Digital Teaching In Higher Education: Designing E ...

Digital Teaching In Higher Education

Designing E-learning for International Students of Technology, Innovation and the Environment

Tom Worthington

Copyright © Tom Worthington 2017 Cover pictographs ebook, talk, issues and approved, by Carlos Sarmento from the Noun Project (CC BY 3.0 US). First Printing: 2017 ISBN: 978-1-326-94785-9 (Hardback) ISBN: 978-1-326-93992-2 (Paperback) ISBN: 978-1-326-93882-6 (ePub e-Book) ISBN: 978-1-326-96796-3 (PDF e-Book)

TomW Communications Pty Ltd., PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Worthington, Tom, 1957- author. Digital teaching in higher education : designing e-learning for international students of technology, innovation and the environment / Tom Worthington. ISBN: 9781326947859 (hardback) ISBN: 9781326939922 (paperback) ISBN: 9781326938826 (ebook) Education, Higher--Effect of technological innovations on. Education, Higher--Computer-assisted instruction. Educational technology--Social aspects. Education, Higher--Electronic information resources. Instructional systems--Design. A web version of this book is available free on-line, under at Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license, at http://www.tomw.net.au/digital_teaching/

Table of Contents

Digital Teaching In Higher Education.................................... 1 Introduction...............................................................................13 Organization of Material...........................................................13 Computer Professional to On-line Educator..............................14 Studying for an Education Certificate On-line...........................14 Education is a People Business.................................................15 Helping Build Australia's e-Learning Capability.......................16 References................................................................................17 Instructional Design...........................................................19 Course Redesign Using Learning Theory.................................21 Introduction..............................................................................21 Background..............................................................................21 Need for Enhancement..............................................................23 The Students.............................................................................23 The Course Content..................................................................24 Learning Theory Applied in The Current Course.......................25 Recommendations....................................................................30

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References................................................................................32 How 1990s Computer Mediated Communication can inform today's MOOCs.........................................................................37 Introduction..............................................................................37 The Research Process...............................................................37 Conclusion................................................................................44 References................................................................................46 Theory of Practice.....................................................................49 Introduction..............................................................................49 Three Learning Principles.........................................................49 Conclusion................................................................................53 References................................................................................55 Needs Assessment and Proposal Development......................... 57 Introduction..............................................................................57 Part 1: Needs Assessment.........................................................59 Part 2: Proposal Development...................................................65 Conclusion................................................................................68 References................................................................................70 Analysis and Assessment........................................................... 75 Introduction..............................................................................75 Part 1: Instructional Analysis....................................................75 Part 2: Student Assessment.......................................................82 ii

Conclusion................................................................................84 References................................................................................85 Instructional Materials............................................................. 87 Introduction..............................................................................87 Unit of Instruction....................................................................87 Instructional Design Strategy....................................................87 Conclusion................................................................................91 References................................................................................92 Introduction to Innovation (Sample Course Notes) .................95 About the Course......................................................................95 Innovation................................................................................99 Appendixes.............................................................................109 References..............................................................................114 Planning and Management................................................117 Beyond Experimental Research Methods for Education.......119 Introduction............................................................................119 Development of Computer Science as a Discipline..................119 Action Research for Education of Professional........................126 Conclusion..............................................................................126 References..............................................................................128

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Business Analysis.....................................................................131 Proposed Business Idea for Open Innovation Courses.............131 Business Opportunity..............................................................131 Market Analysis......................................................................138 Analysis of the Competition....................................................142 Business Analysis Results.......................................................146 References..............................................................................147 Business Strategic Plan........................................................... 151 Executive Summary:...............................................................151 SWOT Analysis......................................................................154 Vision and Mission.................................................................162 Goals......................................................................................164 Tasks......................................................................................166 Resource Requirements..........................................................167 Planning Requirements...........................................................168 References..............................................................................169 Business Plan........................................................................... 173 Executive Summary................................................................173 Business Environment............................................................173 Business Strategic Direction...................................................173 Business Description...............................................................174 Marketing and Sales...............................................................176

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Business Requirements...........................................................177 Resource Requirements..........................................................178 Financial Plan.........................................................................180 Performance Management Plan...............................................183 Timeline for Implementation...................................................185 Conclusion..............................................................................185 References..............................................................................187 Marketing Plans...................................................................... 189 Marketing Plan Summary.......................................................189 The Market.............................................................................191 Educational Technology Applications..................................195 Course Definition.....................................................................197 Current Status of the Course...................................................197 SECTIONS model..................................................................199 Applying SECTIONS Model..................................................201 Advantages of Aligning Academic Requirements with Innovation Competition............................................................................205 The Problem of Accrediting Degree Programs........................206 Conclusion..............................................................................207 References..............................................................................209

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Innovation Course Description............................................... 213 SECTIONS Analysis................................................................217 SECTIONS model..................................................................217 Better Taxonomy of Learning Technology Required................219 Conclusion..............................................................................220 References..............................................................................221 Learn Something from CAI.................................................... 223 Why I Chose This Subject.......................................................223 References..............................................................................229 Mobile-Ready Blended Innovation Course, Incorporating ePortfolios..................................................................................231 Statement of the Problem........................................................232 Proposed Solution...................................................................232 Plan for implementation, including activities and deadlines .....232 Resources required for implementation, plan for evaluation ....233 Innovation Course Description................................................234 Adoption Attributes of the Technologies.................................236 References..............................................................................238 International Issues in Distance Education.......................... 239

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Benefits and Costs of E-learning: Summary and Critique of Rumble's Approach.................................................................241 Summary................................................................................241 Critique..................................................................................243 Conclusion..............................................................................244 References..............................................................................246 Distance Education in China's Radio and TV Universities ....247 Introduction............................................................................247 Article selection......................................................................247 Critical Review.......................................................................248 Conclusion..............................................................................253 References..............................................................................254 Use of Open Education Resources...................................... 257 Defining openness: a personal reflection................................ 259 Introduction............................................................................259 Definitions and Trends of Openness in Education...................259 Personal Reflection on Openness in Education........................261 Conclusion..............................................................................263 References..............................................................................264 Curated or crowd-sourced learning resource development...267 Introduction............................................................................267

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Different formats for content development..............................267 Curated or crowd sourced?......................................................267 Conclusion..............................................................................270 References..............................................................................270 Developing learning modules from open resources................273 Introduction............................................................................273 OER Sources..........................................................................273 Adapting Content....................................................................285 Conclusion..............................................................................287 References..............................................................................287 Mobile Learning.............................................................. 289 The benefits and challenges of m-learning............................. 291 Introduction............................................................................291 What is m-Learning?..............................................................291 M-learning Barriers................................................................300 Benefits and Challenges..........................................................301 M-learning and Pedagogy.......................................................302 M-Learning Examples............................................................303 Use of Audio for M-Learning..................................................304 Australian Rural Data Drought................................................305 Conclusion..............................................................................307 References..............................................................................307 viii

Mobile Learning and Distance Education.............................. 313 Introduction............................................................................313 M-learning in the Literature: The Latest Technological Determinism?.........................................................................313 Masters Level Coursework Degrees........................................316 M-leaning using Existing E-Learning Tools............................318 M-learning for a Formal Lifelong Learning Campus Experience, Off-campus.............................................................................320 Conclusion..............................................................................321 References..............................................................................323

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Introduction Higher Education is a global industry, driving a new technological, industrial revolution. However, it is important to remember education is still about teachers helping students learn. This work is a collection of short essays exploring how to use digital technology to provide a form of teaching which will meet social and economic goals, and make use of technology, while still having a place for the academic as a teacher. They were written for a Masters of Education in Distance Education which I completed at Athabasca University, in January 2017. My approach to education is summarized on the cover of this book, with four pictographs by Carlos Sarmento (from the Noun Project: CC BY 3.0 US). The instructor needs to: 1. provide ebooks and other curated content on the topic; 2. facilitate discussion between the students; 3. provide tools and techniques for the student to explore the topic; and 4. Assessment, including formative feedback, to help students learn. Organization of Material The material is divided into six broad categories: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Instructional Design Planning and Management Educational Technology Applications International Issues in Distance Education Use of Open Education Resources

6. Mobile Learning Each section is divided into short essays, with their list of references. It is intended these can be read on their own, but there are a few overall themes which develop, about the value of part-time on-line education for working professionals and the use of simply formatted text-based materials for efficient delivery on-line. More specifically examples of course design are based on my ICT Sustainability syllabus (Worthington, 2011) and a proposal for an innovation course. However, please note this is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to digital teaching, for that I recommend Bates (2015). 13

Computer Professional to On-line Educator My three years of study at Athabasca University (AU) were part of a transition, from a computer professional to a designer and teacher of computing courses. After nineteen years working as a computer professional for the Australian Government, in 1999 I became a selfemployed computer consultant. My plan was to undertake short projects, providing advice to organizations about their computer strategies. This work would involve extended periods of time working alone in my home office in Canberra and brief periods at client's offices. To keep my skills up and provide continuity, I volunteered to help at the computer science department of the Australian National University. In return for a desk and status as honorary academic staff, I would help supervise student projects and gave an occasional seminar. However, I found myself drawn to teaching and to the issue of how to use computer technology for learning. From 1999 to 2008 I gave occasional guest lectures alongside my consulting work. At this time I thought of real education happening in a classroom, with a teacher at the front. However, in 2008, I was contracted to design an on-line course, as part of a graduate program for computer professionals. The program used a standard template for courses, with a weekly text-based discussion forum using Moodle, adapting techniques from the Open University UK (OUUK) for professional education. Since then I have been teaching computer students on-line using Moodle, part time. A third of my students are from China and India, in Australia on work or study visas. Studying for an Education Certificate On-line In 2011, I enrolled in a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, which is the minimum teaching qualification Australian university academic staff are expected to have. Due to my interest in e-learning, as part of this, I undertook two on-line courses at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). This study paid off: I had less difficulty with planning and delivering courses, and student feedback scores were high. However, my academic colleagues remained skeptical about e-learning and my competence to provide it. I thought more study might help. In 2013, most 14

graduate education programs in Australia were for classroom-based school teachers, not on-line university instructors. The obvious place to study internationally was a university which focused on Distance Education (DE). From the start of my studies, I kept an e-journal. My first post: "... So far everything looks very familiar, with Athabasca using the same e-learning and e-portfolio software I am used to. The course materials are well laid out and look very much like those I have read (and written) before. But there is a risk in thinking it will, therefore, be easy. ... I am worried about how I am going to work in a group on-line internationally (there appear to be no other Australian students) ..." I need not have worried about being the only Australian, as I had much in common with the Canadian students. We were all mature age entrants, who already had one career, many like myself, in government. As part of the MEd, I read many research papers, and attended weekly seminars and several international conferences. From this, I realized that my contributing quantitative research would not help education. There are many volumes of research over decades on the effectiveness of e-learning. My adding a small amount to this research is unlikely to help. However, what has already proved effective is to show my colleagues useful techniques to help with their teaching, backed up by research results, so they are then more likely to listen to advice on larger, long term issues. Education is a People Business From being a student, I realized how necessary administration is for education and DE in particular. Before the student can worry about the details of learning, they have to find the materials and work out what it is they are supposed to be learning. This is an aspect which is glossed over in academic research on education and something which it is easy to overlook as an instructor. 15

The presence of competent, enthusiastic human instructors is something I valued in my studies. With Educational Technology (EdTech) the Education can be forgotten due to the enthusiasm for new Technology. In DE courses instructor time with students is a precious resource and one which needs to be very carefully used. As a result of the MEd courses, in my teaching, I tend to say less in forums, leaving room for the students to support each other and offer individual encouragement in the background Having been a student reminds me that any student, however, mature and experienced, still needs help. In particular, DE students need support to fit their studies into their lives. This can be through careful course design, giving the student small frequent nudges, scaffolding assignments and allowing them to be based on real-world problems. Also, frequently assessed work is an aid for the DE student, who needs a reason to tell themselves, their employer, family, and friends why they have to study now and can't leave it to later. Helping Build Australia's e-Learning Capability Education is Australia’s third-largest export and the government's "National Strategy for International Education 2025" points out that Moodle is an Australian product serving a global market and identifies on-line learning as an area for growth (Australian Government, 2016). However, Australia's universities are predominantly set up for students traveling to Australia to study on campus, and the government strategy provides little practical guidance for changing this. International tensions could disrupt the flow of students to Australia very quickly. Competition from universities in other countries and DE is likely to increase. We can produce quality on-line and blended programs to remain competitive, based on demonstrated success and research results.

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References Australian Government (2016). National Strategy for International Education 2025. [Canberra] Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved from https://www.education.gov.au/node/3759 Bates, A. W. (2015). Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning for a digital age. open.bccampus.ca. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/ Worthington, T. (2011). ICT Sustainability. Tomw Communications Pty Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/ Worthington, T. (2015). Designing an Innovation Course: Part 3 Introduction to Innovation. Higher Education Whisperer. Retrieved from http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2015/04/designinginnovation-course-part-3.html#innovation

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Instructional Design 1. Course Redesign Using Learning Theory 2. How 1990s Computer Mediated Communication can inform today's MOOCs 3. Theory of Practice 4. Needs Assessment and Proposal Development 5. Analysis and Assessment 6. Instructional Materials 7. Introduction to Innovation (Sample Course Notes)

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Course Redesign Using Learning Theory Introduction Here I investigate the use of new learning technologies to adapt the materials from an existing course on "ICT Sustainability" (Worthington, 2011) to be delivered as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The existing course was designed for on-line delivery to small groups of adult learners who have a university first degree and with the assistance of a tutor. The task then is to see how the same material could be used with large numbers of less advanced students, without tutor support, while retaining the ability to use the same materials in a tutor lead small online course. The current course uses a constructivist approach to education, derived from that of the UK Open University (Lindley, 2008). It is proposed to supplement this with the Personalised System of Instruction (PSI), developed by Keller (1974). This hybrid mode (Neo & Neo, 2010) would provide more support in learning the basic elements in a MOOC version of the course for less advanced students. The major issue with the use of PSI is not the efficacy of the technique, which already in use for vocational education in Australia, but in making it acceptable to university academics. It is proposed to do this by using PSI as a supplement to the existing constructivist approach. Background In its flexible learning strategy, the University of British Colombia identified three issues for universities (UBC, 2014): 1. Increasing focus on vocational education, 2. Online competition, 3. Demand for mid-career education. The problem for higher education institutions is to provide courses which are accessible (preferably online), meet the vocational needs of students, but are also academically sound. In announcing the decision of Central Queensland University (CQU) to discontinue the use of multiple choice questions in examinations, Pro Vice-Chancellor, 21

Professor Rob Reed, discussed the history of educational psychologist Frederick Kelly's use of the tests in WW1 US Army intelligence testing (Reed, 2014). CQU was concerned that multiple choice questions were not suitable for assessing real world skills. Anderson and Dron (2013) categorised three generations of distance education pedagogy based on the learning theories underlying them. However while being an improvement on an analysis simply based on the technology used, this still assumes that only one approach to learning can (and should) be applied in a course (or program). Students need to have a basic knowledge of a topic, before learning advanced skills. Rather than adopt one teaching and assessment approach for a whole course, these should suit the particular material and level. It is proposed that a combination of techniques can be used to teach basic and advanced material to the same students using the same learning technology. Origins of the Green Computing Course In 2008 the Australian Computer Society (ACS) commissioned a course on "Green Computing" for its Computer Professional Education Program (Worthington, 2012a). The course teaches how to evaluate the carbon footprint and e-waste from IT in an organisation and recommend how to reduce them. These objectives are aligned with "Sustainability assessment" and "Sustainability strategy" from the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA, 2011). The Green Computing course is one of a series of 12 week postgraduate online courses, using a constructivist approach to education, derived from that of the UK Open University (Lindley, 2008). The course was first run by the ACS in February 2009 as "Green ICT Strategies", then adapted for the Australian National University from July 2009 as "COMP7310" and for Athabasca University as "COMP 635". The course is delivered on-line, with an e-book of course materials which is also available as a printed booklet (Worthington, 2011), group activities and assessment is via the Moodle Learning Management System.

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Need for Enhancement While well received by students, the course is resource intensive, requiring a trained tutor for each small group of students (typically six to twenty-four). Also the course is designed for a standard twelve week university face-to-face semesters, which may be too long for online study. The Green Computing course was originally intended for university qualified IT professionals, but has also been taken by those from other professions and by undergraduates. However, it is not clear how the educational techniques developed for a cohort of postgraduate students with the same professional background will translate to a more general audience. Apart from not having the particular subject knowledge of ICT professionals, students may not have the maturity assumed by the current course design. The intention therefore is to look available learning research and theory to see what can be applied in this situation for "best practice". The Students The original ACS "Green Computing" course was commissioned for Australian ICT professionals as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program (CPEP). These students are typically adults with a degree in computing and at least two years experience working in a computing job. Almost all ACS students are Australians resident in Australia, but a few are international students resident in islands of the Pacific region. Students are typically aiming for advancement in their career by broadening their technical skills into the management area. Students are aiming to obtain postgraduate qualifications, with the CPEP being accepted for articulation into masters programs at eleven Australian universities (ACS, 2012). In contrast to the CPEP program, ANU students undertaking the green computing course are a mix of Australian and international students, with computing degrees, some with no work experience. The students are required to be English speakers, with those having English as a second language required to pass a university level academic English test.

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What most students of the green computing course have had in common has been an undergraduate degree in computing. This contrasts to the typical MOOC, with no formal entry requirements, aimed at high school graduates. Can an advanced postgraduate course for IT specialists be converted to this format? Not all the students for the ICT Sustainability course are IT specialists, some students with engineering, environmental science, law and arts degrees have also undertaken the course. One undergraduate was able to complete the course in an accelerated four week programs (one third the normal time). A shorter two week version of the course was prepared as a student project (Worthington, 2012b). This has been used live in a classroom for high-school IT students and also adapted as an experimental edX course (Wu, 2014). This suggests the content of the course could be suitable for non-specialist students. Proponents of MOOCs have argued that they are a way for those without formal education in developing nations to access higher education. However, research indicates that the largest proportion of students are from developed nations and already have tertiary qualifications. Nesterko et al (2013) report that developed nations accounted for 42.29% of of enrollments in HarvardX courses (as of September 8, 2013), with India having the next highest being India (9.47%). DeBoer, Stump, Seaton and Breslow (2013) report a similar distribution of students for the first edX course, MIT's "6.002x: Circuits and Electronics.", with 70.94% of students having a higher education degree. Of the students without a higher education degree, 26.68% had completed secondary school. The ANU explicitly aimed its Astrophysics Xseries Certificate, including the "Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe" edX course, at students with a high-school level education Maths and Physics (ANU, 2014). Aiming the ICT Sustainability course at a similar academic level would be appropriate. However, an issue which needs more consideration is the maturity of the students and their access to relevant information. The Course Content This study focuses on the teaching methods to be used and assumes the course content is appropriate and up to date. The material is checked each time the course is run (annually) and last had a major 24

revision in 2011,being restructured to incorporate the SFIA Skills definitions (SFIA, 2011). Issues to be considered are the use of video, forms of feedback, student interaction and assessment. As with traditional distance education courses, ICT Sustainability is heavily reliant on text based materials. The ebook is the equivalent of 100 pages of text, with no graphics. There are no video presentations accompanying the course. There are four videos from external sources recommended for the students to watch: •

Professor Ross Garnaut discusses the challenges of climate change (pt1). 9 Minutes (ANU, 2009).

•

General EPEAT Orientation. 56 Minutes (EPEAT, 2012).

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Google container data center tour. 7 Minutes (Google, 2010). Available:

•

Green Planet. 9 Minutes (TelecomTV, 2009).

