapter we show in detail the ramifications of the effort chain problem and explain why pre-contextual universities that employ this approach to learning and teaching are unable to produce transformational change . We describe how a lack of understanding of context and professional control (Bowker and Star 2000) severely inhibits the capacity of those pre-contextual universities to plan for and produce whole-of-organization improvement in learning and teaching. We attribute this problem to a mismatch between aspiration, organizational design, and agency . The chapter employs simple rules (Waldrop 1992) or commitments as a central principle of the self-organizing university (SOU) derived from complex systems theory, to show how universities can begin a change process in a different way by developing the core commitments that serve as the foundation for a systemic approach to learning and teaching. Crowdsourcing (Howe 2006) and Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP) (Benkler 2002) are described as self-organizing methods for understanding the learning and teaching context, developing commitments and policy in the first phase of designing an SOU.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The goals described here are not idiosyncratic to the example. They reflect the form and content of statements described in many university strategic plans.
- 2.
This idea is discussed extensively in Bain and Drengenberg (2016) where research in the compulsory and higher education sectors are employed to show how the lack of professional control in higher education severely limits the role and application of technology and specifically learning management systems with respect to their influence on learning and teaching. This idea is also taken up in Chap. 7.
- 3.
There are a number of commercially available collaborative software platforms that can be employed for compiling sharing and analyzing crowdsourced data.
- 4.
A reference to the book by James Suroweicki about the way decisions sourced by crowds are better than individual experts.
- 5.
This rule was included recognizing the contestation that exists among educators about what constitutes evidence and empirical research support. The intent was to surface multiple perspectives and required respondents to make a case for their definitions.
References
Auhl, G. (in progress). The development of pre-service teachers’ schema for teaching students with diverse learning needs.
Aitamurto, T., & Landemore, H. (2015). Five design principles for crowdsourced policymaking: Assessing the case of crowdsourced off-road traffic law in Finland. Journal of Social Media for Organizations, 2(1), 1–19. Retrieved from http://www2.mitre.org/public/jsmo/pdfs/02-01-5-design-principles.pdf.
Bain, A., & Zundans-Fraser, L. (2016). Rising to the challenge of transforming higher education: Designing universities for learning and teaching. New York: Springer Verlag.
Bain, A., & Drengenberg, N. (2016). Transforming the measurement of learning and teaching in higher education. New York: Routledge.
Bain, A. (2007). The self-organizing school. Next generation comprehensive school reforms. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Bauwens, M. (2014). Commons based peer production: An introduction. Retrieved from https://www.boell.de/en/2014/07/08/commons-based-peer-production-introduction.
Benkler, Y. (2016). Peer production and cooperation, forthcoming in J. M. Bauer & M. Latzer (Eds.), Handbook on the economics of the internet, (pp. 81–119). Cheltenham and Northampton, Edward Elgar.
Benkler, Y. (2002). Coase’s penguin, or Linux and the nature of the firm. Yale Law Journal, 112, 369–446.
Bertolini, M., Duncan, D., & Waldeck, A. (2015, December). Knowing when to reinvent. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/12/knowing-when-to-reinvent.
Bird, J. (2012). Should you care about Conway’s law? Retrieved from http://swreflections.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/should-you-care-about-conways-law.html.
Bowker, G., & Star, S. (2000). Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
CFAR. (2005). A summary of best practice approaches in strategic planning processes. Retrieved from http://trugroup.com/whitepapers/tru-strategic-planning-best-practice.pdf.
Coate, K., & Tooher, M. (2010). The Galway symposium on design for learning: Curriculum and assessment in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 15(3), 347–354. doi:10.1080/13562511003740924.
Conway, M. E. (1968). How do committees invent. Datamation, 14(5), 28–31.
Dvorak, N., & Busteed, B. (2015, August, 11). It’s hard to differentiate one higher-ed brand from another. Gallup Business Journal, Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/184538/hard-differentiate-one-higher-brand.aspx.
Grima-Farrell, C. (2013). Bridging the research to practice gap to respond to student and teacher needs in Catholic school settings: A collaborative school and university approach. Journal of Catholic School Studies, 84(2), 66–75.
Friend, M., & Cook, L. (2014). Interactions: Collaboration skills for school professionals (7th ed.). New York: Pearson.