This is eighty-one minutes of video in total, or about seven minutes per week. However, none of these videos feature the course designer and so may lack the human touch advocated by some learning theories. Friedlander and Taylor provided weekly video feedback for their Understanding India edX course to provide a more personal touch (ANU, 2014b). Learning Theory Applied in The Current Course Lindley (2008) described in detail the educational thinking behind the CPEP program, of which the Green Computing course forms a part. So before proposing new teaching methods, it would be useful to review those origins. The Computer Professional Education Program (CPEP) was established by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) for post university professional development. CPEP students are required to have an ICT degree and 18 months work experience in a relevant job. The aim is to foster professionalism, with graduates required to then complete at 30 hours of continuing professional development. Implicit in this is a view of the student becoming an expert and also taking responsibility for their own education. Lindley (2008) references the Knowles' theory of Andragogy or "self-directed learning" (Knowles, 1980). However, while Knowles 25

makes mention of Computer Assisted Instruction, this was as a form of Programmed Instruction, very far from the idea of self-directed learning: "The very notion of terminal behavioural objectives is discordant with the concept of continuing self-development toward one's full potential." (Knowles, 1980, p. 135). The Conscious Competence Learning Model, is also applied in the CPEP with students being encouraged to reach the fourth stage of competence: "conscious competence" (Chapman, 2003?). This concept of "conscious competence" relates closely to the use of e-portfolios and student reflection. Alongside course based subjects CPEP students are required to undertake "Professional Practice", keeping a "Reflective journal" with weekly reflections on their learning to be discussed with a mentor and prepare an ePortfolio with skill assessment and career plan (ACS, 2012b). The hope is that the student will maintain the eportfolio for used for personal development and career advancement, after the completion of the program. The concept of "competence" is important in the area of professional development. Wilcox and King, J. (2014) explore the relationship between competencies, skills and knowledge. Lindley (2008) explicitly references Salmon's five stage model of online learning: Access and Motivation, Online Socialisation, Information Exchange, Knowledge Construction, and Construction (Salmon, 2004). However, it is not clear how these stages relate to "competence". In a later work Salmon, Gregory, Dona, and Ross (2014) report successfully using the five stages explicitly in an experiential online development course for educators. However, the researchers admit that their cohort of students were pre-disposed to this approach have been self selected due to familiarity with Salmon's approach to elearning. Lindley (2008, p.5) briefly mentions Outcomes Based Education (OBE), but only two of the four principles which Killen, (2000) sets down: "clarity of focus" and "designing back" (the "desired end result" of the education). Lindley does not mention Killen's other two OBE principles: "high expectations" and "expanded opportunities". Killen was writing in the context of school and vocational education and it is not clear how well OBE translates to HE, although Castillo (2014, p. 176) reviews the implementation of OBE for higher education in the Philippines, as part of a "a shift from a teaching- or in26

struction-centered paradigm in higher education to one that is learner- or student-centered, within a lifelong learning framework." One reason given for this is international recognition of qualifications (the example of engineering is given), so graduates can be employed in other countries, placing it in a vocational context. Most important to the CPEP program, according to Lindley (2008, p. 6) is reflective learning. Students are required to write about their experience of learning in the program in a journal. The claim is that students will continue this practice beyond their formal learning to help with future professional development. Also it is claimed that this suits adult learners engaged in intellectually demanding activities (Hinett & Varnava, 2002). Applying Behavioural and Cognitive Learning Theory To The Course It might seem a step backwards to take a course designed along constructivist principles and attempt to apply Behavioural and Cognitive learning theory. However, it is suggested that a hybrid-mode learning environment (Neo & Neo, 2010) could be used, with the behavioural and cognitive techniques applied to small tasks in learning fundamentals, within a borderer constructivist approach. Behavioural theory's emphasis on measurement and observation fits well with the subject matter of ICT Sustainability, with formulas and calculations to be learned. Personalised System of Instruction (PSI) can be implemented using Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle, as the modern successor to Computer Based Training systems of the 1960s. While modern LMS, such as Moodle are usually promoted as supporting a constructivist or social constructionist approach to education, they have the facilities to support older approaches. Shafeeq and Rahman (2014) point out that the influential early PLATO system (Programmed Logic/Learning for Automated Teaching Operations), developed in 1959 by the University of Illinois, used a Behaviourist approach to learning. This "drill-and-practice" approach providing the student with feedback on their progress and matching the learner's pace are still applicable for basic learning tasks.

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As an example of a basic task in the green computing course, the computation of carbon emissions from electricity use by computer equipment could be taught with a simple computer based application. The system would present the formula and explanation from the current course notes, with students being asked multiple choice questions to assess their comprehension. Common misconceptions would be detected and additional material provided. The student would be presented with worked examples of formulas, possibly using illustrations (perhaps even animated illustrations) and the student asked "fill in the blank questions". Personalised System of Instruction Applied to Higher Education Keller's Personalised System of Instruction (PSI), was developed in the mid 1960s for teaching physiology (Keller, 1974). The elements which Keller described for his system are: 1. Utilising of course content, 2. Self pacing of the student through the units, 3. Mastery demanded at each step, 4. Repeated tests without penalty and maximum credit when done, 5. Proctors, to assist the students. By 1974 Keller reported that this approach was being used for 412 courses, including ones in engineering and mathematics/statistics (Keller, 1974). Keller also reported the use of PSI at secondary schools and for postgraduate level. Also he pointed out that proctors were not strictly necessary, if teachers can relate to the student's experience). While it might seem a little old fashioned, this can be used with modern Learning Management Systems for the basic parts of a course. Smith (2010) describes the competency-based training (CBT) approach of Australia's Vocational Education and Training (VET) system as "competency-based curriculum". Harris and Schutte (1985), make the link between TAFE education (TAFE being the earlier term for VET), competency and the Keeler Plan: 28

"Competency-based education may most appropriately be described as a synthesis of two other well known alternative educational systems: Mastery Learning and Keller's Personalised System of Instruction." From: Harris and Schutte (1985, p. 52). PSI can be seen as an elaboration of Skinner's Programmed Instruction. The idea of changing the behaviour of students using a teaching machine is a concept not well accepted for university education and not helped by Skinner's examples of teaching pigeons to perform (Skinner, 1954). It is more accepted in VET vocational education, particularly as one of the aims of such education is to change the behaviour of students so they conform to workplace requirements. There are clear parallels between PSI's seven elements and the approach to training by Australia's VET Registered Training Organisations. Nationally standardised training packages are made up of units of competency, with students required to pass each unit. Students will typically work in a workshop with an instructor present to help and undertake computer based modules in a learning centre with a roving proctor, or online at home (with online assistance). Students are not given a grade, but just considered "not yet competent" until "competent". Smith describes this form of assessment somewhat dismissively as "Tick and flick" (2010). The use of a PSI approach is not widely accepted in Australian Higher Education outside the VET sector. While VET has a nationally standardised database of training packages and modules with competency based assessment, Australian universities each develop their own courses, which are not divided into standardised modules and not each competency assessed. University academics are unlikely to accept a wholesale change to the VET approach, but it is suggested may accept incorporation of some of its features within courses. Forsyth (2014, p. 191) questions the packaging of on-line courses into "chunks" and the conversion of students into consumers of education as a commodity. Kazi (2004) questions if such courses are achieving their pedagogical goals, or being used just because they are easy to track student progress. However, carefully structured materials which provide re-enforcement through small tests could be seen as a useful part of an overall program. 29

Use of VET Educational Materials The use of VET educational techniques for a university course suggests that the VET sector should be looked at as a source of educational materials. A search of the Australian National Register on Vocational Education and Training (Australian Department of Industry, 2013) found a Vocational Graduate Certificate in Information Technology Sustainability (ICA70211). Of the twelve units of competency for this qualification, five relate directly to sustainability: 1. ICASUS702A - Conduct a business case study for integrating sustainability in IT planning and design projects 2. ICTSUS7235A - Use ICT to improve sustainability outcomes 3. ICTSUS7236A - Manage improvements in ICT sustainability 4. ICTSUS8237A - Lead applied research in ICT sustainability 5. ICTSUS8238A - Conduct and manage a life cycle assessment for sustainability However, use of these units of competency would require extensive reworking of the course materials. Also the vocational nature of some material is not as applicable, for example "Install and test power saving hardware" (ICTSUS4184A) is intended for training technicians who are licensed install equipment. It is not clear if the VET material can be easily converted for university use. An alternative approach which applies PSI to the existing course content to ensure mastery of the basic concepts, along with the existing assessment process for higher level concepts seems most appropriate. Recommendations 1. Retain existing course content structure: The course is currently divided into twelve weekly modules, each comprising eight to ten hours work for a student. This structure should be retained. 2. Divide Modules Into Smaller Components Using Keller's PSI: The content within each week should be broken into 30

smaller components using Self pacing, Mastery and Repeated tests. 3. Add Quiz Based Assessment: The current weekly assessment which uses free form answers to questions should be supplemented by the quiz questions of the Repeated tests, to provide students with feedback on their progress with basic material. This should replace half the weekly assessment. Students would receive a mark of 1 for this and not be permitted to proceed until they have achieved that mark. 4. Retain discussion forums: The current discussion forums would be retained, but just one question would be asked each week in each topic (instead of the current two or three). The material not covered in questions would be included in the quiz based assessment. 5. Peer assessment of forum contributions: The discussion forum contributions of students would be peer assessed. 6. Retain Assignment Based Assessment: The current two assignments for the majority of assessment would be retained, along with assessment by an expert human tutor. This component of the course would not be available for the free/low cost MOOC version of the course.

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References ACS, (2012a). ACS CPEP Articulation Pathways. retrieved October 1 2014, from Australian Computer Society Web Site: http://www.acs.org.au/professional-development/cpe-program/pathways ACS, (2012b). Professional Practice Online Course. retrieved October 2 2014, from Australian Computer Society Web Site: http://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/12385/18_ACS_F act-sheet-professional_practice.pdf Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2013). Três gerações de pedagogia de educação a distância. EAD em FOCO, 2(1). URL: http://eademfoco.cecierj.edu.br/index.php/Revista/article/viewArticle/162 ANU, (2009). Professor Ross Garnaut discusses the challenges of climate change (pt1). (Video). Australian National University. URL: http://www.anu.edu.au/vision/videos/4281/ ANU, (2014a). Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe. retrieved October 1 2014, from edX Web Site: https://www.edx.org/course/anux/anux-anu-astro2x-exoplanets-1443 ANU, (2014b). Engaging India. retrieved October 1 2014, from edX Web Site: https://www.edx.org/course/anux/anux-anu-india1x-engaging-india-1376 Australian Department of Industry, (2013). About training.gov.au. retrieved October 9 2014, from National Register on Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Australia Web Site: http://training.gov.au/Home/About DeBoer, J., Stump, G. S., Seaton, D., & Breslow, L. (2013). Diversity in MOOC students' backgrounds and behaviors in relationship to performance in 6.002 x. In Proceedings of the Sixth Learning International Networks Consortium Conference. URL http://tll.mit.edu/sites/default/files/library/LINC%20%2713.pdf Castillo, R. C. (2014). A Paradigm Shift to Outcomes-Based Higher Education: Policies, Principles and Preparations. International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research (IJSBAR), 14(1), 174186. URL http://gssrr.org/index.php?journal=JournalOfBasicAndAp32

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of Education. URL http://drjj.uitm.edu.my/DRJJ/OBE%20FSG %20Dec07/2-Killen_paper_good-%20kena%20baca.pdf Knowles, Malcolm S. (Malcolm Shepherd) (1980). The modern practice of adult education : from pedagogy to andragogy (rev. and updated). Association Press ; Chicago : Follett Pub. Co, [Wilton, Conn.] Lindley, D. (2008). A research proposal to assess the efficacy of initial professional development offered by professional associations, in particular, the Computer Professional Education Program offered by the Australian Computer Society. In Proceedings of the Adult Learning Australia 48th Annual National Conference, November, Fremantle Western Australia. URL https://ala.asn.au/images/document/ALA_Paper_David_Lindley.pdf Neo TK, K., & Neo, M. (2010). Interactive multimedia education: Using Authorware as an instructional tool to enhance teaching and learning in the Malaysian classroom. Digital Education Review, (5), 80-94. URL http://greav.ub.edu/DER/index.php/der/article/viewFile/56/144 Nesterko, S. O., Dotsenko, S., Han, Q., Seaton, D., Reich, J., Chuang, I., & Ho, A. D. (2013). Evaluating the geographic data in moocs. In Neural Information Processing Systems. URL http://nesterko.com/files/papers/nips2013-nesterko.pdf Nyoni, J. (2014). Self-Regulatory Learning Behaviours in Open and Distance Learning: Priming Appropriate Online Mediation Contexts for Multicultural Students. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(15), 441. URL http://www.mcser.org/journal/index.php/mjss/article/download/3251/ 3205 Reed, R (2014, September, 19). Does the student a) know the answer, or are they b) guessing?. retrieved October 8 2014, from The Conversation Web Site: https://theconversation.com/does-the-student-a-know-the-answer-or-are-they-b-guessing-31893 Salmon, Gilly (2004). E-moderating : the key to teaching and learning online (2nd ed). RoutledgeFalmer, London

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Salmon, G., Gregory, J., Dona, K. L., & Ross, B. Experiential online development for educators: The example of the Carpe Diem MOOC. URL http://publicservicesalliance.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/08/www.gillysalmon.com-uplo...t_pre_peerreviewed.pdf SFIA Foundation, (2011). Skills Framework for the Information Age, Framework Reference Version 4. retrieved September 30 2014, from SFIA Foundation Web Site: http://www.qgcio.qld.gov.au/images/documents/QGEA_documents/ govnet/Documents/Projects%20and%20services/ICT%20workforce %20capability/SFIA%20v5%20-%20framework%20reference.pdf Shafeeq, C. P., & ur Rahman, M. M. (2014). An Outline of Developments in Language Learning Technologies. URL http://www.iairs.org/PAPERS/PAGE%2051%20-%2054.pdf Skinner, B. F. (1954). The science of learning and the art of teaching. Cambridge, Mass, USA, 99-113 Smith, E. (2010), A review of twenty years of competency-based training in the Australian vocational education and training system. International Journal of Training and Development, 14: 54-64. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2419.2009.00340.x URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2419.2009.00340.x/full TelecomTV, (2009). Green Planet. (video). URL http://www.mobileworldlive.com/green-planet-episode-1-the-green-economy. UBC, (2014, September, 15). Flexible Learning: Charting a Strategic Vision for UBC (Vancouver Campus) FOR UBC. retrieved October 8 2014, from University of British Columbia Web Site: http://flexible.learning.ubc.ca/files/2014/09/FL-Strategy-September2014.pdf Wilcox, Y., & King, J. (2014). A Professional Grounding and History of the Development and Formal Use of Evaluator Competencies. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 28(3). URL http://cjpe.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/cjpe/index.php/cjpe/article/do wnload/170/pdf

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Worthington, Tom (2011). ICT sustainability : assessment and strategies for a low carbon future. Tomw Communications, Belconnen, A.C.T URL http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/ Worthington, T. (2012a). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. 2012 7Th International Conference On Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), (Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Science and Education, ICCSE 2012) 263. doi:10.1109/ICCSE.2012.6295070 Worthington, T (2012b). How Green is My Computer?. retrieved September 30 2014, from Tomw Communications Pty Ltd Web Site: http://www.tomw.net.au/How_Green_is_My_Computer/ Wu, H (2014). ICT Sustainability. retrieved September 30 2014, from ANU edX Edge Web Site: https://edge.edx.org/courses/ANUHonsProject/COMP7310/2014_T2 /about

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How 1990s Computer Mediated Communication can inform today's MOOCs Introduction This review looks at one study from the late 1990s into what the range of participation in CMCs was and why (Taylor, 1998). This could be useful in informing today's e-Learning and MOOC developers. The use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) for education is now the subject of discussion in the media. Many reports on the use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), make claims that students will engage with computers for education in a new way. However, there are decades of literature on computer based distance education which can inform the current debate. MOOCs have been proposed as a way to broaden access to education, but have barriers to previous forms of online participator been overcome? The Research Process Taylor follows a conventional research process, starting with a literature review (Taylor, 1998, p. 13) looking at previous studies of the interaction of students and instructors (interestingly Taylor changes from "instructors" to use the term "moderators" later). Most papers referenced are from the early to mid 1990s, during the early days of the use of the Internet. As a result Taylor emphasises the limitations of the media at the time. This remains an issue today, particularly for developing nations and in regional and remote areas, with limited Internet access. Some of the pre-Internet studies Taylor discusses are also still relevant, as they concern the educational effectiveness of the use of two-way audio and video. While the technology used for audio and video has changed from analogue phone lines and satellite, to digital fibre optic cables, the educational outcomes are unchanged. Taylor goes on to chart the development of Computer Medicated Communication (CMC), at this stage a purely text based media and ends with the question: "... why the learners do not seize the oppor-

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tunity that is offered by CMC" (1998, p. 25). This is the central research question for the study. Theory: Taylor's study is theory driven. The idea of interaction being of value for learning is explored and the limits of that interaction in distance education. The key theory used is Feenberg's 'phatic' expressions: non-verbal cues which are lacking from text based communication (1989). Taylor then theorises that this lack of non-verbal cues in CMC will be heightened for students who already have a fear of communicating. The student's fear of communication can be measured with McCroskey's communication apprehension (CA) questionnaire (1981) and then compared with the student's perceived and actual communication in real e-learning courses. Statement of the Problem Question: Taylor (1998) sets out to find why some learners participated more than others in CMCs. The study considers if a lack of participation by some students (so called "lurkers") is due to an absence of visual clues missing in text based forums or if a perceived need for high quality academic writing is deterring students. Three research questions are asked: 1. "To what do students attribute their levels of participation in computer conferencing?" (Taylor, 1998, p. 82) 2. "Is there a systematic relationship between oral communication apprehension and levels of computer conference participation?" (Taylor, 1998, p. 84) 3. "Is there a significant difference between responses of the lurker and the non-lurker to the PRCA-24 and the computer conference participation questionnaires?" (Taylor, 1998, p. 86) Purpose and Method: Taylor describes their study as "... an exploratory examination of the phenomenon of lurking ..." and later use the terms "explanation" and "description" for their case study to "gather basic information" (p. 36). So could best be described as exploratory basic research.

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A set of definitions are provided (Taylor, 1998, p. 37) for the main concepts: •

Lurking: a low participation rate in CMCs. This is defined for the study, as at most, two postings per conference topic of at most 150 words total. It is not clear how these values for lurking were derived, with no sensitivity analysis of them in the paper, nor sources cited.

•

Communication Apprehension: Taylor (1998, p. 29) quotes McCroskey's 1977 definition of CA as "... an individual's level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons." This is cited by Taylor as being originally from McCroskey's 1981 paper, but is actually from a previous study (1977). McCroskey's "Personal Report of Communication Apprehension" (PRCA-24) questionnaire is used to measure apprehension (Taylor, 1998, p. 11). The PRCA has been widely used in studies of students in North America and Australia (McDowell, 1994) and is suitable for this research.

It might be argued that Lurking and Communication Apprehension are obsolete concepts in the age of social media and smart phones, with every one (or at least every young university student) comfortable being online, all the time. However, students of any age can still experience anxiety speaking in a formal academic setting, be it online or a physical classroom, so these are issues still worth exploring. One aspect not fully explored by Taylor (1998) is the extent to which students who are Lurking may still be engaged in the course. A student who is not originating text messages, due to Communication Apprehension may still be reading messages (that is Lurking), or may be completely non-engaged in the course, neither reading nor writing. Course Management Systems (such as Moodle) allow for the monitoring of what content the student accessed in a course, even when they did not contribute, but Taylor does not appear to have made use of this information. This may be because Taylor's approach draws heavily on McCroskey's earlier studies, at which time good "analytics" would not have been available from the early computer systems in use.

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Research Design The single case study is described by Taylor as "... non-experimental as it does not include any manipulation or control, is inductive, and does not seek to predict." (1998, p.36). However, the purpose of the study is to see if the student's apprehension about communication relates to their participation in computer conferences and this implies a causal relationship (apprehension causing lower participation). If such a relationship was found, it could be used to devise interventions to assist students at risk of under participation Unit of analysis: Subjects of the study were 274 Athabasca University Masters of Distance Education students, studying by distance education in the first three courses of the program. These were adult students with an average of 42 years (making them different to the typical non-DE student). Taylor commented the students were "... broadly dispersed geographic locations throughout Canada" (1998, p. 38). Sampling techniques: No sampling was used, with all students invited to take part in the study. One possible source of bias might be that students who have Communication Apprehension may be reluctant to participate in such a study and so be under-represented. A possible indication of this is that Taylor found that 60.8% of the total non-respondents to the survey met the definition of lurking, compared with only 30.7% for respondents (1998, p.69). That is, those who did not take part in the survey were about twice as likely to contribute minimally to the conferences as those who did take part. Measurement Techniques: Two questionnaires were used, one for Computer Conference Participation and one for Communication Apprehension. The "Computer Conference Participation Survey" (Taylor, 1998, p. 89) had 31 items, using mostly a 5-point Likert scale (quantitative) and some free test questions (qualitative). This questionnaire asked about the student's experience with CMC, other factors which might effect their participation and how much they participated. The second questionnaire was the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24), using a 24 item Likert scale (Taylor, 1998, p. 111), as discussed previously. In addition students were asked for permission (Taylor, 1998, p. 114) for the researchers to access the CMC to measure the frequency (postings per unit) and 40

magnitude (words per posting) for each student participating in the study. The study surveyed students enrolled in courses for the September to December 1995 and September to December 1996 terms. Students who withdrew within the first 30 days of the course under the university's early withdrawal policy were excluded from the analysis, as they would not then participate in the CMC. However, as a result 28 of the students (about 10%) were excluded. It is not clear why this was done, as these students may well be withdrawing due to Communication Apprehension and their exclusion would thus underestimate the effect. This methodology could not be used for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), where the number of students renaming active in a course drops rapidly in the first few weeks. The first edX MOOC had only 50% of the students engaged after the first week (Breslow, Pritchard, DeBoer, Stump & Seaton, 2013). Even a course with highly motivated students, such as those who want to learn academic English to enrol in College (so presumably less susceptible to Communication Apprehension), showed only a 6% completion rate (Whitmer, Schiorring & James, 2014). Findings by Talyor The results of the Conference Activity and Experiences questionnaire show that most students reported reading the conference forums "Every couple of days" (42.30%) or "Daily" (40.38%) (Taylor, 1998, p. 48). This is consistent with a similar study of students at Open University UK, Baxter and Haycock (2014), which found that 38.1% of students were "occasional posters". The Personal Report of Communication Apprehension - 24 Scores (Taylor, 1998, p. 62) for all students had a mean of 52.02 Standard Deviation of 17.76, which is reasonably close to compared to 65.60 and Standard Deviation of 15.30 report by McCroskey for over 40,000 college students (McCroskey, n.d.). The data was grouped by lurker and non-lurker groups for some analysis. No weightings or adjustments were applied to the data. The data was reported in a comprehensive set of 28 tables. However, no graphs or diagrams were provided and the lack of these may have made the data more difficult to interpret for the reader. 41

The analysis makes use of simple statistical measures of mean, standard deviation, correlation and Chi-square test, appropriate to the quantitative data. However, the analysis carried out on two open ended text questions in the questionnaire is less clear. The responses are described as having been "tabulated" and "clustered according to any central themes that emerged" (Taylor, 1998, p. 66), however the methodology is not further described. This contrasts for example, with Carroll, Diaz, Meiklejohn, Newcomb and Adkins (2013) who describe using a thematic analysis, followed by axial coding to analyse student developed Wikis. The PRCA-24 Scores did not show a statistically significant correlation (at a 95% confidence level) with Lurking or with Conference Participation. When divided into lurker and non-lurker groups a Chisquare test did not find a significant difference in PRCA-24 score and computer conference participation. One positive result was that participants were self aware of their level of participation, with 50% of the lurkers reporting their viewed their level of participation as at best "below average". Discussion While Taylor's study is now sixteen years old (1998) the discussion of the role of interaction in distance education is still relevant today. While Internet speeds have increased and more interactive software is available, the text-only nature of CMCs remains a common feature of online courses. In 2014, text based forums appear to still be the primary mode used by these successors to these courses at Athabasca University (2014). More generally, the interactive component of on-line courses may be decreasing, with MOOCs popularising pre-recorded videos as the primary method of instruction. The term xMOOC is being used, sometimes pejoratively, to describe these highly structured, one-way courses, with little student interaction (Ross, Sinclair, Knox, Bayne & Macleod, 2014). Such courses are unlikely to help students become comfortable with expressing their views in an academic environment. Taylor's study is heavily dependent on McCroskey's 1977 idea of communication apprehension (CA) as "... an individual's level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons." However this concept was con42

ceived in terms of oral communication in a face-to-face classroom and it is not clear if the theory is directly applicable to a text based CMC. The study also depends on the text contributions to the CMC as a measure of the student's involvement in a course. There is no consideration of other forms of on-line participation, such as via social media, audio, or video. Taylor suggested that the variability in instructional style of the moderators and the personalities of the participants may explain the lack of correlation between students confidence in communication and their frequency and quantity of forum postings (1998, p. 84). However, the PRCA-24 questionnaire used was designed to measure how confident the students were with communication and no analysis was made of the moderators. One aspect not adequately addressed in the report was the effect of the course assessment scheme and tutor input on student participation. Taylor comments that "Most moderators allotted a percentage of the final course mark to the conference contributions, ranging from 10 to 20% ... Some required a minimum of 2 contributions per unit ..." (1998, p. 44). The allocation of marks to conference contributions could be expected to have a significant effect on student behaviour, but is not addressed further in the report. Also the practice of allocating marks for student participation does not appear to have been at the discretion of the individual moderators, as Taylor suggests. The official published course descriptions for the period of the research include a set proportion of marks for conference contributions (Athabasca University, 1997). Assuming each moderator carried out the assessment set down for the course, there would be an incentive for students to participate. Conclusions of The Study Taylor found that students are reasonably self aware of their level of how much they contribute to forums in a course. But no systematic relationship between oral communication apprehension and levels of computer conference participation was found. While the quantitative analysis of the data has been carried out with the appropriate statistical tools, the qualitative analysis of free form answerers by students appears to be very limited. More analysis of what students said might have yielded better insights that the negative statistical tests 43

show. The results as they stand would apply to the current courses offered in the Athabasca University Master of Education (Distance Education) as the courses, content, teaching methods and assessment to not appear to have changed greatly between 1998 and 2014. Implications for future research: Perhaps worryingly, this study still has implications for future research more than a decade later. Universities are still grappling with the issue of why some students do not interact online. An updated version of the communication apprehension questionnaire might be carried out for both students and moderators in relatively conventional online courses (such as those run by Athabasca University), on xMOOCs (large scale course with minimal student interaction) and with courses which encourage students to interact via social media. The nature of interaction for e-learning courses and how it can be supported with software, is yet to be adequately explored (Worthington, 2013). Conclusion Taylor found that are reasonably self aware of their level of how much they contribute to forums in a course. But no systematic relationship between oral communication apprehension and levels of computer conference participation was found. The study raises important questions about the role of the human tutor in an online course: what skills should they have and how much freedom to use an individual approach to teaching should they have and what effect this has on student's learning. This has implications beyond individual courses, for universities and educational systems. As an example, the Australian National University(ANU) and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) formed an "alliance" in 2010 to "... to share teaching, research and enrolment prospects." (Australian National University, 2010). In theory the strengths of the two institutions should complement each other, ANU for research and USQ for online distance education. However, the results of the alliance have been limited, with ANU listing only six USQ courses for their students, of the more than one thousand offered by USQ (Australian National University, 2014). One reason for this may be the differences in the amounts and modes of student interaction for courses of the two institutions. USQ has online courses very similar in format 44

to those of Athabasca University, as studies by Taylor. With such courses the student interaction is within carefully prescribed bounds. The ANU follows a very different approach, where the format, delivery methods and assessment is decided by the lecturer in change, each time a course is run and may be changed while the course is being run. In this environment the student interaction may range from none, to recasting the content and assessment. Taylor did not find a correlation between a student's communication apprehension (CA) and interaction in a course. However, such a study repeated in a course which has a significant number of students for whom the language of instruction is not their first language, may show different results. In particular, Australian universities are having to accommodate large numbers of students for whom English is a second language and are therefore less confident in communicating in student forums (Worthington, 2012, p. 3). One solution proposed to this problem is to have mixed bilingual classes where English speaking students learning a second language interact on-line with students who speak that language and are learning English (Worthington, 2014, p. 3). Taylor's techniques might be used to assess the success of this approach. One approach which was not available to Taylor in 1998, but can now be applied is measuring reading comprehension by tracking eye movements (Copeland & Gedeon, 2013). This may provide a way to apply the concept of Taylor's analysis routinely, on a much larger scale, for conventional elearning courses and MOOCs.

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References Athabasca University, (1997, November 7). MDDE 601: Introduction to Distance Education and Training. retrieved July 22 2014, from Course List Web Site: https://web.archive.org/web/19980117111231/http://www.athabascau.ca/html/syllabi/mdde/mdde601.htm Athabasca University, (2014 May, 27). MDDE 601: Introduction to Distance Education and Training. retrieved July 23 2014, from Athabasca University Web Site: http://cde.athabascau.ca/syllabi/mdde601.php Australian National University, (2010, February 12). Alliance to forge new directions in higher education. retrieved July 23 2014, from Australian National University Web Site: http://news.anu.edu.au/2010/02/12/alliance-to-forge-new-directions-in-higher-education/ Australian National University, (2014, April 1). University of Southern Queensland online courses. retrieved July 23 2014, from Australian National University Web Site: http://drss.anu.edu.au/gss/usq_online_courses.php Baxter, J. A., & Haycock, J. (2014). Roles and student identities in online large course forums: Implications for practice. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 15(1). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1593/2763 Breslow, L., Pritchard, D. E., DeBoer, J., Stump, G. S., Ho, A. D., & Seaton, D. T. (2013). Studying learning in the worldwide classroom: Research into edX's first MOOC. Research & Practice in Assessment, 8, 13-25. Retrieved from http://www.rpajournal.com/dev/wpcontent/uploads/2013/05/SF2.pdf Carroll, J. A., Diaz, A., Meiklejohn, J., Newcomb, M., & Adkins, B. (2013). Collaboration and competition on a wiki: The praxis of online social learning to improve academic writing and research in under-graduate students. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(4). Retrieved from http://ascilite.org.au/ajet/submission/index.php/AJET/article/download/154/607 46

Copeland, L., & Gedeon, T. (2013, December). Measuring reading comprehension using eye movements. In Cognitive Infocommunications (CogInfoCom), 2013 IEEE 4th International Conference on (pp. 791-796). IEEE. Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/icp.jsp?arnumber=6719207 Feenberg, A. (1989). The written world: On the theory and practice of computer conferencing. Mindweave: Communication, computers, and distance education, 22-39. Retrieved from http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/books/The_Written_World_old.pdf McCroskey, J. C. (n.d.). Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24). retrieved July 22 2014, from Dr. James C. McCroskey Web Site: http://www.jamescmccroskey.com/measures/prca24.htm McCROSKEY, J. C. (1977). ORAL COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION: A SUMMARY OF RECENT THEORY AND RESEARCH. Human Communication Research, 4(1), 78. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.1977.tb00599.x Retrieved from http://www.jamescmccroskey.com/publications/074.pdf McCroskey, J. C. (1981). Oral Communication Apprehension: Reconceptualization and a New Look at Measurement. Retrieved from http://www.jamescmccroskey.com/publications/101.pdf McDowell, E. E. (1994). An Exploratory Study of PRCA-24 Variables, Receiver Apprehension (RA) and Telephone Apprehension (TA) for College Students from Australia and the United States. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED379693.pdf Ross, J., Sinclair, C., Knox, J., Bayne, S., & Macleod, H. (2014). Teacher experiences and academic identity: The missing components of MOOC pedagogy. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(1), 56-68. Retrieved from https://oerknowledgecloud.org/sites/oerknowledgecloud.org/files/ross_0314.pdf Taylor, D. O. (1998). Participation and non-participation in computer mediated conferencing : a case study / by Daniel O. Taylor. --. 1998. Retrieved from http://auspace.athabascau.ca/bitstream/2149/563/1/taylor.pdf

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Whitmer, J., Schiorring, E., & James, P. (2014, March). Patterns of persistence: what engages students in a remedial english writing MOOC?. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Learning Analytics And Knowledge (pp. 279-280). ACM. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2567601 Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. In Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 2012 7th International Conference on (pp. 263266). IEEE. Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/9013/1/Worthington_Green2012.pdf Worthington, T. (2013, April). Synchronizing asynchronous learning-Combining synchronous and asynchronous techniques. In Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 2013 8th International Conference on (pp. 618-621). IEEE. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICCSE.2013.6553983 Worthington, T. (2014). Chinese and Australian students learning to work together online. In Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 2014 9th International Conference on. IEEE. Advance online publication. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/11724

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Theory of Practice Introduction This paper presents a personal Theory of Practice for my online teaching to postgraduate students, in vocationally orientated courses (Worthington, 2012). Three learning principles, inspired by Zen maxims of the Martial Arts, are presented: Economy of effort, Realism, and Switching smoothly between techniques. Theory and research literature, are presented to justify these. Three Learning Principles Bruce Lee established the Jeet Kune Do system of martial arts in 1967 (Lee, 1975). As with other such systems, this contains elements of an eastern philosophy of life, as well as physical training techniques. Khoo & Senna-Fernandes (2014) sought to use this as inspiration for techniques in plastic surgery, so it does not seem too farfetched to look to the same source for insights into teaching. Economy of effort for maximum results

Meditation, Created by Jens Tärning from the Noun Project, CC-BY 3.0, 2014 "One of the greatest adjustments the novice athlete must make in competition is to overcome the natural tendency to try too hard - to hurry, strain, press and try to blast the whole fight at once." (Lee, 1975, p. 57) 49

Martial arts emphasize maximum results from minimum effort. Similarly, learning is a means to an end and so should be done efficiently: using just enough resources to get the job done. However, most theories of education ignore the cost of an activity. There tends to be an inappropriate emphasis on trying in education, rather than succeeding. I seek economy of effort in my teaching and try to instill this approach in my students. Courses are aligned with external job skills requirements, with readings and exercises to help the student meet that requirement. But economy of effort is not the same as leaving students to fend for themselves. Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) reviewed studies which showed that lower aptitude students achieved lower results when provided with no, or less, guidance. Mayer (1999) suggests highlighting the most important information for the leaner using simple techniques (such as bold italics), provide a summary and eliminate irrelevant information. They suggest using the SIO (Select, Organize, Integrate) principles for textbooks and lectures as well as multimedia materials. The techniques of Cognitive Information Processing can be used to provide meaningful structure to the material, with a default sequence (even if the students are encouraged to find their own path). Huang and Andrade (2014, p. 300) suggest methods to manage the cognitive load placed on the student by being able to present only the information the student needs on a mobile device. Realism

Martial Arts, by Heywood (Public Domain) 50

"... most systems of martial art accumulate a ' fancy mess'' that distorts and cramps their practitioners and distracts them from the actual reality of combat, which is simple and direct." (Lee, 1975, p. 14) Education needs to provide the student with useful skills. Students will need to start with simplified exercises, but need to be exposed to increasingly realistic problems. My students either have jobs or are training for a specific role as a professional, their studies are therefore focused on obtaining skills for that job. By providing student exercises which are based on their own workplace, or a reasonable simulation of the workplace, the students are motivated and learn useful skills. Baviskar, Hartle and Whitney (2009) point out that Constructivism is a theory of learning, not of teaching, but any method of teaching should be based on how students learn. Baviskar, Hartle and Whitney (2009) list the four features of constructivism as: eliciting prior knowledge, creating cognitive dissonance, application of new knowledge with feedback, and reflection on learning There is an obvious correspondence between these features of learning and the teacher's role in motivating the student with: "... providing content and resources, posing relevant problems and questions at appropriate times..." (Baviskar, Hartle & Whitney, 2009). Switching smoothly between techniques

Flexible, Created by Borengasser for the Noun Project, CC-BY 3.0 2012 51

"If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo." (Lee, 1975, p. 5) Educational literature is full of explanations of why one principle, theory or technique is superior to another. But one approach will rarely do for all situations. Educators need to move smoothly from one technique to another. Students will need times when they learn alone and then others in a group. They can learn the basics using a simple drill and practice computer program (based on behaviorism theory) and then explore advanced topics with other students. Kanuka and Anderson (1999) claim that competition and student expectations is pressuring higher education institutions to remove time, place, and situational barriers. However, universities seem to have been able to resist that pressure with most students still attending face-to-face classes on campus. They argue that computer mediated conferencing allows for "small group discussions, Socratic dialogue, collaborative/cooperative learning, brainstorming, debriefing, case studies, problem based learning", but simply translating these classroom techniques the online environment is unlikely to significantly increase efficiency. What might make a difference is to be able to blend techniques. Kanuka and Anderson (1999) create a two dimensional space with a social axis, from socially to individually (the scale would more naturally run the other way from individually to socially) and an axis from subject to objective reality. They then place four forms of constructivism into four quadrants of this space: Cognitive (Individual & Objective), Radical (Individual & Subjective), Situated ( Social & Subjective and Co-Constructivism (Social & Objective). Kanuka and Anderson (1999) describe and then dismiss each form of Constructivism, until they reach the last, Co-Constructivism, which emphasizes the shared social interaction between students and teacher. This must be comforting for teachers used to the classroom and who can see a path to adopt the same approach on-line. However, the on-line environment provides a way to interact with a large fluid group of people, unlike the small fixed class. Also the many voices challenge the idea that there is an objective reality. When anyone can create a plausible looking web site and edit the Wikipedia, 52

how do you know what is an authoritative source and what is not? All four forms of Constructivism should be able to be applied online in one course simultaneously. One interesting approach is with what Mayer (1999) calls "multiframe illustrations" with "coordinated captions". These are essentially a cartoon strip, with a series of frames showing a series of steps, with the text on each frame. This was shown to be superior to illustrations with text separate and illustrations on separate pages. Also animation was found to be superior. In my own work I will tend to use simple diagrams and pictograms (Figs. 1 to 3), to highlight points. Babaian and Chalian (2014) report on the use of the narrative techniques of graphic novels for teaching surgery and Meyers (2014) has used comics for teaching Communication Theory. This approach is supported by the Cognitive Information Processing, which encourages the use of graphic representations of information (Huang and Andrade, 2014, p. 300). Koh, Basawapatna, Nickerson, and Repenning (2014) report using online assessment of computer coding skills using a "Project First, just-in-time" pedagogy, combining Csíkszentmihá¡lyi's Flow (2014) with Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. In practice this presents the students with a combination of increasingly advanced programming concepts within the same project and more complex projects. The authors claim to be able to track the progress with the student's progress in real time by mining data from the learning management system. However, this level of monitoring might detract from the social aspects of learning and the authors may be stretching these theories beyond breaking point by attempting to implement them explicitly in software. For example Vygotsky (1977, p. 16) referred to the zone of proximal development in relation to children's play and "voluntary intentions" rather than a form of programmed step by step instruction. Conclusion Three learning principles, as part of my personal Theory of Practice for online distance teaching are: Economy of effort for maximum results, Realism, and Switching smoothly between techniques. These are intended for teaching computing to postgraduate students on-line and are inspired by the Jeet Kune Do System of Martial Arts. No one 53

approach or technique will be sufficient for all teaching and the practitioner must be ready to apply approaches as required. Learning materials and assessment should be based on real world scenarios and, where possible, incorporate the student's own experience. The cost of teaching and learning, to the teacher and the student, should be taken into account, so resources are used sparingly.

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References Babaian, C. S., & Chalian, A. A. (2014). "The Thyroidectomy Story": Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and the Novel Approach to Teaching Head and Neck Surgery Through the Genre of the Comic Book. Journal of surgical education, 71(3), 413-418. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsurg.2013.11.008 Baviskar, S. N., Hartle, R. T. & Whitney, T. (2009). Essential criteria to characterize constructivist teaching: Derived from a review of the literature and applied to five constructivist-teaching methods articles. International Journal of Science Education, 31(4), 541 - 550. DOI: 10.1080/09500690701731121 Borengasser, S. (image designer). (2012).Flexible [Pictogram], Noun Project. Retrieved from http://thenounproject.com/term/flexible/43170/ Clark R.E. (1989). When teaching kills learning: research on mathematics in Mandl H et al (eds) Learning and Instruction Vol 2.2 Pergamon Press, Oxford/New York, 1-22. Cognition and Technology Group Huang, W. D., & Andrade, J. (2014). Design and Evaluation of Mobile Learning from the Perspective of Cognitive Load Management. Handbook of Research on Education and Technology in a Changing Society, 291. Heywood, L (image designer). (2012).Martial-Arts [Pictogram], Noun Project. URL http://thenounproject.com/term/martial-arts/1924 Kanuka, H., & Anderson, T. (1999). Using Constructivism in Technology-Mediated Learning: Constructing Order out of the Chaos in the Literature. Radical Pedagogy,1(2), 2-39. Khoo, L. S., & Senna-Fernandes, V. (2014). Applying Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do Combat Philosophy in Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery - 7 Principles for Success. Modern Plastic Surgery, 2014. DOI: 10.4236/mps.2014.42005

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Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J. & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86. Koh, K. H., Basawapatna, A., Nickerson, H., & Repenning, A. (2014, July). Real Time Assessment of Computational Thinking. In Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2014 IEEE Symposium on (pp. 49-52). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/VLHCC.2014.6883021 Lee, Bruce (1975). Tao of jeet kune do. Ohara Publications, Santa Clarita, California. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/pdfySP1dBDr6xLGrVfF9 Mayer, R. E. (1999). Designing instruction for constructivist learning. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (pp. 50-67). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Meyers, E. A. (2014). Theory, Technology, and Creative Practice: Using Pixton Comics to Teach Communication Theory. Communication Teacher, 28(1), 32-38. DOI: 10.1080/17404622.2013.839051 Tärning, J. (image designer). (2014).Meditation [Pictogram], Noun Project. URL http://thenounproject.com/term/meditation/51613/ Vygotsky, L. S. (1977). Play and its role in the mental development of the child. (C. Mulholland, Trans.). Soviet developmental psychology, 76-99. Retrieved from http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/Courses/Psy225/Classic %203%20Vygotsky.pdf Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. In Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 2012 7th International Conference on (pp. 263266). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/ICCSE.2012.6295070

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Needs Assessment and Proposal Development Introduction In this chapter I carry out the first two steps in instructional design (ID) for creating a new course provisionally titled "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" to be offered on-line, initially for students in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra. First a needs assessment will be carried out, followed by a proposal for what is to be developed. These first two phases will be fowled in a separate document with creation of one of the learning objects for the course. An "Innovation ACT" competition was established at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra in 2008 (Blackhall, n.d.). The competition, now supported by the University of Canberra and the local Canberra government (the "ACT Government"), has the aim of providing): 1. "Entrepreneurial education via seminar sessions ran parallel to a university semester 2. Entrepreneurial experiences within a competition environment that allows students to test their ideas." From Innovation ACT (2014a), emphasis added. The Innovation ACT competition provides students with handbooks and templates, students attend presentations, prepare their proposals with the help of a mentor and then pitch their ideas to a panel of judges (InnovationACT, 2014b). Prasad (2014) discusses the history and educational role of such enterprise competitions and categorizes it as an "action learning" pedagogy. While popular with students and having an educational role, the Innovation ACT competition is not part of a formal educational program and so is not evaluated as to its educational effectiveness and students do not receive credit for participation towards their studies. This document discusses how to design an on-line course which stu57

dents could take in conjunction with Innovation ACT and similar competitions, as part of a university degree program. The course would be designed to fit with postgraduate certificate and degree programs in the computing discipline, as that is to author's discipline area. Kakouris (2009, p. 231) argues for an ADDIE model (Anallise, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate) is suitable for providing online entrepreneurial education, emphasizing guidance, communication and peer support. They argue that the DE teaching material can be used to implement Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction: Gain Attention, Inform Learners of Objectives, Stimulate Recall of Prior Learning, Present the Content, Provide Learning Guidance, Elicit Performance (Practice), Provide Feedback, Assess Performance, Enhance Retention and Transfer to job" (Gagné (1965) cited in Kakouris (2009, p. 233)). Is a Human Tutor Needed? Kakouris (2009, p. 233) assert that the DE system can act as a "virtual educator" without a human tutor. More recently replacing the tutor with an automated system has been attempted with a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on entrepreneurship. Al-Atabi and DeBoer (2014) report on an entrepreneurship MOOC conducted with 1600 online student in 115 countries, plus 60 on-campus students. The online students formed teams and under took group projects. In addition to videos, the students received points from peers and badges to provide them with feedback on progress. AlAtabi and DeBoer (2014) noted that the completion rate for online students was 25%, which is higher than a typical MOOC, but was far lower than the 90% completion rate for the students undertaking the same course on-campus. Neck, Greene and Brush (2014) point out the role for the instructor to "facilitate engagement in creative processes" for higher level skills. As the course under development here is intended to be part of a conventional university degree program, a completion rate of 25% is unacceptably low. It is therefore proposed to take a middle path, having on-line materials, but facilitated by a human tutor, to achieve a completion rate comparable to face-to-face courses.