Hanover Research. (2013). Strategic planning in higher education: Best practices and benchmarking. Retrieved from http://www.hanoverresearch.com/media/Strategic-Planning-in-Higher-Education-–-Best-Practices-and-Benchmarking.pdf.
Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.
Hennessey, A., & Dionigi, R. A. (2013). Implementing cooperative learning in Australian primary schools: Generalist teachers’ perspectives. Issues in Educational Research, 23(1), 52–68.
Howe, J. (2006). The rise of crowdsourcing. Wired Magazine, 14(6), 1–4.
Jenkins, J., Antil, L., Wayne, S., & Vadasy, P. (2003). How cooperative learning works for special education and remedial studies. Exceptional Children, 69(3), 279–292.
Knapp, M. S., & Brandon, R. N. (1998). Building collaborative programs in universities. In M. S. Knapp (Ed.), Paths to partnership: University and community as learners in inter professional education. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Landemore, H. (2014). We, all of the people: Five lessons from Iceland’s failed experiment in creating a crowdsourced constitution. Slate, July 13. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/five_lessons_from_iceland_s_failed_crowdsourced_constitution_experiment.2.html.
Landemore, H. (2012). Why the many are smarter than the few and why it matters. Journal of Public Deliberation, 8(1), Retrieved from http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol8/iss1/art7.
MacCormack, A., Baldwin, C., & Rusnak, J. (2012). Exploring the duality between product and organizational architectures: A test of the “mirroring” hypothesis. Research Policy, 41(8), 1309–1324.
Martin, R. (2014, January–February). The big lie of strategic planning. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/01/the-big-lie-of-strategic-planning.
Maurer, R. (2010a). Why 70% of change fails. Retrieved from http://www.reply-mc.com/2010/09/19/why-70-of-changes-fail-by-rick-maurer/.
Maurer, S. (2010b). Five easy pieces: Case studies of entrepreneurs who organized private communities for a public purpose. Retrieved from https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/ssrn-id1713329.pdf.
NCUDL. (2016). UDL provisions in the higher education opportunity act (P.L. 110–315). Retrieved from http://www.udlcenter.org/advocacy/referencestoUDL/HEOA.
Pascale, R. T., Millemann, M., & Gioja, L. (2001). The new laws of nature and the new laws of business. New York: Crown Publishing Group
Pascarella, E., & Terenzini, P. (2005). How college affects students (Volume 2): A third decade of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
RACGP. (2012). Standards for general practice (4th ed.). Retrieved from http://www.racgp.org.au/your-practice/standards/standards4thedition/.
Sclater, N. (2014). Code of practice for learning analytics: A literature review of ethical and legal issues. Retrieved from: http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5661/1/Learning_Analytics_A-_Literature_Review.pdf.
Slavin, R. E. (1996). Research on cooperative learning and achievement: What we know, what we need to know. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21, 43–69.
Springer, L., Stanne, M. E., & Donovan, S. S. (1999). Effects of small-group learning on undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering and technology: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 69(1), 21–51. doi:10.3102/00346543069001021.
Stensaker, B. (2008). Outcomes of quality assurance: A discussion of knowledge. Methodology and Validity Quality in Higher Education, 14(1), 1470–1081.
Suroweicki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds. New York: Anchor Books.
TechTarget. (2015). Crowdsourcing defined. Retrieved from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/crowdsourcing.
Vuculescu, O. (2012). Commons based peer production for problem solving – perspectives from evolutionary computation. Retrieved from http://pure.au.dk/portal-asb-student/files/45294059/commons_based_pp.pdf.
Waldrop, M. M. (1992). Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York: Touchstone, Simon and Schuster.
Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21, 1–21.
Willis, J. (2014). Learning analytics and ethics: A framework beyond utilitarianism. Educause Review. Retrieved from https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0742.pdf.
Zundans-Fraser, L., & Bain, A. (2015). How do institutional practices for course design and review address areas of need in higher education. Higher Education Research and Development, 35(4), 841–853. doi:10.1080/07294360.2015.1137883.
Zundans-Fraser, L. (2014). Self-organisation in course design: A collaborative, theory-based approach to course development in inclusive education. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Charles Sturt University, Bathurst.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bain, A., Zundans-Fraser, L. (2017). Committing to Learning and Teaching. In: The Self-organizing University. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4917-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4917-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-4916-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-4917-0
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)