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Part 1: Needs Assessment Needs assessment approach Smith and Ragan, (2005, pp. 43) suggest that an ID needs assessment should first establish if there is a need at all. They outline a cycle of needs assessment, design, production, implementation and evaluation (Smith and Ragan, 2005, pp. 44), while advocating the evaluation plans actually be constructed during the needs assessment phase. This may be unrealistic where the need for a course has not yet been established and so work on evaluation would be wasted if the course is never run. Smith and Ragan, (2005, pp. 44) divided needs assessments into three model types: 1. Problem Model: As Smith and Ragan note, it is necessary to determine if there really is a "problem" and if a cause it the best way to solve it. In the case of an unsolicited new course on innovation, the problem model is not as applicable, as there is no current group of employees to canvas. As the aim is to have students go out and create new companies, there are also not employers to consult. The Innovation ACT competition is part funded by the local government, which has in an economic development strategy to foster new industries, a "culture of entrepreneurship" and encourage startup firms to provide employment (ACT Government 2013). The ACT Government might therefore be consulted about the problem of educating innovators. 2. Innovation Model: This approach looks for changes in the students, the education system or the environment. The innovation model would seem apt for a course in innovation: students are less likely to want to simply get a job in a corporation and instead want to set up their own company. The approach of involving students in an innovation competition working on a real world project is not new in the Australian education system (along with e-learning and e-portfolio systems which make it easier to offer such education), but not widely used. However, the reduction in the available of jobs for life has required graduates to be more entrepreneurial, be59

ing able to take on new roles and even invent a job for themselves. Thompson and Kwong (2013) found that "enterprise education", designed to develop entrepreneurial skills, in UK schools had a "direct positive relationship with entrepreneurial activities and intentions". This indicates that students will respond positively to such education and an introductory course on innovation with lead to the student doing more such work. 3. Discrepancy Model: The discrepancy model, as described by Smith and Ragan, (2005, pp. 45) , does not start with a new need, but as a check to see if an existing course is meeting the already established requirements. This applies to an innovation course, as some such courses already exist, along with externally set skills requirements. The analysis to be carried out therefore incorporates some elements of the discrepancy model, at least to say what is wrong with existing courses and so why a new course is required. With this the requirements will be listed and how well these are met with courses, to determine the gap. Scope and extent of the need a. Who to query. As there is a question over the popularity of the existing course, the first group to survey are potential students. It would be simpler to have access to students currently enrolled in a program of study (as they are easy to access). But it may be worthwhile contacting those who have not been attracted to programs, perhaps via a professional body, such as the Australian Computer Society and Engineers Australia. These bodies could also asked as to the need. Innovation organizations, such as the various "co-working" offices and "hacker" competition providers may be of use. In addition experts in the field can be consulted, as Dr. Lachlan Blackhall, founder of Innovation ACT (Blackhall, n.d.), who has worked on engaging students with real world problems (Smith, Brown, Blackhall, Loden & O'Shea, 2010). b. How to Query. An on-line survey instrument could be used to collect information from potential students. This could use multiple choice and rating questions. Interviews could be used with organizational representatives. However, they are unlikely to agree to a for60

mal social science style of interview and a more informal approach may need to be used. c. Type of questions. Reimers-Hild and King, (2009) proposed six questions for entrepreneurial leadership and innovation in the context of distance education. These could be applied more generally for questioning potential students and employers about innovation courses: 1. "How entrepreneurial is your organization? On a scale of 1-5, would you classify your organization as a 1 (not at all entrepreneurial) or a 5 (extremely entrepreneurial)? 2. How are administrators, instructors and learners in your organization learning to be more entrepreneurial? 3. Developing a global mindset throughout an organization characterized by risk taking, innovation and change should be encouraged, not discouraged. ... 4. Is innovation a priority? On a scale of 1-5, would you classify your organization as a 1 (not at all innovative) or a 5 (extremely innovative)?... 5. In what ways can your leaders share the vision ... Can they use both face-to-face and online methods? Can they use both individual and large group settings?... 6. How can you institutions connect employees and learners with their passions and their personal vision of the future?... 7. What is your organization doing to develop and leverage the human and social capital of its administrators, instructors and students? ..." 61

From Reimers-Hild and King , 2009 (emphasis added) . d. Other data sources. While the sources discussed above may be of some use, the primary source of information will be preexisting skills definitions and syllabuses. In particular Australian computer science degrees are accredited by the Australian Computer Society (ACS, 2014). The Society promotes the use of an internationally standardized skills framework and courses are required to be "aligned" with the framework (IP3, 2015). It would therefore be appropriate to based the course on the most appropriate skills definitions in that framework. McEwan (2013) discusses the use of SFIA skills definitions (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015) for university courses and note it is particularly useful for fast developing new job categories (SFIA is also part of the ACS/IP3 framework). McEwan proposed the use of SFIA level 5/6 for Masters-level courses and 4/5 for Honors-level. They also found that one SFIA skill was insufficient for a typical university course and used two. In this case McEwan (2013) aligned a course with skills "Emerging Technology Monitoring" (EMRG) and "Innovation" (INOV). Alongside the university system, Australia has a system of Vocational Education and Training (VET), which as Mazzarol (2014) points out, has been active in offering courses in entrepreneurship for small business. Some universities have associated VET Registered Training Organizations (RTOs) to deliver such courses, at a lower qualification level than their degree programs. The VET system has a national database of standardized skills sets, make up of units of competency (Australian Department of Industry, 2013) and a database of preprepared learning objects (National VET E-learning Strategy, 2013). A search of the training database for "innovation" found a "Managing Innovation Skill Set" BSBSS00014, "Innovation Leadership Skill Set" (BSBSS00008) with units of competency "Establish systems that support innovation" (BSBINN501A), "Foster leadership and innovation" (PSPGOV604A). However, of the ten courses listed in the training database with the word "entrepreneurship" in the title, only two are currently offered, a Graduate Certificate and a Diploma of "Entrepreneurship for Food and Wine". This indicates that perhaps the demand for such courses at the VET level is not a strong as Mazzarol (2014) suggests. A search of the database of learning objects found three relevant en62

tries: "Communicate information and ideas", "Plan for change" and "Manage emerging challenges and opportunities". These may be of some limited value in the innovation course for low level skills, as may the units of competency. The intention is that students can optionally undertake an innovation competition, in particular "Innovation ACT" alongside the course. Therefore the content of "Innovation ACT" will provide more detail as to the need. Need and Causes The Australian Computer Society already offers an on-line innovation course: "New Technology Alignment" NTA, (ACS, 2013). However, NTA is intended for employees of corporations to identify innovations within the organization. The need is to address the aspirations of students to set up their own enterprises working on their own products, rather than working for a corporation. This is in part by an innate wish to innovate and partly due to the difficulty in finding worthwhile (or any) employment in a corporation. Segal Quince & Partners (1985) argue that the growth of start-up high technology businesses around Cambridge from the 1980s was in part due to students who wanted to maintain the Cambridge lifestyle and, with the lack of alternative employment, were forced to setup their own business. The ACT Government (responsible for Canberra), is implementing a similar strategy by funding Innovation ACT, to encourage students to stay in Canberra and set up a business, rather than move away after graduation. The proposed course would teach the students skills needed to set up a business in Canberra. What is Available: The University of Canberra (UoC) and ANU both offer innovation courses in Canberra. UoC have courses as part of the Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (University of Canberra, 2012b). A typical unit is "Managing Change and Innovation" (University of Canberra, 2012a), offered in blended mode (online content with on campus attendance of up to thirty nine hours). ANU has "innovation" courses in business and engineering programs: "Entrepreneurship and Innovation" MGMT3027 (ANU.n.d. b), "Innovation and Commercialisation" MGMT7165 (ANU.n.d. c), "Engineering Innovation" ENGN3230 (ANU.n.d. a), "Technology and Innovation Management and Strategy" MGMT7106 (ANU.n.d. 63

d). However, these are courses have largely the format of a conventional lecture and examination based university program, are not integrated with an innovation competition and not aligned with external skills standards. What is desired: A course which is delivered on-line, can be used alongside an innovation competition to provide the student with more hands on-experience and aligned with external skills standards to provide an industry relevant and preferably global qualification. Cause of the Needs Gap: The Canberra university courses are designed to fit within conventional classroom teaching techniques and program structures. The student is assumed to undertake their academic study at the university, receive a university qualification and then move to employment, most likely at a corporation or institutional setting. Potential solutions One solution to the problem of including innovation in a university technology program is the "New Venture Design" course for engineering and business students at UBC (Kruchten, Lawrence, Dahl & Cubbon, 2011). Since 2003 UBC's final year engineering and business students have had the option to work in mixed teams on an entrepreneurial venture Teams of six UBC students produce a prototype and business plan. The students are provided with conventional lectures and lab work activities. Teams can optionally enter external innovation completions in Vancouver, or elsewhere. This approach solves the problem of providing students with academic credit for innovation competition, but duplicates the activities of the competition, increasing resource requirements and student effort. Also the use of conventional lectures and labs limits the course to on-campus students. a. Instructional solutions: On-line course materials and forums for students to help form their teams can be provided. Quizzes and large assessment items, which follow the sequence and content of Innovation ACT (and similar competitions) can be provided. One issue concerns scheduling. Ideally students would be able to commence the course at any time, to suit the competition they were intending to enter. However, as such competitions depend on the students forming a 64

team and this could be difficult to schedule within the course. An alternative strategy would be for the students to undertake the course self paced, with or without, their team. Another alternative is to have the course in a set program term and not closely align it with the competition. This would cause difficulties where the student submits competition materials as part of their assessment, but the competition and assessment deadlines do not align. b. Non-instructional solutions: An alternative to a full course would be to rely on the competition materials and process to provide the entire learning experience and have the student submit evidence for assessment, as a form of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). This would require the student and/or the assessor to check the competition covered the syllabus (and used the same terminology) and the materials produced were suitable for assessment. Also there would be the difficulty that innovation competitions are almost always entered by teams of competitors, and are assessed exclusively on the team product. It is therefore not possible to know what contribution an individual team member made. This might be overcome by having the student keep a diary with their contributions during the competition (submitted via an e-portfolio system) and with some form of test (such as on-line quiz). Part 2: Proposal Development Components of the course Course description: "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" is a new course to for students to develop the capability to identify and develop new technology based business ideas. Students will learn to identity strategic uses for information technology, applying systematic investigation, analysis, review and documentation to take an idea through the stages of development and proposal. Students are encouraged to take part in Innovation ACT, or a similar innovation competition, and submit their competition materials for assessment. Learning Outcomes After successful completion of this subject students will be able to : 1. Investigate a strategic application of IT. 65

2. Propose new ways of conducting business using IT. Skills Alignment: 1. SFIA Version 5, Level 6: Business analysis BUAN, (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015) 2. SFIA Version 5, Level 6: Innovation INOV, (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015) Course components: The major topics (based on Innovation ACT, 2014) are: 1. Business Model Thinking 2. Stakeholder Engagement 3. Concept Generation 4. Value Capture Activities are: 1. Contributions to on-line forums/exercises for ten weeks (assessed at 2% per week for 12 weeks, with the best 10 counted), 2. Mid semester assignment: "Investigation of a strategic application of IT". Individual work of 2,000 words, plus references 40% 3. End of course deliverables: A business proposal. Students are encouraged to undertake the work as part of Innovation ACT, or another innovation competition. However, the activity must take during the semester. May be performed in a group of up to six with all receiving the same mark. Up to 2,000 words, plus references, 40%. The Innovation ACT Business proposal consists of: 1. Business Model Canvas: One page diagram of the business model, using the IACT Business Model Canvas template, or similar (about 5% to 6%). 2. Executive Summary: One page text summary of the business model (300 words, about 5% to 6%). 66

3. Canvas Report: Five to eight page report on development of plan (this is equivalent to 1,500 to 2,400 words of assessment, about 30% to 50% of the assessment) 4. Continuation report: Detailed plan outlining funding requirements and proposed expenditure (Assuming 5 pages, that is 25% to 30% of the assessment). 5. Pitch: Notes and visual materials for a five minute presentation. A video of the presentation can also be provided, but for academic purposes, the assessment will be based on the notes for the presentation, not the presentation itself (assessment 5% to 10%). The learner population The learner population for this course would have a degree in computer science, information technology, software engineering or other technology discipline. The students would typically be enrolled in a postgraduate certificate or degree program (usually a Masters by coursework) at an Australian higher education institution. Students would be in a city where they have access to an innovation competition (such as Innovation ACT in Canberra). Students would be expected to have experience at using a computer and the Internet to be able to undertake an on-line program. They would require sufficient communication skills in the language of instruction (English) and to work in teams. As Blair and Hoy (2006) point out "... an online com munity doesn't happen by sheer virtue of creating discussion forums and requiring weekly postings ...". Also the innovation course will be a form of group Problem Based Learning (PBL), which can be subject to dysfunctional group interaction and high cogitative load (Hung, 2011). However, it is not clear if any additional skills can be asked of the students, beyond written and computer literacy. How the course will be delivered The course will be delivered as in online DE format as a 12 weekly units using non-real-time (asynchronous) delivery. Course notes will be provided an an e-book, with additional readings (and videos) and weekly exercises to complete. Forums will be provided for student interaction with each other in groups and with an instructor, via a 67

Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle. An e-portfolio system (such as Mahara) will be provided for students to collate their project material. No real-time (synchronous) activities will be provided, due to the difficulty of supporting these and of students in different time zones participating. Students will be expected to undertake team activities, and optional participation in an innovation competition, without further support from the course (organizing their own meetings and any telecommunications required). Materials and exercises will be designed in accessible web formats suitable for mobile devices. Suwantarathip and Orawiwatnakul (2015) report success delivering small exercises to students using mobile devices. Feedback for low level tasks will be provided by small automated weekly quizzes, to assist students with terminology. Van der Kleij, Feskens and Eggen (2015) note the importance of feedback in a computer based course. Students will also receive weekly feedback and a mark from the instructor, but this will be of necessity a brief few sentences. The mark will be based on an average of peer assessment collected by the LMS and then vetted by the instructor. Example Content What is Innovation?: Unit 1 (What is Innovation?) provides some terminology and concepts, before the students start to think about what project they would like to work on. The primary reading is Moore (2012). Students are also introduced to the on-line discussion forums at this point and do an icebreaker exercise to become antiquated so they can then form teams in the next unit to work on a project. This fits in the course's aim of bridging theory and practice, individual student study and group project work. Conclusion This document provides the first two steps in instructional design (ID) for a new course "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" to be offered on-line, initially for students in Canberra, Australia. The aim is to provide a formal masters level course to complement competitions, such as "Innovation ACT", catering for students who have ambitions of becoming entrepreneurs. A needs assessment, after Smith and Ragan, (2005, pp. 44) was pro68

vided and the limitations of existing courses discussed. An on-line course is discussed (noting the limitations in the fixed term based course format). A brief description of one unit is provided. This will be fowled in a separate document with creation of one learning objects for the course.

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References ACS. (2013). New Technology Alignment. Retrieved from https://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/8889/Subjectoutline_New-Technology-Alignment.pdf ACS. (2014). Application Guidelines: Professional Level Courses. Retrieved from https://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/24499/ACS-Accreditation-Document-2-Application-Guidelines-28-March-2014V01.pdf ACT Government. (2013). Growth, Diversification and Jobs - A Business Development Strategy for the ACT. Retrieved from http://www.business.act.gov.au/resources_and_networks/business_de velopment_strategy/business_development_strategy#innovinit Al-Atabi, M., & DeBoer, J. (2014). Teaching entrepreneurship using Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Technovation, 34(4), 261264. Australian Department of Industry. (2013). About the National Register on Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Australia. Retrieved from https://training.gov.au/Home/About Australian National University. (n.d. a). Engineering Innovation ENGN3230. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/ENGN3230 Australian National University. (n.d. b). Entrepreneurship and Innovation MGMT3027. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/MGMT3027 Australian National University. (n.d. c). Innovation and Commercialisation MGMT7165. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/MGMT7165 Australian National University. (n.d. d). Technology and Innovation Management and Strategy MGMT7106. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/MGMT7106 Blackhall, L. (n.d.) LinkedIn [Profile page]. Retrieved January 22, 2015 from http://au.linkedin.com/in/lachlanblackhall 70

InnovationACT. (2014a). Innovation ACT: History. Retrieved January 25, 2015, from http://www.innovationact.org/about/history/ InnovationACT. (2014b). Innovation ACT: Resources. Retrieved January 25, 2015, from http://www.innovationact.org/resources/ Blair, K., & Hoy, C. (2006). Paying attention to adult learners online: The pedagogy and politics of community. Computers and Composition, 23(1), 32-48. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8755461505000824 Gagné, R. (1965). The Conditions of Learning, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965. Cited in Kakouris, A. (2009). Online platforms for entrepreneurship education: an instructional design approach. In 4th European Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Academic Conferences Limited., Reading, UK, September (p. 233). Hung, W. (2011). Theory to reality: a few issues in implementing problem-based learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 59(4), 529-552. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11423-011-91981.pdf IP3. (2015). IP3 Professional IT Standards. Retrieved from http://ipthree.org/gain-ip3-accreditation/ip3-accreditationprogram/it-professional-standards/ Kakouris, A. (2009). Online platforms for entrepreneurship education: an instructional design approach. In 4th European Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Academic Conferences Limited., Reading, UK, September (pp. 230-235). Kruchten, P., Lawrence, P., Dahl, D., & Cubbon, P. (2011). New Venture Design-Interdisciplinary Capstone Projects at UBC. Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association. Retrieved from http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/PCEEA/article/download/363 7/3650 Mazzarol, T. (2014). How do Australia's universities engage with entrepreneurship and small business?. Centre for Entrepreneurial Man-

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agement and Innovation (CEMI) Discussion Paper, (1401). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2428008 McEwan, T. (2013, October). Commercial competency and computing students: Using the skills framework for the information age in higher education. In Frontiers in Education Conference, 2013 IEEE (pp. 286-292). IEEE. Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/icp.jsp?arnumber=6684833 Moore, A. (2012). Correia, A. P. (2012). Defining Innovation. In A. P. Correia (Ed.), Breaking the Mold: An Educational Perspective on Diffusion of Innovation. Retrieved from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Breaking_the_Mold:_An_Educational_ Perspective_on_Diffusion_of_Innovation/Defining_Innovation National VET E-learning Strategy. (2013). National VET Content. Retrieved from https://nationalvetcontent.edu.au/ Neck, H. M., Greene, P. G., & Brush, C. G. (Eds.). (2014). Teaching entrepreneurship: A practice-based approach. Edward Elgar Publishing (p. 65). Prasad, T. (2014). Developing Enterprise Culture among the Students through Intercollegiate Competitions: A Case of Student Enterprise Competition (SEC) 2007. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 35. Retrieved from https://absel-ojsttu.tdl.org/absel/index.php/absel/article/download/399/365 Reimers-Hild, C., & King, J. W. (2009). Six questions for entrepreneurial leadership and innovation in distance education. Online journal of distance learning administration, 12(4). Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter124/reimershild124.html Segal Quince & Partners (1985). The Cambridge phenomenon : the growth of high technology industry in a university town. Segal Quince & Partners, Cambridge SFIA Foundation Ltd, (2015). The purpose of SFIA. [online] Skills Framework for the Information Age. Retrieved from https://www.sfia-online.org/v501/en/index.html

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Smith, J., Brown, L., Blackhall, L., Loden, D., & O'Shea, J. (2010, September). New Partnerships Linking Universities and NGO's on Education for Development Engineering: Case Study from Engineers Without Borders Australia'. In Joint International IGIP-SEFI Annual Conference (Trnava, Slovakia). Retrieved from http://www.sefi.be/wp-content/papers2010/papers/1248.pdf Smith, P. L. & Ragan, T. J. (2005). Instructional design (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Jossey-Bass Education. Suwantarathip, O., & Orawiwatnakul, W. (2015). Using Mobile-Assisted Exercises to Support Students' Vocabulary Skill Development. TOJET, 14(1). http://www.tojet.net/articles/v14i1/14118.pdf Thompson, P., & Kwong, C. (2013) Compulsory School Based Enterprise Education as a Gateway to an Entrepreneurial Career. Retrieved from http://www.isbe.org.uk/content/assets/Enterprise_Education-_Caleb_Kwong.pdf University of Canberra. (2012a). Managing change and innovation 7776.3. Retrieved from http://www.canberra.edu.au/coursesandunits/unit? unit_cd=7776&version_number=3&rownum=3165 University of Canberra. (2012b). Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 208JA.1. Retrieved from http://www.canberra.edu.au/coursesandunits/course? course_cd=208JA&version_number=1&location_cd=BRUCE Van der Kleij, F. M., Feskens, R. C., & Eggen, T. J. (2015). Effects of Feedback in a Computer-Based Learning Environment on Students' Learning Outcomes A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research, 0034654314564881. Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/01/08/0034654314564881.full.pdf

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Analysis and Assessment Introduction This is the completion of the design specifications for creating a new course provisionally titled "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" (referred to as "the innovation course") to be offered on-line, initially for students in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra. The first two steps in instructional design (ID): needs assessment and proposal were carried out in Assignment 1. The next two steps in this document are Instructional Analysis (consisting of learning goals, learning objectives and Content Analysis), followed by development of test items for student assessment. This will be followed by preparation of the learning object using the Moodle Leaning Management System in Assignment 3. Part 1: Instructional Analysis Learning goals The learning goals are derived from SFIA Version 5 (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015). SFIA has a general description of each skill and then a description for the skills at a specific level (in this case level 5 is show as being most relevant): Business analysis (BUAN): "The methodical investigation, analysis, review and documentation of all or part of a business in terms of business functions and processes, the information used and the data on which the information is based. The definition of requirements for improving processes and systems, reducing their costs, enhancing their sustainability, and the quantification of potential business benefits. The creation of viable specifications and acceptance criteria in preparation for the construction of information and communication systems." From SFIA Version 5 (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015) 75

At Level 5 of SFIA, the skills are made more explicit (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015): "Takes responsibility for investigative work to determine business requirements and specify effective business processes, through improvements in information systems, information management, practices, procedures, and organisation change. Applies and monitors the use of required modelling and analysis tools, methods and standards, giving special consideration to business perspectives. Conducts investigations at a high level for strategy studies, business requirements specifications and feasibility studies. Prepares business cases which define potential benefits, options for achieving these benefits through development of new or changed processes, and associated business risks. Identifies stakeholders and their business needs." (Emphasis added) From SFIA Version 5 (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015) Innovation (INOV) "The capability to recognise and exploit business opportunities provided by IT, (for example, the Internet), to ensure more efficient and effective performance of organisations, to explore possibilities for new ways of conducting business and organisational processes, and to establish new businesses." from SFIA Version 5 (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015). At Level 5 of SFIA, the skills are made more explicit (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015): Actively monitors for, and seeks, opportunities, new methods and trends in IT capabilities and products to the advancement of the organisation. Clearly articulates, and formally reports their benefits. (Emphasis added) From SFIA Version 5 (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015) Converting these to learning goals:

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•

Business analysis: The learner will be able to document an analysis of a business in terms of functions and processes, to identify and quantify improvements to reduce costs, enhance sustainability, with specifications and acceptance criteria for information and communication systems.

•

Innovation Planning: The learner will be able to prepare a plan to exploit business opportunities provided by IT, for more efficient and effective performance of an existing or new businesses.

With this approach the task is divided into two steps: first analysis of the business problem (or opportunity) and then how to innovate to fix the problem (or exploit this opportunity). Anderson, and Bloom (2001, pp. 27-33) present a two dimensional taxonomy of learning outcomes. The vertical axis has four types of knowledge: Factual, Conceptual, Procedural, and Metacognitive. The horizontal axis has six cognitive processes: Rememberer, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate and Create. This is a revision of Bloom's Taxonomy (Krathwohl, Masia, Bertram & Bloom, 1956, p. 18). Bloom originally had three domains: 1. Cognitive: Further divided into: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation (which is all most educators worry about). 2. Affective: emotions and attitudes 3. Psychomotor: manual skills The new taxonomy has changed the cognitive domain to be: 1. Remembering (was Knowledge) 2. Understanding (was Comprehension) 3. Applying (Application) 4. Analyzing (was Analysis) 5. Evaluating (was Evaluation) 6. Creating (was Synthesis) 77

Apart from the change to active verbs, there appears little substantive change between the original and revised taxonomies, but the revised will be used here. As with most academic courses, the innovation course is concerned with the cognitive domain. Some in-house commercial training programs may wish to influence the emotions and attitudes of students (the Affective domain) instilling a passion for innovation and manual skills (Psychomotor domain) using stylized exaggerated mannerisms common to pitch presentations. However, there are ethical problems with requiring and testing for attitude and a danger in turning out presenters with robotic mannerisms. The first of the two learning goals for the learning course "Business analysis" requires analysis from the cognitive domain. "Innovation Planning" requires Evaluating (was and Creating. There will also be Remembering, Understanding and Applying required in the early stages, so that students have the knowledge and skills to then carry out the higher level tasks. However, these domains do not neatly segment with separate learning activities. It is not the case that students can do Remembering tasks before moving on to higher level skills, nor can this all be done with simple computer based learning. As St-Jean and Audet (2012) note: "In addition to declarative knowledge, discussions with a mentor enable the development of new mental models and the reorganization of previously acquired knowledge." Learning objectives Mager (1975, p. 46) suggests that learning objectives should have three characteristics: performance, conditions and criterion. Performance describes what the student is expected to do, Conditions sets the environment and criterion the level of performance. The Innovation ACT competition (2014a) assesses a live "pitch" presentation by the student for part of the scoring and the "Innovation and Commercialisation" MGMT7165 (ANU. n.d. a) has 20% of the assessment for a "Team Presentation". However, it has to be asked what is being assessed with such presentations: the student's ability with the course subject matter, or simply their ability to present on

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any topic. In the case of the innovation course, it is proposed to assess performance in terms of the presentation of written reports. The conditions for the innovation course will set the context in terms of analysis of business functions and processes and opportunities through IT. This will exclude some non-business innovations and those not involving IT. However, one course can't cover all possible circumstances and students need a limit set on the conditions under which they are expected to perform. Criterion for performance are in part set by the skills framework used to derive the Learning Goals. SFIA Version 5 (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015) has seven "Levels of responsibility", from 1 to 7, lowest to highest. At Level 1 personnel works under supervision and at level 7 they have responsibility for their own work. McEwan (2013) proposed the use of SFIA level 5/6 for Masters-level university courses and 4/5 for Honors-level. The SFIA Framework also constrains the choice of levels, as not all skills are defined at all levels. Busi ness analysis is only defined at levels 3 to 6 and Innovation at levels 5 and 6 in SFIA (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015). The Australian Computer Society align their postgraduate courses to SFIA Level 5 (ACS, 2013). In marketing terms of course accreditation and market differentiation, a university may want to separate undergraduate from postgraduate courses at levels 5 and 6, however, this is unlikely to make any real difference. Therefore the innovation course will use level 5. The Australian Computer Society align their New Technology Alignment" course with the SFIA Emerging Technology Monitoring skill (ACS, 2013), with Learning Outcomes: 1. "Knowledge and understanding of emerging technologies. 2. Ability to identify new and emerging information technology trends and assess their relevance and potential value to the organisation. 3. Ability to strategise for and promote emerging technology awareness among staff and management technologies." 79

These objectives do not appear to be a good match to the skills definition (which could be taken as the learning goal) or meet Mager's approach to performance, conditions and criterion for objectives (1975, p. 46). The first objective "Knowledge and understanding of emerging technologies", suggests Remembering, but the SFIA skill definition has the more active "Monitors the market to gain knowledge ..." (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015). The second objective refers to "Ability", rather than a learned skill. Proposed Learning Objectives: Business analysis: The learner will document an analysis of a business in terms of func tions and processes (goal), by identifying and quantifying improvements to reduce costs and enhance sustainability (conditions) in accordance with the specifications and acceptance criteria for information and communications system, at a skill level equivalent to SFIA Version 5, Level 5 "Business analysis" BUAN (Standard). Innovation Planning: The learner will be able to prepare a plan (goal) to exploit business opportunities provided by IT, for more efficient and effective performance (conditions) of an existing or new businesses, at a skill level equivalent to SFIA Version 5, Level 5, "Innovation" INOV (Standard). Instructional strategy: The proposed instructional strategy is that commonly used for postgraduate courses: a small cohort of students (up to 24), materials broken up into weekly topics, text based course notes, discussion questions and assignments. This format is largely set by the institutions the course will be offered through. While self paced materials are possible (and a previous course by the author was adapted for self paced use), the course has to meet the customer's requirements (the customer being the educational institution, not the student). The instructional strategy will divide the topic into two halves, corresponding to Business analysis and Innovation Planning, with six weekly topics for each. Each topic will have approximately eight pages of course notes to read, two additional readings, four automatically marked quiz questions (mostly for declarative knowledge) and two discussion questions (peer marked for intellec80

tual skills). The discussion questions will be designed to prompt the student to collect information for use in their assignments. Content Analysis Template Here is a preliminary plan based on the objectives: 1. Business analysis: 1. Business terms, functions and processes 2. Analysis techniques 3. Identifying opportunities in existing and new businesses 4. Quantifying improvements to reduce costs, enhance sustainability 5. Specifications and acceptance criteria 6. Completing the plan 2. Innovation Planning: 1. Elements of a business plan 2. Preparing a business plan 3. IT and the business plan 4. Performance measures 5. Preparing the written plan 6. Pitching the plan

Possible Use of Aronson Jigsaw: Pow-Sang (2014), reports on using the Aronson Jigsaw techniques for teaching object-oriented analysis. With the jigsaw technique students are divided into small groups, each work on a different, but related topic. Students then move groups and report what they learned from the previous group to the new one. Pow-Sang (2014), found from pre and post tests that the Jigsaw technique facilitate learning, but were not able to say this was superior to other techniques. Also a survey found that that the 81

student's like it, but then again there was no comparison with other techniques. This technique might be applied to the Innovation course, because of the similarities in techniques and the importance of group work. However, it is not clear if there is support for the technique built into tools such as Moodle. Where to get content: Collet and Roberts (2014, p. 5) report on the running of an entrepreneurship education program at an Australian university. They note the need to "Use available on-line and published resources rather than engage in constructing project-specific resources that quickly become obsolete". They also list the most popular events in their program, which, not surprisingly included short hands-on workshops, but also popular was a five day business course, which indicates students are prepared to do some serious learning (Collet & Roberts, 2014, p. 39). What is perhaps more interesting is exploring the activities which were not popular, as these could be ones which would be appropriate for an on-line course which complements the face-to-face activities. Detailed instructional design allows for the student to be taken through a learning experience which is not fun, like a workshop, but may be necessary for them. Part 2: Student Assessment Student assessment strategy Each topic will have approximately eight pages of course notes to read, two additional readings, four automatically marked quiz questions (mostly for declarative knowledge) and two discussion questions (peer marked for intellectual skills). The discussion questions will be designed to prompt the student to collect information for use in their assignments. The assessment strategy will need to be adaptable to criterion-referenced or normative testing, as different institutions use different approaches. As an example, the Australian national University uses normative testing, so as to be able to select students for advanced post-graduate studies, whereas the Australian Computer Society uses a criterion-referenced approach for validating student's suitably for certification. This does not necessarily require different assessment tasks, just different marking.

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An example of adjusting marking for criterion-referenced or normative testing of the same course materials, is thOECD (2011)e "Green Technology" course run both by the Australian National University (2015) and ACS (2015). Both versions of the course have 2% allocated each week for forum contributions, however, the marking schemes are such that 1% is expected for ANU students and 2% for ACS students. This results in a normal curve around a "pass" for ANU students and one skewed to a high "competent" mark for ACS students. Sample test items What Business terms, functions and processes for business analysis? Match terms to examples from case study. Will be presented in a random order by the quiz tool: Case study example

Term

New system increasing performance

Value Proposition

Online Discount Vouchers

Brand Loyalty

Research and Development Cost

Capital ments

Require-

High production costs reduced number of busi- Shakeout nesses Interpreting business analysis: In one paragraph (60 words) provide an example of two of the business analysis terms from the glossary (link to glossary). Include a formal APA style (link to APA guide) reference. Mark out of 2 (for competency marking scheme 2 is "competent", for relative scheme, 1 is "meets expectation" and 2 exceeds expectation) Calculate the Current Ratio.

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Provide the student with randomly generated values of Total Current Assets and Total Current Liabilities, near those of the case study. Have them enter a numeric value for the Current Ratio. For the provided Total Current Assets and Total Current Liabilities, what is the Current Ratio? Student is given three attempts at the question, each with different random values. Wrong answers refer student back to section of the text. Repeat step above for other terms: Profit Margin and Return on Investment. Reasons for starting a business Terms, functions and analysis: Read the case study "The Cambridge Phenomenon" (Worthington, 1999) and draw out themes. Why did high technology industries grow up around Cambridge in the late 20th Century? Will your innovation benefit from similar circumstances? Investment and return Interpret Chart: Play the animation "Emerging Markets Take Off" (OECD, 2011). What does this say about innovation and investment in China? Conclusion This document provides a sample of a design specifications for an innovation course. First Instructional Analysis, with learning goals, learning objectives and content analysis were carried out, followed by development of sample test items for student assessment. This will be followed in Assignment 3 by preparation of the learning object using the Moodle Leaning Management System. The course design allows for the option of either criterion-referenced or normative testing, by an adjustment to the assessment scheme.

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References ACS. (2013). New Technology Alignment. Retrieved from https://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/8889/Subjectoutline_New-Technology-Alignment.pdf ACS. (2015). Green Technology Strategies. Retrieved from http://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/56533/Subjectoutline_Green-technologies-Jan-2015.pdf Anderson, Lorin W & Bloom, Benjamin Samuel, 1913- (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing : a revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (Abridged ed). Longman, New York Australian National University. (n.d. c). Innovation and Commercialisation MGMT7165. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/MGMT7165 Australian National University. (2015). ICT Sustainability, Programs and Courses, Australian National University. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/2015/course/COMP7310 Innovation ACT. (2014a). Innovation ACT: Resources. Retrieved January 25, 2015, from http://www.innovationact.org/resources/ Krathwohl, David R & Masia, Bertram B & Bloom, Benjamin Samuel, 1913- (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives : the classification of educational goals. Longman, London McEwan, T. (2013, October). Commercial competency and computing students: Using the skills framework for the information age in higher education. In Frontiers in Education Conference, 2013 IEEE (pp. 286-292). IEEE. Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/icp.jsp?arnumber=6684833 OECD/Eurostat (2005), Oslo Manual: Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data, 3rd Edition, The Measurement of Scientific and Technological Activities, OECD Publishing, Paris. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264013100-en

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OECD (2011), Charting innovation. OECD Publishing, Paris. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/site/innovationstrategy/chartinginnovation.htm Pow-Sang, J. A. (2014). An experience in the use of the jigsaw technique to teach object-oriented design. In Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL), 2014 International Conference on (pp. 1062-1067). IEEE. Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/icp.jsp?arnumber=7017930 Schubert, P., & Williams, S. P. (2013). The Concept of Social Business: Oxymoron or Sign of a Changing Work Culture?. Proceedings of the 26th Bled eConference, 1-14. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Petra_Schubert/publication/260517948_The_ Concept_of_Social_Business_Oxymoron_or_Sign_of_a_Changing_ Work_Culture/links/00b495317ddc07721c000000.pdf SFIA Foundation Ltd, (2015). The purpose of SFIA. [online] Skills Framework for the Information Age. Retrieved from https://www.sfia-online.org/v501/en/index.html St-Jean, E., & Audet, J. (2012). The role of mentoring in the learning development of the novice entrepreneur. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 8(1), 119-140. Worthington, Tom. (1999). The Cambridge Phenomenon. In Net traveller : exploring the networked nation (2nd ed). Australian Computer Society, Dickson, A.C.T Retrieved from http://tomw.net.au/nt/cp.html#appendixa

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Instructional Materials Introduction Here the design of an instructional unit called "An Introduction to Innovation" is completed. This is intended to be part of a new course, provisionally titled "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" to be offered on-line, initially for students in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra. The needs assessment, proposal, Instructional Analysis and Test Item design has already been completed. This last step in the instructional design (ID) is the preparation of one of the instructional units, using the Moodle Leaning Management System. Unit of Instruction The Unit of Instruction is implemented using the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), being installable from a 130 kbyte Moodle backup file: http://www.tomw.net.au/digital_teaching/backup-moodle-course-worthington-innovation.mbz. This can be restored in the Moodle sandbox demo at: https://demo.moodle.net/ Instructional Design Strategy Instructional strategy The instructional unit has been designed using the instructional strategies outlined in Smith and Ragan (2005). The materials are designed for delivery via computer, using a web browser, a tablet device or smart phone. They are designed to be delivered in non-real time (asynchronous) mode for distance education. The materials have been designed to be efficiently encoded so they can be used over a low bandwidth Internet connection for remote users in developed nations and in developing nations with limited infrastructure (at a typical dial-up speed of 48.8 kbps). The instructional unit uses HTML web-based content for a learning management system (LMS), however, the materials are designed to be suitable for being printed for delivery on paper for use in distance education or in a classroom. The course notes are in the form of an e-Book, which can 87

be read on screen, or when printed used as paper based course materials (complete with APA references). Knight (2015) in a study of eight higher education teachers in Australia found that they still saw a role for the use of such textbooks. The instructional unit is self-instructional, with an automated quiz.Group-based activities are also suggested. However, this is intended to be just one unit in a larger course, with a human tutor. Legal and ethical considerations may also require those offering this course to have a human tutor overseeing the self-instructional units, to ensure the students are safely and correctly instructed. The unit is designed for students in the third year of an undergraduate university STEM program (science, technology, engineering or mathematics), or advanced graduate/postgraduate students undertaking a STEM component, such as those undertaking an ANU TechLauncher project (Australian National University, 2015). It should take one to two hours to complete. Learning materials for learning outcomes The instructional strategy used is common to many DE courses: material is presented for the student along with a self administered, automatically checked quiz. Discussion questions are provided for group discussion along with peer assessment. The materials are designed to be backward compatible with print delivery and use in a physical classroom. Also, the material is organized as a conventional lesson with introduction, materials, conclusion, activities and assessment. Directions to the learner are kept to a minimum, on the assumption that the unit forms part of a program and all program units will use the same format and LMS. Practice with feedback is provided for the learner through multiple attempts at the automated quiz and forum discussion. Quiz feedback provides hints for answers and links to the relevant notes and model answers are provided for forum discussions. Assessment covers all learning objectives. Promoting learner engagement and motivation. Preparatory elements used are confined to a text introduction and the structure of the instructional unit as displayed by the LMS. It is as88

sumed that the program the unit is part of a course which will have already aroused the interest and motivation of the learner. The idea of setting up your own business to sell your own invention is a powerful motivator for students and in the author's experience the problem can be to moderate that enthusiasm. The learner's attention is drawn to the learning objectives being aligned with the relevant international skill standard, so their learning will be globally recognized (SFIA Foundation Ltd, 2015). Interaction is limited to that supported by the LMS, but includes the quizzes (student-content), which provide feedback. Learner involvement is provided through group discussion (student-student). Activities are correspond to the learning objectives and are derived from real world examples. The use of student-instructor interaction is precluded by the requirement that the unit use self-instruction. However, this could be supported via the LMS, with human created feedback on quizzes and discussions. Embodying great instruction The learning materials have been designed with accessibility and maintainability as the priority. As part of a university program, the emphasis is on making the material clear and simple. Text is formatted using the XHTML Basic subset of the HTML markup language (Baker, Matsui, Stark & Wugofski, 2000). The text is in one column, with sizes, font and colors inherited from the LMS and is designed to adapt automatically to the small screens of hand-held devices. The content is formatted for conformance to Level AAA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.0 (World Wide Web Consortium, 2008). The writing style and reading level is intended for third year STEM university students, but taking into account that many may have English as a second language. Introduced technical terms are provided in a glossary. Navigation is limited to that provided by the LMS, with it assumed the learner will progress linearly through the material (with no complex branching). A brief video is provided. Embodying great instruction: The aim of embodying "great instruction" is not one the author believes appropriate, or subscribes to. 89

Instructional design should be adequate for the learner's requirements, fit for the intended purpose and within the budget available for development. Attempting to make "great instruction" implies going beyond what is required, wasting teaching resources, risking producing something too complex and expensive to be feasible. Reflecting on instructional design and future improvements The original aim was to design a complete 12 week course, which turned out to be too larger a challenge. Just one module of the course was produced. It would have been useful to limit the scope of the problem earlier. The requirement for the unit to be self-instruction has implications for instructional design, as well as for the larger questions of the future of education and the self image of teachers. It would have been worth exploring these issues in more depth and perhaps resolving them and deciding exactly what a self-instruction unit is, before beginning design work. Timing: Reducing the unit to something which could be done in one hour provided to be a challenge. Designing a unit of instruction as small as one hour is a concept alien to someone used to designing week long units (eight to ten hours student work). It proved difficult finding something small enough to learn in one hour. The Peer reviewer pointed out firmly that the first attempt was far too large ("All this in an hour?"), but a second attempt with reduced readings proved more feasible. The Peer reviewer also questioned the readability of the materials, describing them as "dry" and with a Gunning fog index 15. The materials were changed in response, but materials for an advanced university course in a STEM area is going to always be a bit dry. Shuptrine and Lichtenstein (1985) measured the readability levels of undergraduate marketing textbooks at 15 to 20 on the Gunning fog index, indicating this innovation course is at the lower end of this range. A remaining problem with timing is the wide range of language skills of potential learners. McEwan (2012, p. 80) notes: "Typically, a student with an overall 6.5 IELTS score will have a reading speed for comprehension of approximately 80 words per minute as compared to 400 words per minute for native speakers." 90

Based on these speeds, the unit would take an IELTS 6.5 student one hundred minutes and a student fluent in academic English less than one hour to complete all tasks. Tools: The unit was developed by hand, which proved to be challenging, even for such a small unit. One improvement would have been to use software development tools from the computer industry. As an example, version control software automatically keeps track of changes made to content, allowing for different versions to be maintained and for work by multiple developers (an open source software project may have hundreds, or thousands, of developers). At the same time I was designing this unit I was teaching a course for graduate students on a related subject. It may have been useful to involve the students in the design process, asking them what they thought beginning students need to know and what was a suitable form of instruction. Positioning: The unit is intended to be part of a real educational program which teaches innovation, using a combination of coursework and a project (where the student can set up a real company to sell their product). The aim is to do a small amount of further development work and then trial the unit on a class of about 200 students in the second half of 2015. The first run through of the course would not involve assessment of the students (only evaluation of the unit). The materials would then be further improved and released publicly as free open access materials, with the hope I would be hired (and paid) to teach the material. Conclusion The design an introductory instructional unit for a new course in innovation was completed. This will be offered on-line, to students in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra in the second half of 2015. One of the lessons learned from this design was how very difficult and time consuming the design of an instructional unit is. While there are theories, tools and techniques to assist with this, the unsolved problem is a business model for an education system to support such a development activity.

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References Australian National University. (2015). TechLauncher. Retrieved from http://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/ Baker, M., Matsui, S., Stark, P. P., & Wugofski, E. T. (2000). XHTML basic. W3C Recommendation, 19. Retrieved from ftp://62.219.99.166/LearningStandards/XML/W3CSpecifications/XHTML/XHTML-Basic-20001219.pdf IELTS. (2011). IELTS band scores. Retrieved from http://www.ielts.org/institutions/test_format_and_results/ielts_band_ scores.aspx Knight, B. A. (2015). Teachers' use of textbooks in the digital age. Cogent Education, 2(1). Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2331186X.2015.1015812 McEwan, M. (2012). Evaluating and enhancing the feedback process: an international college case study. Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 7(1), 79-95. Retrieved from http://community.dur.ac.uk/pestlhe.learning/index.php/pestlhe/article/viewFile/131/244 SFIA Foundation Ltd, (2015). The purpose of SFIA. [online] Skills Framework for the Information Age. Retrieved from https://www.sfia-online.org/v501/en/index.html Smith, Patricia L. & Ragan, Tillman J (2005). Instructional design (3rd ed). Hoboken, N.J. John Wiley & Sons Shuptrine, F. K., & Lichtenstein, D. R. (1985). Measuring readability levels of undergraduate marketing textbooks. Journal of Marketing Education, 7(3), 38-45. Showing 15 to 20: http://jmd.sagepub.com/content/7/3/38.full.pdf World Wide Web Consortium. (2008). Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

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Worthington, T. (2011). Green technology strategies. Tomw Communications Pty Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/

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Introduction to Innovation (Sample Course Notes) About the Course These are the notes for a course in innovation, which requires the ability to recognise the opportunities provided by technology and know how to exploit them in business. The aim is more efficient and effective organisations, be they for-profit or not, existing or new start-ups. This requires documented investigation, analysis and review. A methodical investigation of functions and processes, requirements, costs, sustainability and business benefits is needed, with specifications and acceptance criteria. Learning Objectives At the completion of this course: 1. The learner will be able to prepare a plan (goal) to exploit business opportunities provided by IT, for more efficient and effective performance (conditions) of an existing or new businesses, at a skill level equivalent to SFIA Version 5, Level 5, "Innovation" INOV (Standard). 2. The learner will document an analysis of a business in terms of functions and processes (goal), by identifying and quantifying improvements to reduce costs and enhance sustainability (conditions) in accordance with the specifications and acceptance criteria for information and communications system, at a skill level equivalent to SFIA Version 5, Level 5 "Business analysis" BUAN (Standard).

Competencies The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA 2015) provides a common reference model for the identification of the skills needed to develop effective Information Systems (IS) making use of Information & Communications Technology (ICT).

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This course targets SIFA Level 5 competencies: "ensure, advise ... Works under broad direction ... Influences organisation, customers, suppliers, partners and peers ... Performs an extensive range and variety of complex technical and/or professional work activities ... Advises on the available standards, methods, tools and applications ..." (SFIA, 2015). Two skills have been selected, corresponding to the two learning objectives:

Skills from SFIA Innovation "The capability to recognise and exploit business opportunities provided by IT, (for example, the Internet), to ensure more efficient and effective performance of organisations, to explore possibilities for new ways of conducting business and organisational processes, and to establish new businesses." From: Skill INOV, Category: Strategy & architecture, Subcategory: Business/IT strategy and planning, SFIA (2015). Business analysis "The methodical investigation, analysis, review and documentation of all or part of a business in terms of business functions and processes, the information used and the data on which the information is based. The definition of requirements for improving processes and systems, reducing their costs, enhancing their sustainability, and the quantification of potential business benefits. The creation of viable specifications and acceptance criteria in preparation for the construction of information and communication systems." From: Skill BUAN, Category: Business change, Subcategory: Business change management, SFIA (2015).

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Pre-requisites, Co-requisites It is assumed that the learner is in the third year of an undergraduate university STEM program (science, technology, engineering or mathematics), graduate or advanced students undertaking a STEM component. It is assumed the learner is undertaking a project course, such as ANU TechLauncher (Australian National University, 2015), or is an entrant in an innovation competition, such as Innovation ACT (2014). Terminology from the innovation field is used (with a Glossary), but apart from this standard international English, as could be expected from a university student at IELTS 6.5 for Academic Reading and Academic Writing (IELTS, 2011).

Content The course consists of two parts, corresponding to the skills: Innovation 1. An Introduction to Innovation 2. Business Model Thinking* 3. Stakeholder Engagement* Business analysis 1. Concept Generation* 2. Value Capture* * Yet to be designed

Workload To complete the subject the learner is expected to take 12 weeks, with eight to ten hours study per week. Self-instruction units in the course are each expected to take one to two hours. The upper limit is based on a reading speed of 80 words a minute for a student at IELTS 6.5 (McEwan, 2012, p. 80). Assessment Methods There are two areas of assessment in the course: 97

•

Quizzes/Forums:

1. Quiz questions, which are automatically assessed, 2. Contributions to weekly discussion forums, peer assessed, •

Project assignments, tutor assessed.

The final mark is made up of 10% for the Quizzes, 20% Forums and 70% assignments. To pass overall, it is necessary to pass in both areas of assessment: quizzes/forums and project assignments. Note that the weighting of the assessment items and pass level is set by the particular educational institution offering the unit. Check the institution's policy for details. Instructional strategy The course has been designed using the instructional strategies outlined in Smith and Ragan (2005), for delivery via computer, using a web browser. They are designed to be delivered in non-real time (asynchronous) mode for distance education. The course includes self-instructional units, with automated quizzes. However, the project assignments are expected to be assessed by a human tutor. Also legal and ethical considerations may require those offering this course to have a human tutor overseeing the self-instructional units, to ensure the learners are safely and correctly instructed.

Specialist Features or Equipment The materials for this course have been designed to be efficiently en coded so they can be used over a low bandwidth Internet connection on a tablet device or smart phone for remote users in developed nations and in developing nations with limited infrastructure (at dial-up 48.8 kbps). The course uses HTML web-based content for a learning management system (LMS), however, the materials are designed to be about to be printed for delivery on paper for use in a classroom. Course Designer Tom Worthington is a private computer consultant, who also does some part time teaching at tertiary institutions. He started as a computer programmer and later IT policy writer in the Australian gov98

ernment. I then left to be an independent consultant and teach computer students part time. As well as being an Certified Computer Professional (equivalent to the Canadian CPIS Information Systems Professional), he has a Graduate Certificate in Education from an Australian university and an Australian Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. Tom's liability is limited by a scheme approved under Australian Professional Standards Legislation.

References The notes for this course are to be published on paper and electronic formats as "Introduction to Innovation - Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology". Further readings, most of which are available on-line, are detailed in the notes. Learners may be provided with a copy of the notes via a Learning Management System.

Changes from Previous Version This is the third pre-release version of the notes (version 0.3). Version 0.1 was a draft description of the course. Version 0.2 provided details of just the introductory unit. Version 0.3 has more course level details. Corrections, suggestions for improvement and comments to the author would be welcome. Innovation "An innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 46) emphasis added. 2.1. An Introduction to Innovation About the Unit This is the first unit of a course in "Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology". 99

Learning Objectives At the completion of this unit: 1. The learner will document an analysis of a business in terms of functions and processes (goal), by identifying improvements (conditions), at a skill level equivalent to SFIA Version 5, Level 5 "Business analysis" BUAN (Standard). This objective is based on the skill "Business Analysis" (BUAN) from the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA 2015). See "About the Course" for further details.

Workload To complete the unit the learner is expected to take on to two hours: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Read: An Introduction to Innovation (15 minutes) Take the quiz (20 Minutes) Watch and read: The Readings (25 minutes) Answer two questions: Discussion Forum (20 minutes) Rate forum answers other students (15 minutes) Reply to students in the Discussion Forum (154 minutes)

7. Check your grade (5 minutes)

Assessment Methods There are two areas of assessment in the unit: 1. Quiz questions, which are automatically assessed, for half the assessment total, 2. Contributions to a discussion forum, peer assessed, for half the assessment total. Introduction To be able to innovate, you need to first know what innovation is, what types of innovation there are and where they can be applied. Here you will learn some international definitions of forms of innovation.

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OECD Taxonomy of Innovation The Oslo Manual (OECD/Eurostat, 2005) provides a useful set of definitions of innovation: "An innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 46) emphasis added. "Innovation activities are all scientific, technological, organisational, financial and commercial steps which actually, or are intended to, lead to the implementation of innovations. Some innovation activities are themselves innovative, others are not novel activities but are necessary for the implementation of innovations. Innovation activities also include R&D that is not directly related to the development of a specific innovation." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 47) emphasis added. Four types of innovation: The OECD/Eurostat (2005, pp. 47-51) identify four types of innovations (emphasis added): 1. "A product innovation is the introduction of a good or service that is new or significantly improved with respect to its characteristics or intended uses. This includes significant improvements in technical specifications, components and materials, incorporated software, user friendliness or other functional characteristics. 2. A process innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software.

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3. A marketing innovation is the implementation of a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing. 4. An organisational innovation is the implementation of a new organisational method in the firm's business practices, workplace organisation or external relations." While the OECD likes to collect statistics for these neat categories, in order to innovate it is likely that your innovation will fall into several categories. As an example an organizational innovation which gives more workplace autonomy for decision making might be implemented through software and an on-line forum, making it a product innovation as well. One point of difference is that OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 56) argues that "It is not an innovation to stop doing something, even if it improves a firm's performance.". However, removing unnecessary work practices and processes can be a significant innovation.

Novelty versus diffusion OECD/Eurostat (2005), points out that innovation requires some degree of novelty and distinguishes three categories: 1. New to the firm: "A product, process, marketing method or organisational method may already have been implemented by other firms, but if it is new to the firm (or in case of products and processes: significantly improved), then it is an innovation for that firm." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 57) 2. New to the market: "Innovations are new to the market when the firm is the first to introduce the innovation on its market. The market is simply defined as the firm and its competitors and it can include a geographic region or product line." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 58) 102

3. New to the world: "An innovation is new to the world when the firm is the first to introduce the innovation for all markets and industries, domestic and international. New to the world therefore implies a qualitatively greater degree of novelty than new to the market." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 58).

Disruptive innovation Disruptive or Radical innovation is "an innovation that has a significant impact on a market and on the economic activity of firms in that market." (OECD/Eurostat, 2005, p. 58). The impact of innovation may be great even where it is not very novel. As an example, the effect of the use of on-line social media tools have on the way organizations are managed is still being worked out today, even though such tools are not new. Schubert and Williams (2013) trace the use of social media in business over the last six years and comment that so far 'the most popular usage scenarios of the software are not very "social" but support people in their daily joint work with a focus on getting the job done', so there is scope for further disruptive innovation.

The innovative firm The (OECD/Eurostat, 2005, p. 58) define the innovative firm as one which "... has implemented at least one innovation ...". They go on to characterize innovation activities for a period as being: •

• •

"Successful in having resulted in the implementation of an innovation (although the innovation need not have been commercially successful). Ongoing, for work in progress which has not yet resulted in the implementation of an innovation. Abandoned before the implementation of an innovation., while a product or process innovator is defined as a firm that has implemented either a product or a process innovation."

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From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 58) The Cambridge Phenomenon

King's College Chapel, Cambridge, by Andrew Dunn [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons Thousands of high technology businesses have started in the area around the City of Cambridge (UK) in the last fifty years, these employ approximately 40,000 staff (Cotton & Kirk, 2012). The process of its formation of these companies fostered by Cambridge University is referred to as "The Cambridge Phenomenon" (Segal Quince & Partners, 1985). The process continues with the area sometimes referred to as "Silicon Fen" (Kirk & Cotton, 2012), who attribute the success of Cambridge to three factors: 1. Allowing academics to pursue non-academic roles, 2. Overcoming the fear of failure, and 3. A willingness to collaborate across organisational boundaries.

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ARM processor, photo by Socram8888 [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons, 26 August 2008 Kirk and Cotton (2012) also point out the value of "Soft-starts, where technology is developed within a company before being spunout, has also successfully de-risked technology for many investors". One of the most successful Soft-startsat Cambridge has been microchip designer Advanced RISC Machines Ltd (ARM Ltd). Acorn Computers Ltd. researched the use of RISC technology for low cost, low power, home computers (Garnsey, Lorenzoni & Ferriani, 2007, pp. 125-127). Acorn's home computer market seemed assured by winning the contract to provide the BBC Micro, a computer for home education, but sales declined from the mid 1980s. ARM Ltd was formed to exploit the work on RISC technology for portable devices and now powers many of the world's smart phones and tablet computers.

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Raspberry Pi Computer, photo by By Ayaita (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons A more recent Cambridge start-up is the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a non-profit foundation which has designed a new low cost education computer, the "Raspberry Pi", using the ARM technology (Garnsey, Lorenzoni & Ferriani, 2007, pp. 132-133). Unlike Acorn, which sold computers through retailers, or ARM which licenses intellectual property to chip manufacturers, the Raspberry Pi is sold on-line. Canberra Start-up Business Boomerang Many cities have attempted to emulate Cambridge's success in fostering new technology companies. The most recent is Canberra (Australia) with the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN, 2014). CBRIN is a non-profit organisation sponsored by the Canberra local government and universities to support entrepreneurs, start-ups, accelerator programs, venture capital and co-working spaces. CBRIN's office is located in the Canberra CBD. adjacent to the campus of the Australian National University (ANU), with a high concentration of technology companies (Worthington, 2015).

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Canberra Start-up Business Boomerang, map by Tom Worthington [CC BY 3.0], via Google Maps CBRIN provides: •

Co-working space: with open plan office space for 35 people (Entry 29, 2012). This allows a new start-up to to have room for a small number of employees and also call on the skills of others in the space. This includes the Public Sector Landing Pad program (PSLP) for former government employees to start a new business.

•

Accelerator: business advice and staff training usually given in return for a share of the start-up business equity (GRIFFIN Accelerator, 2014).

CBRIN is aimed at creating new private for-profit and not-for profit organisations. However, the Australian Government, based in Canberra also has initiatives to create an innovation culture in the organisation and amongst the organisations it works with: •

innovationXchange: for innovation in the delivery of international aid (DFAT, 2015), with five principles: •

• •

"Openness - We work in the open, sharing learnings broadly to support participation in innovation and drive new, better thinking. Leadership - We demonstrate and influence change towards new ways of working. Collaboration - We co-create with a range of partners. 107

•

•

•

Agility - We are problem solvers in the business of funding trials. A cycle of iteration, adaptation and learning will be the foundation for our progress. Engagement with Risk - We look at risk differently. We don't think of risk as something to be avoided or mitigated at all costs. We recognise the upside of risk and that innovation offers the potential for reward and big impact. Taking risks is essential to pioneering new approaches. We strive to achieve transformational" From DFAT (2015)

Digital Transformation Office: The Digital Transformation Office (DTO) in the Australian Department of Communications (2015): "The DTO will comprise a small team of developers, designers, researchers and content specialists working across government to develop and coordinate the delivery of digital services. The DTO will operate more like a startup than a traditional government agency, focusing on end-user needs in developing digital services." From Department of Communications (2015).

Conclusion To innovate you will need to implement new or improved products, services, processes, marketing or organizational structure. The innovation can be new to the firm, market or the world. Innovation can be disruptive (radical), but does not need to be. The implementation of an innovation can be successful, ongoing or abandoned. The area around the City of Cambridge (UK), "Silicon Fen", shows an example of where such innovation has developed. Acorn Computers Ltd, ARM Ltd and the Raspberry Pi Foundation show how innovations can build on each other, with research, education, innovation and commerce flourishing, even when not all the companies involved survive.

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Quiz Before the readings, attempt the quiz. Now Read 1. How Innovation is Changing in Europe: an interview with OECD's Andrew Wyckoff (2013). 2. Viewpoint: The Cambridge Phenomenon, five decades of success (Cotton & Kirk, 2012). 3. Case Study 2: The Rise and Fall of Acorn Computers Ltd, (Garnsey, Lorenzoni & Ferriani, 2007, pp. 125-127) 4. Case Study 10: The Raspberry Pi Foundation (Garnsey, Lorenzoni & Ferriani, 2007, pp. 132-133) Forum Discussion Questions 1. OECD Definitions Suitable for Business?: The OECD definitions of innovation are used by government agencies collecting statistics. Are these definitions suitable for use by business. Select one definition, say if it is suitable, or not, and justify your answer. Cite at least one source to support your argument. 2. Innovation in Cambridge and Canberra: Many cities have tried to emulate "Silicon Fen", the high-tech start-up area around Cambridge University UK. What does Canberra's attempt have in common with Cambridge? What is different? Post an answer to each question in the forum. After answering each question, rate and reply to an answer from another student for each topic. Appendixes Supplementary material.

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3.1. Assessment The weighting of the assessment items and criteria are set by the particular educational institution offering the module. Shown here are those for a typical vocational course: Read the course notes and the additional readings before attempting the assessment. •

Quiz: Five automatically scored multiple choice questions.

•

Contributions to discussion forum: peer assessed by your fellow student for half quarter of the assessment total.

Quiz You can have three attempts at the quiz, with the best result recorded. Questions are selected at random from a question bank, with each learner receiving a different quiz, on each attempt. Forum Submit an answer of no more than 140 words, to each of the discussion questions in the Discussion Forum, before reading the answers from other students. Read the answers from at least one other students, rate them (either "Competent" or "Not Yet Competent") and submit at least one reply to a posting your fellow students in the Discussion Forum. 3.2. Glossary These terms are from OECD/Eurostat (2005), except where otherwise indicated. C

Cambridge phenomenon Growth of the high technology industry around Cambridge University, UK. (Segal Quince & Partners, 1985)

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D

Disruptive innovation "... an innovation that has a significant impact on a market and on the economic activity of firms in that market." (OECD/Eurostat, 2005, p. 58) I

Innovation "An innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 46) emphasis added.

Innovation activities "Innovation activities are all scientific, technological, organisational, financial and commercial steps which actually, or are intended to, lead to the implementation of innovations. Some innovation activities are themselves innovative, others are not novel activities but are necessary for the implementation of innovations. Innovation activities also include R&D that is not directly related to the development of a specific innovation." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 47) emphasis added.

Innovative Firm "... has implemented at least one innovation ...". From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 58)

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M

Marketing Innovation "A marketing innovation is the implementation of a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 46) emphasis added. N

New to the firm "A product, process, marketing method or organisational method may already have been implemented by other firms, but if it is new to the firm (or in case of products and processes: significantly improved), then it is an innovation for that firm." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 57)

New to the market "Innovations are new to the market when the firm is the first to intro duce the innovation on its market. The market is simply defined as the firm and its competitors and it can include a geographic region or product line." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 58)

New to the world "An innovation is new to the world when the firm is the first to introduce the innovation for all markets and industries, domestic and international. New to the world therefore implies a qualitatively greater degree of novelty than new to the market." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, p. 58).

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P

Process Innovation "A process innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software.A process innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, pp. 47-51)

Product Innovation "A product innovation is the introduction of a good or service that is new or significantly improved with respect to its characteristics or intended uses. This includes significant improvements in technical specifications, components and materials, incorporated software, user friendliness or other functional characteristics." From OECD/Eurostat (2005, pp. 47-51) R

Radical innovation See: Disruptive Innovation. S

Silicon Fen High technology industry around Cambridge University, UK. Soft-starts "... where technology is developed within a company before being spun-out, has also successfully de-risked technology for many investors" (Kirk & Cotton, 2012)

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References Australian National University. (2015). TechLauncher. Retrieved from http://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/ CBRIN. (2014). Canberra Innovation Network: Who We Are. Retrieved from http://cbrin.com.au/#weare Cotton, Charles & Kirk, Kate. (2012). Viewpoint: The Cambridge Phenomenon, five decades of success. BBC News UK. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17982595 Department of Communications (2015). Establishment of a Digital Transformation Office, Malcolm Turnbull, Minister for Communications, Australian Department of Communications. Retrieved from http://www.minister.communications.gov.au/malcolm_turnbull/news /joint_release_with_the_hon_tony_abbott_mp,_prime_minister_establishment_of_a_digital_transformation_office#.VRnQrcvhntS DFAT (2015). innovationXchange - Australia's new aid paradigm. Minister for Foreign Affairs, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, Canberra. Retrieved from http://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/Pages/2015/jb_mr_150323.aspx Entry 29. (2012). Co-working at Entry 29, Retrieved from http://cbrin.com.au/#weare EurActiv. (2013). How Innovation is Changing in Europe: an interview with OECD's Andrew Wyckof. EurActiv. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/m4kM7ocL6fA Garnsey, E., Lorenzoni, G., & Ferriani, S. (2007). Speciation through Entrepreneurial Spin-off: The Acorn-ARM story. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elizabeth_Garnsey/publication/222423713_Speciation_through_entrepreneurial_spinoff_The_Acorn-ARM_story/links/0deec52945dd7279bf000000.pdf GRIFFIN Accelerator. (2014). GRIFFIN Accelerator: About Us. Retrieved from http://griffinaccelerator.com.au/about-us/ IELTS. (2011). IELTS band scores. Retrieved from http://www.ielts.org/institutions/test_format_and_results/ielts_band_scores.aspx

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Innovation ACT. (2014a). Innovation ACT: History. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20131030170036/http://www.innovationact.org/about/history/ Kirk, Kate & Cotton, Charles & Gates, Bill, 1955- (2012). The Cambridge Phenomenon : 50 years of innovation and enterprise. Third Millenium, London McEwan, M. (2012). Evaluating and enhancing the feedback process: an international college case study. Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 7(1), 79-95. Retrieved fromhttp://community.dur.ac.uk/pestlhe.learning/index.php/pestlhe/a rticle/viewFile/131/244 OECD (2011), Charting innovation. OECD Publishing, Paris. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/site/innovationstrategy/chartinginnovation.htm Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2005). The measurement of scientific and technological activities Oslo manual : guidelines for collecting and interpreting innovation data (3rd edition). OECD, Paris. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3859598/5889925/OSLO-EN.PDF/60a5a2f5-577a4091-9e09-9fa9e741dcf1?version=1.0 SFIA Foundation Ltd, (2015). The purpose of SFIA. [online] Skills Framework for the Information Age. Retrieved from https://www.sfia-online.org/v501/en/index.html Segal Quince & Partners (1985). The Cambridge phenomenon : the growth of high technology industry in a university town. Segal Quince & Partners, Cambridge Smith, Patricia L. (Patricia Lucille) & Ragan, Tillman J (2005). Instructional design (3rd ed). Hoboken, N.J. John Wiley & Sons Worthington, Tom. (2015). Canberra Start-up Business Boomerang. Retrieved from http://blog.tomw.net.au/2015/03/cambridge-phenomenons-fifty-years-of.html#cbb

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Planning and Management 1. 2. 3. 4.

Beyond Experimental Research Methods for Education Business Analysis Strategic Planning Business Planning

5. Marketing Plans

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Beyond Experimental Research Methods for Education Introduction Educators belong to two disciplines: that of education and the discipline they are teaching. Those researching education therefore need to consider the acceptance their work will find with both groups. As a teacher of computing I must balance the conventions of both education and computer science in how I teach and conduct research. Education derives its research approach from that of social science, which conflicts from the approach taken by much of computer science, which assumes the experimental methods of "hard" science. There is little point in using a research approach which will not be accepted by my peers, as they will then take no notice of any recommendations from that research (assuming my results ever even get published). The problem then is to find research methods which are valid from a social science and education perspective and also acceptable to computer scientists. Development of Computer Science as a Discipline Computer Science emerged as a discipline at universities during the mid-1960s, concerned with theoretical and practical aspects of information and algorithms (Tucker, 1996). Being a relatively young discipline there have been problems with rapid obsolescence of topics. However, many issues discussed by Tucker in 1996 concerning Computer Science education will be familiar to other fields, including the issue of staff research versus teaching, theory versus practice, management of large classes, meeting vocational requirements, cross-disciplinary work and preparation in K-12 education. What research methods would assist in addressing these issues? Multiple Perspectives on Computer Science Education Research It would be tempting to simply declare Computer Science as an objective "hard" science, applying a logical positivist approach and therefore the way to study its educational aspects is a similar hard 119

science approach. From a purely pragmatic point of view, if academics in computer science are trained in a particular methodology for their own research, it will be hard to convince them to change their teaching based on research using social science techniques which are alien to their way of thinking, However, not all of those in the computing discipline agree it is "science". Parnas (1999) argues that the practical application of computer science is a branch of engineering, commonly called "Software Engineering". They argue that while computer scientists are interested in what is "true" using scientific methods, engineers are also interested in what is "useful" can be applied responsibly. Garg & Varma (2008) suggest the .Software Engineering adds "people" issues be addressed through: "It is suggested that approaches such as project-centered learning for case studies adopted and made role based. This will help students to acquire role based expertise through understanding and practice of responsibilities associated with different roles." From Garg & Varma (2008). There is a similarity in these approaches to pedagogy with descriptive studies and case study approaches to social science research. This suggests that these approaches to research would be more accepted by software engineers than those involved in "computer science". It may also be that "harder" computer scientists may be more accepting of these approaches if they were explained in terms of an approach common in a related discipline (Software Engineering) than the unknown area of social science. An example of this approach is by Carver, Jaccheri, Morasca, Sandro and Shull (2003), who advocate a quantitative or qualitative "evidence-driven" approach, tempered by resource availability issues. The use of the engineering approach, with an emphasis on costs, and resources will appeal to the software engineer, even when addressing what are essentially social science issues such as the difference in behavior of a student and an experienced than professional. Hazzan (2002) goes further proposing the Reflective Practitioner (RP) perspective typically used in architecture education be applied to software engineering.

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Other research methods even farther from the computer scientist's experience, might be introduced in the same way, such as postmodernist and feminist views. The video games industry now rivals the motion picture industry, in terms of revenue. Computer games design relies heavily on computer science techniques such as artificial intelligence, but blended with techniques of storytelling for the creation of fictional worlds. These aspects could suit the postmodernist . Also as Squire (2002) points out, computer games raise issues of cultural values and censorship, which can be addressed through social science research techniques. Solomon (2000) provides a critique of post-modernism theory and attempts to apply this to an agenda for instructional technology. While suggesting post-moderism's approach fits with a constructivist approach to education, Solomon does not make a case which a computer scientist is likely to understand, let alone find of value. An approach which may have more impact on computer science is feminist theory, for the very practical reason that the computer industry has been criticized for an extreme gender imbalance. Ridley and Young (2012) note that not only is the proportion of women the IT industry low (26%) it has been declining. Ridley and Young go on to consider theories which might be used to account for this gender imbalance, including essentialist theory, Social construction, and the the Individual Differences Theory of Information Technology and Gender (IDTGIT). The researchers carried out an analysis of gender and IT in Australian mass communication medium to evaluate the theories. The Research Process and Computer Science Education As a white western computer professional, my discipline derives its background in computer science, which in turn has its academic traditions in the hard sciences. In this tradition, only empirical research matters. Everyone can be challenged, even the most junior student can interrupt the most senior professor in mid sentence to point out where they are wrong. Quaye (2007), presents a very different point of view, with a powerful first person analysis of their struggle to reconcile their identity as a Ghanaian-American with learning to be a objective, value neutral social researcher. However, western universities have their own culture and those wishing to proposer in that 121

system must at least understand its norms, of not necessarily conform to them. Those within a university will naturally see their culture as "objective" and values as neutral. Those who wish to be accepted by this system need to learn how to conform to it, or to attempt to change the culture. As white western male from an English heritage, I have less difficulty conforming to universty's cultural norms, but even I have problems occasionally (being an on-line international student at a Canadian university throws up some subtle cultural issues). Oosterlinck, Debackere and Cielen (2002) argue that basic and applied research were separate until forced together by ICT and biotechnology commercialisation successes starting in the 1970s. I don't find this argument very convincing. While such an R&D approach has been popularized in recent years, as for example by Segal (1985), commercialization of research has been a feature for at least one hundred years. As an example, the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company was formed in the late 1800s, exploiting scientific expertise at Cambridge University. Oosterlinck, Debackere and Cielen (2002) claim that during the 1990s universities changed from being government funded organisations motivated by pure research to partnerships with industry having protection of intellectual property to consider. However, it is not clear which universities in what countries the authors have in mind. Outside a few prominent intuitions in the USA, universities are typically funded by government, or through student fees, not by royalties from R&D. Oosterlinck, Debackere and Cielen (2002) argues that the education of students was the traditional way "universities transferred their know how to society". However, universities are also seen as catalysts of economic development through research. As an example, the Australian National University was conceived in the last 1940s to foster national development, though research (Foster, Glynn & Varghese, 2009). Hallinan (1996) argues that educators and social science researchers are responding to different "pressures" and have different "agendas". Hallinan's proposes to have staff who's job it is to "link basic and ap-

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plied research" but this seems doomed to failure, if the social, and cultural backgrounds do not align. Hallinan gives the example of a US state education system where researchers were asked to suggest changes to schooling to address a funding crisis. Hallinan argued that the school administrators ignored the researcher's advice because their priority was how to reduce the budget. This seems to me to be stating the obvious: the re searchers were not answering the question asked and so their advice was ignored. While not made explicit by Hallinan, the researchers also ignored the political priorities: for example it is politically in feasible to argue for larger class sizes, regardless of what research shows. If researchers want the results of their research to be used by practitioners, then they need to research issues of relevance to educators. They also need to present the results in a form which can be easily understood. If the researchers want their results to be adopted, they then have to consider what various groups are aiming to achieve and which aspects of their results will appeal to which groups. At this point the researcher is leaving the field of research and entering politics. Those who choose not to do this must accept that the extent to which their research influences policy will depend on others who interpret their research. Can Research Integrate MOOCs into Distance Education? An example of a research topic which is topical for educators and com puter scientists is the role of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The claims made for the benefits of MOOCs are now being replaced by concerns over real benefits in the popular media. This creates a risk that governments, universities and students may conclude that because MOOCs did not "work", therefore online Distance Education (DE) in general, does not work. There is then a need for DE research to work out what went wrong with MOOCs and incorporate lessons learned in online education. This could go beyond experimental techniques which compare MOOC and non-MOOC teaching. Survey techniques could be used to find out what costs students have in relation to MOOCs. As an example, do students purchase addi123

tional computer equipment, or networking, to be able to undertake MOOCs? Do they purchase additional study materials or equipment? Does the low completion rate of MOOCs increase their real cost to the students? The proponents of MOOCs emphasize the value for those who have not had access to education, particularly in developing nations. However, indications so far are that the MOOC students tend to already have degrees and are from developed countries. Why aren't those without university qualifications in developing nations taking up these courses? Is it because the courses are in a language they do not speak, because the topics will not help with their employment, or because they do not have time to study? Is the cultural context of the course inappropriate? These questions might be better addressed by having the educators and the students actively involved in determining the direction of the research, not some impartial observers. Glance, Forsey & Riley (2013) looked at the educational design claims made for MOOCs and the reality. They note that the use of short videos, popularized by the Khan Academy, is an adaptation of the technique of tutoring with formative feedback, found to be effective by Bloom (1984). However, some other of the approaches found effective in research have yet to be incorporated into MOOCs. For example, it was suggested by Bloom (1984): "If students develop good study habits, devote more time to the learning, improve their reading skills, and so on, they will be better able to learn from a particular teacher and course - even though neither the course nor the teacher has undergone a change process." The study habits, time spent and reading skills do not appear to be directly addressed in current MOOCs. Conventional universities, and their online equivalents, do address study skills, through optional training available to the student. The same might be incorporated in the MOOC by some form of quiz, which would asses the student's needs and refer them to a preparatory course. This raises the issue of the relationships of those involved.

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Transactional Distance Theory and DE Murphy and Rodriguez-Manzanares (2008) characterize Transactional Distance (TD) as a metaphor for the quality of communication between participants (typically in education being the student and teacher) being described as a distance. The researchers give an example of the application of TD to research interviews were conducted with 20 educators and the transcripts subject to analysis to characterize categories of common concepts. The educators described the "fear" and "anxiety" students were perceived to have (it should be noted that the students were not interviewed). The educators attribute this fear to the "lack of visual cues". Murphy and Rodriguez-Manzanares (2008) go on to describe techniques use to overcome the perceived isolation the students and teachers feel. However, an issue which computer scientists are likely to have with this, and much of this form of research, is that it is based on analysis of the transcript of an interview. While it is useful to obtain opinions as to what is happening, computer scientists may not see this as a sufficient substitute for an experiment, comparing a group of students provided with a visual video conference interface and those not. The opinion of 20 educators also might not be seen by policy makers as sufficient evidence upon which to make decision on structuring education involving billions of dollars of public money. Garrison (2000) introduces Moore's theory of transactional distance, which I suggest could be the key to improving computer scientists understanding of technology based distance education. Garrison asserts that "Asynchronous collaborative learning may well be the defining technology of the postindustrial era of distance education". This may be overstating the case and the division of online communication into asynchronous and synchronous may be a flawed theory. The terms "Synchronous" and "Asynchronous" were borrowed by educators from the discipline of computer science, but may have been misapplied (Worthington, 2013). It may be feasible to produce software which combines both synchronous and asynchronous communication seamlessly (Worthington, June 2013). There will then be the need for educational theory to explain how this functions and

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guide its application in applications such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Action Research for Education of Professional McWilliam (2004) discusses the "ethos of research disinterestedness", and contrasts this with of practitioner research, in particular "action research". With this the practitioner sets out to investigate an issue or solve a problem usually related to their day-to-day work. What is not clear is if this is driven by a wish to improve practice, or gain academic recognition, by being able to publish this research. Under the Australian higher education system, Masters degrees are awarded not only for research, but also for project work and practice-related learning (AQF 2013). Australian Doctoral Degrees are awarded to those who "research, investigate and develop new knowledge, in one or more fields of investigation, scholarship or professional practice" (AQF 2013). This acknowledges the activity of investigating and developing professional practice, alongside "research". One way to make the social science research techniques used in the education discipline more acceptable to computer scientists, I suggest, would be to emphasize its use for education. Action Research involves the researcher being actively involved in what is being researched, which is an approach generally not acceptable in the "hard" sciences. However, it is acceptable, and expected, for a practitioner to be involved with their projects and clients. Also it is expected that the practitioner will reflect on their practice, to improve it. This is also expected of teachers of science. Emphasizing this aspect would therefore make Action Research more acceptable, perhaps with the term "research" removed. This does not preclude the formal publication of such work, nor of recognition for it. Conclusion The computer science discipline provide the infrastructure for online distance education, in terms of new networking technology and software. It is therefore important that members of that discipline can be involved in education research, for the benefit of their own students and in development of educational technology. However, education 126

research needs to be explained to computer scientists in a way they find palatable. Techniques such as action research, transnational distance theory, and even approaches such as postmodernist and feminist theory, can be made palatable to computer scientists if they can be shown to address problems not tractable with the experimental scientific method. Computer Scientist can also be engaged in the development of new educational theory and the software to support it, of importance to distance education, specifically the integration of synchronous and asynchronous features for Massive Open Online Courses.

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References Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). Advisory Board (2013). Australian Qualifications Framework: implementation handbook. Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) Advisory Board From http://www.aqf.edu.au/wpcontent/uploads/2013/05/AQF-2nd-Edition-January-2013.pdf Bell, F. (2011). Connectivism: Its place in theory-informed research and innovation in technology-enabled learning. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(3). Bloom, B. S. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational researcher, 4-16. From http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189X013006004 Carver, J.; Jaccheri, L.; Morasca, Sandro; Shull, F. (2003, September). Issues in using students in empirical studies in software engineering education, Software Metrics Symposium, 2003. Proceedings. Ninth International , vol., no., pp.239,249, 3-5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/METRIC.2003.1232471 Cattermole, M. J. G. (1987). The Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company from 1881 to 1968. IEE Proceedings A (Physical Science, Measurement and Instrumentation, Management and Education, Reviews), 134(4), 351-358. Foster, S. G. (Stephen Glynn) & Varghese, Margaret M & Australian National University (ANU) (2009). The making of the Australian National University 1946-1996. ANU E Press, Canberra, A.C.T From http://press.anu.edu.au/?p=31641 Garg, K., & Varma, V. (2008, February). People issues relating to software engineering education and training in India. In Proceedings of the 1st India software engineering conference (pp. 121-128). ACM. http://dx.doi.org.virtual.anu.edu.au/10.1145/1342211.1342235 Garrison, D. R. (2000). Theoretical challenges for distance education in the 21st century. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 1(1). Retrieved November 29, 2002 from: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2/22 128

Glance, D., Forsey, M., & Riley, M. (2013). The pedagogical foundations of massive open online courses. First Monday, 18(5). doi:10.5210/fm.v18i5.4350 From http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/4350/3673 Hallinan, M. T. (1996). Bridging the gap between research and practice. Sociology of education, 69, 131-134. Hazzan, O. (2002). The reflective practitioner perspective in software engineering education. Journal Of Systems And Software, 63(3), 161-171. doi:10.1016/S0164-1212(02)00012-2 McWilliam, E. (2004) W[h]ither practitioner research? The Australian Educational Researcher, 31(2), 113-126. DOI: 10.1007/BF03249522 Murphy, E., & Rodriguez-Manzanares, M. A. (2008). Revisiting transactional distance theory in a context of web-based high-school distance education. The Journal of Distance Education, 22(2), 1-14. Oosterlinck, A., Debackere, K., & Cielen, G. (2002). Balancing basic and applied research. EMBO reports, 3(1), 2-5. Parnas, D. L. (1999). Software engineering programs are not computer science programs. Software, IEEE, 16(6), 19-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/52.805469 Quaye, S. (2007). Voice of the Researcher: Extending the Limits of What Counts as Research. Journal Of Research Practice, 3(1), Ridley, G., & Young, J. (2012). Theoretical approaches to gender and IT: examining some Australian evidence. Information Systems Journal, 22(5), 355-373. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2575.2012.00413.x Segal Quince Wicksteed. (1985). The Cambridge phenomenon: The growth of high technology industry in a university town. Segal Quince Wicksteed. Solomon, D. L. (2000). Toward a Post-Modern Agenda in Instructional Technology. From http://www.jstor.org.virtual.anu.edu.au/stable/30220282 Squire, K. (2002). Cultural framing of computer/video games. Game Studies, 2(1), 10p.. From http://gamestudies.org/0102/squire/ 129

Tucker, A. B. (1996). Strategic directions in computer science education. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 28(4), 836-845. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/242223.246876 Worthington, T. (2013). Synchronizing Asynchronous Learning: Combining Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques. In Proceedings of 2013 8th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 26 Apr - 28 Apr 2013 , Sri Lanka. From: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICCSE.2013.6553983 Worthington, T (2013, June , 18). Software for Synchronised Asynchronous Constructivist e-Learning. retrieved May 30 2014, from ANU Student Research Opportunities Web Site: http://cecs.anu.edu.au/projects/pid/0000000912

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Business Analysis Proposed Business Idea for Open Innovation Courses Business Opportunity Overview A new for-profit proprietary company, provisionally called the "Innovation Learning Unit" (ILU) will provide courses in entrepreneurship "co-sourced" with Canberra's government and leading universities. The company will be created using the start-up services of the joint government/university "Canberra Innovation Network" (CBRIN) in partnership with staff and students of the universities. The company will then provide DE courses to aid CBRIN in revitalizing the Canberra economy, moving it from one dependent on federal government agencies, to high-tech start-up private enterprise. These courses will then be marketed for similar start-up schemes around the world. Students from the Australian National University and the University of Canberra who enter the Innovation ACT start-up program at CBRIN (Avada, 2015) will be provided with on-line course modules and receive course credit at their institution. The courses will be offered through the two universities, using course materials provided by ILU and teaching staff provided by ILU and the universities.After being proven in Canberra, services will be offered on-line to cities and regions around the world. The option of a full turnkey service will be offered, where the complete course and tutors are provided. The option of customizing courses for local conditions will be offered, along with the mentoring of local staff in how to teach the courses. As well benefiting Canberra directly through the delivery of courses in entrepreneurship, the ILU is intended to be a showcase for distance education course design and cooperation between private and public organizations, an area in which Canberra's universities are deficient.

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Current State of Business Type of organization: Regional Government and government owned universities. In 2014 the ACT Government announced the "CBR Innovation Network" (CBRIN) to support "growth oriented companies and entrepreneurs" (ACT Government, 2014). CBRIN has an office in the Canberra CBD one block from the campus of the Australian National University, but also has "a charter of outreach that establishes multiple delivery points or partner delivery arrangements" (ACT Government, 2014). The aim is to turn the Australian Capital Territory, where Canberra is located, into a location for high technology industry, similar to Silicon Valley USA, although a better model would be with the "Cambridge Phenomenon" of start-ups around Cambridge University, UK (Segal Quince & Partners, 1985). Stakeholders in CBRIN include the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Canberra. The ANU and University of Canberra are constituted under legislation which requires them to take account of the needs of the region in which they are located. Section 5 of the Australian National University Act 1991 (Cth) and Section 6 of the University of Canberra Act 1989 (ACT) set out very similar functions for the institutions, which in addition to undertaking teaching and research include engaging in extension activities, professional and vocational education and the needs of the Australian Capital Territory. The ANU is in addition required to "pay attention to its national and international roles". Despite the requirement to undertake regional and international roles, the University of Canberra and ANU each have only one main campus, both located in Canberra. This suggests that e-learning is a way to fulfill that role as a new business venture launched through CBRIN Current state of DE business: Limited to a few courses, none on the topic of innovation. An example of one of the few courses currently offered online at the Australian National University related to innovation is "ICT Sustainability" (ANU, 2015b). This uses a traditional DE format of twelve weekly units, with contributions to student discussion forums for 132

20% of assessment and assignments 80%.The University of Canberra and ANU both offer innovation courses in Canberra, some in blended mode, but none purely on-line. The University of Canberra has a Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (University of Canberra, 2012b), with units such as "Managing Change and Innovation" (University of Canberra, 2012a), offered in blended mode (with 39 hours on-campus). ANU has entrepreneurial courses in business and engineering programs: 1. Entrepreneurship and Innovation, MGMT3027 (ANU, n.d. b), 2. Innovation and Commercialisation, MGMT7165 (ANU, n.d. c), 3. "Engineering Innovation" ENGN3230 (ANU.n.d. a), 4. "Technology and Innovation Management and Strategy" MGMT7106 (ANU.n.d. d). However, these are courses have largely the format of a conventional lecture and examination based university program, are not integrated with the Innovation ACT competition and not aligned with external skills standards. In 2015 ANU commenced TechLauncher (ANU, 2015c), which offers students to opportunity to undertake development of a business idea and encourages students to then enter the Innovation ACT competition. However, like the other Canberra university courses, this uses predominately face-to-face teaching methods. In addition to it not being developed for DE delivery, this makes it difficult for the course to scale to have thousands, rather than hundreds, of students. DE technology supported: University of Canberra and ANU both use Moodle, supported by the same private company. ILU will deliver courses using the same hosting service. DE support: University of Canberra and ANU use a private company for technical support of their hosted Moodle service and contracted companies to deliver some courses. As an example, "ICT Sustainability" (ANU, 2015b) is delivered by a contracted company, with a "second examiner" from the university staff to maintain qual133

ity control. This model will be followed for the ILU: with the company contracted to the universities to deliver courses, working alongside university staff. Proposal ILU will be bootstrapped trough CBRIN and then provide courses to its participants. As a first step ILU will be proposed as a project of the Innovation ACT program (Avada, 2015). Staff and students from the University of Canberra and ANU will be invited to help prepare the business plan for the company, as their entry in the competition and share in the ownership. ILU will then apply to enter CBRIN's incubator program to obtain seed funding for the project. With the seed funding ILU design and deliver courses on innovation to students of the universities involved in CBRIN's programs. Students will participate in the courses provided by ILU, through their respective institutions and receive course credit. The service will then be offered online to other regions around the world, particularly in developing nations and those in China and India, which Canberra's universities have links with. Type of business: for-profit proprietary company, having a minimum of permanent staff, delivering on-line courses on innovation, through higher education institutions using open access course materials. The courses would be designed and delivered by contractors, including academics from Canberra's universities and initially delivered to the students of these institutions. An example of this business model is the Australian Computer Society's "ACS Virtual College" (ACS, 2015), which has part-time administrative staff and contracts academics from Australian universities to design and deliver online courses. Changes needed: Participating universities will need to accept the innovation courses as part of their programs. University subject-matter experts will need to work with the ILU's instructional designers to produce harmonized learning outcomes which are compatible with each institution. Each course would need to be submitted by the university subject-matter experts for approval at University of Canberra and ANU for at each program it is to be used in. However, approval for one program should make approval more widely at these institutions relatively simple. Approval by ANU would aid the adop134

tion of the course elsewhere, due to its status as one of the world's top 50 institutions (TES, 2015). Impact on the current system: The new shared courses may replace some university specific units. The Australian National University and the University of Canberra, already use the same company to support Moodle. The company Netspot, describes the process of their staff working with the university staff as "co-sourcing" (Netspot, 2010). With this approach staff of the university work alongside those of the company. It is proposed to extend this approach to the design of courses, to have staff from both universities working together to design and delivery courses using a cooperative model. The "co-sourcing" model is already used by ANU for the delivery of the course "ICT Sustainability" (ANU, 2015b) and for the development of open source computer code plagiarism detection tool supported by Netspot (Le, Carbone, Sheard, Schuhmacher, de Raath & Johnson, 2013). Also there is contact and collaboration of the staff between the universities (attending each other's training courses for example). Little of this appears publicly as the institutions market themselves as separate entities to different groups of students. The "co-sourcing" approach through a third party company is proposed as a way the universities can cooperate where necessary and at other times compete. Proposed Products/Services The new DE unit will design and deliver courses for higher education learning in innovation. Why innovation courses: The Australian Government's research indicates that "Australia ranks poorly compared to European Union countries on new-to-market goods and service innovation (9%), well behind countries like Germany (17%) or Sweden (26%)." (Australia. Dept. of Industry, p. 3, 2014). The report also notes that Australian R&D investment is concentrated in mining and primary industries, which are not potential growth areas for Canberra, being predominately a service sector center, providing government administration and education. The proposed courses will complement the ACT 135

Government's innovation policies and initiatives, which are designed to stimulate new service industries in Canberra. Delivery of Courses: Courses will be delivered to students through Moodle, but be designed to be ported to other Learning Management Systems, if required, using an IMS/SCORM compliant subset of HTML 5 (full SCORM compliance would be too restrictive). Courses and course design services will then be offered worldwide, with the option of courses delivered through a local university, or badged and delivered remotely. Tailoring of courses will be limited to keep down development and maintenance costs and as it will be assumed that a marketing edge will be provided by the association of the courses with leading universities in Canberra. Proposed courseware: 2015: "An Introduction to Innovation" Introductory module, drafted as an assignment for MDDE 604 and available in Moodle. 2015: "Basic Entrepreneurship" Second module to be designed as an assignment for MDDE 622, July 2015. To be offered for Innovation ACT participants at not cost and used as an Innovation ACT competition entry. 2016: "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" Standard size twelve week online Moodle course (incorporating "An Introduction to Innovation" and "Basic Entrepreneurship" modules). To be designed with seed funding in the CBRIN Incubator and piloted in Innovation ACT 2016 at no charge to the universities, using university staff with 100 students. 2017: Course delivered under contract to universities using their existing Moodle service (hosted by Netspot), with 1,000 students. 2018: Course offered worldwide using cloud LMS contracted directly to ILU, 100,000 students. Potential Impact of Proposed Change Canberra, Australia's capital city, has government administration as its primary employer and economic activity. The Australian Govern136

ment is reducing the size of the Australian Public Service (APS), reducing new recruiting and retiring current staff early. Canberra's local government (the Australian Capital Territory "ACT" government), is seeking new areas of economic activity for Canberra, to make up for the reduction in federal employment, to encourage both new entrants to the workforce and former public servants to stay in Canberra. After government administration, Canberra's second industry is higher education (with two major university campuses in Canberra). One ACT Government strategy to keep graduates and former public servants in Canberra is to assist them to start a new business. The ACT Government and the higher education institutions have created a number of initiatives to help university students and former public servants create with new "start-up" companies. The higher education institutions have some programs and courses related to innovation, but these are not integrated with the government/university innovator initiatives. Also these courses are not offered by DE, so students have to leave their workplace to attend and the courses cannot be offed outside Canberra. The course materials are "closed" proprietary content and so cannot be shared between institutions or shared with commercial partners. Why the organization wishes to change: Canberra's universities are facing national and international competition for students. Currently they do not have viable DE products, nor internal units capable of producing such products. The result is that Canberra faces a decline in student enrollments and the loss of a significant part of the local economy. Impact on current operations: The new DE course will not replace any current courses universities. Current teaching staff will be invited to take part in the design and delivery of the new courses, either as part of their normal duties (in which case there is no cost to ILU), or as paid consultants, which is allowed and actively encouraged by the universities.

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Market Analysis The Current Market 1. Size and demographic overview of the market: No breakdown of enrollments in programs related to innovation were available from the universities. However, the universities between them have approximately 34,000 students. Two main fields of study which an innovation course is likely to appeal to are "management and commerce" and "information technology", which made up 24% and 3.3% of Australia's post-school enrollments in 2014 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014), giving a potential market of more than 9,000 students in Canberra. Institution

Students

The Australian National University

19,244

University of Canberra

14,494

Total ACT

33,738

ACT University Enrollments 2014 [Excerpt from Table (i) (c): Summary of student numbers(a) - List of Higher Education Institutions, first half year 2014 (Department of Education and Training, 2014)] The ANU's TechLauncher program, which commenced in 2015 has 118 participants in 24 teams, undertaking projects in conjunction with CBRIN and so provide a useful group to pilot the course with (no equivalent statistics were available for University of Canberra). Three of the TechLauncher projects being undertaken by the students are to build on-line tools to support the program itself: "Online Platform for InnovationACT", "TechLauncher Management System" and "Better Webinar Tool For Teaching" (ANU, 2015c). The third of these is planned to be a student startup company, indicating the willingness of the ANU staff to foster and work with the private sector.For ANU in 2013 (the latest year statics are available for), 74% of the students are domestic and 26% International (ANU, 2014). The high proportion of international students may provide an opportunity for DE courses. There are sightly more female (52%) than male stu138

dents (ANU, 2014). The students are predominately full time (68%) also providing scope for more part time DE students. 2. Current DE products, support and services: The ANU does not currently have a central unit dedicated to course development. The University of Canberra manages course development through a Teaching and Learning Center (University of Canberra, 2011). The term "Learning Innovation Unit" is commonly used for the name of the internal origination unit in a higher education institution which provides assistance to staff with teaching techniques including e-learning (MacKeogh & Fox, 2008). The name "Innovation Learning Unit" is intended to reflect that the company is not simply providing packaged courses in innovation but helping the universities undertake education in a new way. This business name is available for use in Australia (ASIC, 2015). 3. First market segments: The students easily identified for innovation courses are the 118 participants in ANU's TechLauncher initiative, along with approximately the same number undertaking Innovation ACT (Avada, 2015) through University of Canberra. 4. Buying decision maker: At some universities the decisions on the purchase of courses is decided at a college level, but would likely require the agreement of a central Teaching and Learning Center, such as that at University of Canberra (2011). ILU will have been formed by staff and students of the universities, and developed from within their joint initiative (CBRIN). Courses would be developed and delivered by staff of the universities, making the universities comfortable with a decision to use them. Courses would have Creative Commons open access licenses, allowing the universities the option of moving courses inhouse if they wished. The Future Market Potential opportunities: Just about every city and region of the world aspires to be a center for high technology business startups. Courses designed for the ACT could be offered in decustomised 139

form for other regions of the world taking advantage of Australia's reputation for higher education as part of the marketing. One recent example of a region which has set up similar innovation competitions to Canberra is the Gauteng province of South Africa (Gauteng Department of Economic Development, 2013). Gauteng has a state sponsored "Innovation Hub" which has close parallels to the Canberra Innovation Network. The Innovation Hub's GAP Innovation Competitions are similar to Canberra's Innovation ACT competition (Avada, 2015), requiring attendance. Customized versions of the Canberra on-line courses could be delivered for Gauteng, branded with the Gauteng province logo and with the cooperation of local academics. Canberra's universities have partnerships with institutions around the world and particularly in China. The ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science (which runs the TechLauncher program) currently has articulation agreements with: Beijing Institute of Technology, China University of Mining and Technology, Dalian Neusoft University of Information, Liaoning University, and Shandong University at Weihai (ANU, 2015 d). The usual pattern for partnerships is for the students to undertake the first few years of their education in China, before they travel to Canberra to complete their degree (usually Honors, Masters). The transition from one country and education system can be abrupt for the students. The availability of DE offers the opportunity for the students to undertake some of their study "in" Canberra, with local students on-line. Evolution of technology and requirements: Customer Profile Current and future customers: Canberra's universities and the Treasury and Economic Development Directorate of the ACT Government (partners in the Canberra Innovation Network and Innovation ACT). Numbers, locations and needs: Initially approximately 300 students located in Canberra. Complete standard Australian university courses (12 weeks x 10 hours student work per week, one quarter full time load), and modules.

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Reason to buy the product: No online innovation courses are currently available from Canberra's universities and limited capability to produce such modules. The ACT Government and universities will have the opportunity to market Canberra as a location for hitech start-up activities. Target population type description of each customer group: Students would be undertaking Science, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and business programs. The staff of Canberra's universities, who would make the decision to allow DE courses, have tended not to be accepting of this form of education. Teaching staff of Australian universities have primarily come though a system where they undertake a PHD in their discipline, but receive no formal training in teaching or course design. New staff are given a class and told to go and "lecture". This presents an opportunity through "co-sourcing" to offer to work with the staff on new forms of course deliverer. Potential Customer Sensitivities The ACT Government needs to be seen to be helping provide economic growth and jobs. One issue is over the size and nature of companies involved. Political considerations would prefer, on the one hand attracting large multinational companies and on the other supporting very small enterprises, but neither will likely assist with innovation. The growth area for innovation is with new start-ups growing into large companies. Higher education institutions in Canberra are competing for local students and so will need some way to retain product differentiation, while cooperating on course development. Both the ACT Government and education institutions will each want to retain exclusive ownership of all intellectual property and oppose use of open content. To some extent offering courses to other regions will conflict with the aim of promoting Canberra. The universities are primarily concerned with attracting student enrollments, particularly international enrollments. One sensitivity is that government regulations only allow international students to take a maximum of 25% of their courses online (Department of Education and Training, 2007). Full time enrollment for an Australian uni141

versity is four courses, so this would allow students to undertake only one DE course at a time. One key consideration is accreditation of programs by professionals bodies, such as those for engineering, accounting and computer science. The use of carefully designed DE courses will be a positive as these can be designed to incorporate accreditation requirements (many courses are post-hoc analysis to fit accreditation). Price is less of an issue with Australian university courses, as the Australian government subsidies course fees and is planning to remove the current cap to allow fees to rise. Quality is also not an is sue, as universities market their programs based on the research reputation of the institution, not the quality of courses offered. One exception is student feedback scores for courses and programs, which have become a mandatory government requirement. Staff used to lecture style delivery are experiencing difficulty with students who expect an online experience. This is an area ILU could assist with, however, senior academics may feel threatened by new ways of teaching. The impact of offering one online course is unlikely to be seen as helping reduce staff costs, or as a threat to jobs by existing staff. An additional course will also not impact network or LMS infrastructure. Australia's universities have a high capacity fiber optic network infrastructure and the commercial LMS provider uses cloud technology to be able to increase demand as required. Analysis of the Competition Current Competitors Market/industry sector: The major competition of a DE innovation course comes not from courses offered at Canberra's universities but from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS). University staff, and the students, will ask why they should purchase a DE course, when they can get a MOOC for free. As detailed below, these MOOCS do not offer accredited, recognized qualification and are mostly not "free" and so are not real competition for IUL. However, this perception of "free" courses will be difficult to combat and it is therefore

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necessary to look at what MOOCS offer and how to compete with them. Here are some innovation related MOOCS: 1. Innovation and Enterprise, from Loughborough University through FutureLearn: "Managing the innovation process is neither a scientific process nor a black art. We will explore a model for innovation." 2. 3.086x: Innovation and Commercialization, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, through edX: "Covers from human process of innovating to innovation ecosystems." 3. Entrepreneurship: Launching an Innovative Business, from University of Maryland through Coursera: "How to develop the business model with attention to value propositions, customer segments, channels, customer relationships, revenue models, partners, and resources, activities, and costs." Products and services: The edX consortium (set up by MIT) offers "Verified Certificate of Achievement" for individual courses and "XSeries Certificates" for specific sequences of courses. The Verified Certificate of Achievement typically cost US$25 to US$100. There is no Innovation related XSeries Certificate currently offered by edX, but that for "Educational Technology", costs US$275 (four courses at US$50 each plus US$75 program fee). The FutureLearn consortium (set up by Open University UK) will be offering a "Statement of Attainment" by examination, through an agreement with Pearson for £119 (approximately US$189) for some courses (Parr, 2015). However, it is still not clear if this statement will be accepted by accredited universities. Coursera, unlike edX or FutureLearn, has a "Specialization" in innovation. This consists of three courses and a "capstone" (in place of an examination). The capstone has assignments very similar to those of a conventional course, on the topics: business model, customer analysis, marketing and sales strategy, business plan and pitch. The specialization costs US$204 and takes a minimum of 60 hours study (3 courses x 4 weeks x 3 hours a week + 1 capstone x 6 weeks x 4 hours per week). Price charged: Australian universities typically charge around $3,000 to $4,000 per course (ANU, 2015a), so a reasonable whole143

sale rate would be $750 per student per course. Where universities are providing their own teaching staff the cost per course would be lower. Where is the Overlap? Canberra universities already offer some blended and face-to-face innovation courses. MOOC providers in other countries already offer some innovation courses fully on-line to Canberra students. Future Competition Future competition could come from on-shore campuses of international DE for-profit universities. An example of this new world is Torrens University, Australia's first DE university. Torrens was admitted to the Australian National Register of higher education providers in July 2012, as an "Australian University", allowing its Australian students to qualify for government subsided study loans. Torrens is part of Laureate Education Inc., which is reported to be preparing for a $1B float in the USA. This is likely result in pressure on Torrens to keep costs down in Australia by using off-shore courses and tutors from its global network. Torrens is under no obligation to employ staff in Australia to design courses or teach Australian stu dents and therefore can offer "Australian" branded university qualifications without having to pay Australian salaries to its teaching staff. Torrens is required to have staff with qualifications for each discipline the university is teaching in, these staff would be expected to be normally based in Australia (they are not required to be Australian citizens), but are not required to undertake any teaching. Torrens currently has four academic staff: a Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic & Research) and one associate professors for each discipline: Business, Public Health and Education (Torrens University Australia, 2015). In addition there are three adjunct professors. Torrens is not limited in the number of students it can enroll with this limited staff, as the teaching can be undertaken by on-line tutors from Laureate Education Inc in other countries. Torrens staff must show that they have a quality control system in place to ensure those teaching are qualified under Australian standards, but those actually carrying out the teaching need not be in Australia, be Australian citizens or paid at Aus144

tralian salary levels. This represents a considerable threat to Australia's traditional universities and may make them more conducive to ILU's approach. How To Gain the Competitive Advantage The Coursera, specialization is closest to an Australian university course in structure, size and assessment and costs approximately one tenth as much as an Australian course. However, Coursera does not offer a recognized university qualification and so currently not a real competitor (more of a marketing tool). Australian universities have not recognized Coursera programs for credit and are unlikely to do so. However, the cost of the MOOCS might be a useful guide to the wholesale price for course-ware provided to universities. That is the cost of the course content, plus the IT system used to support it. To this would be needed to be added the cost of a tutor required for a recognized university course. It is not feasible to compete with a MOOC purely on price. Other ways to compete are on certification, local knowledge, customization and reputation. The US and UK MOOCS are not designed for Australian students or for Australian professional and educational requirements. An Australian course can meet these requirements and be overseen by staff recognized in the Australian university system. Australian university programs (both university and vocation education) are accredited under a common nationally mandated Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF Advisory Board, 2013). Lucey (p. 13, 2014) points out that the implementation of the AQF has aided the use of implementation of competency-based training, which is appealing to both vocational students, as their prospective employers. Adoption of the AQF standards therefore will provide a considerable competitive advantage when offering courses, as this is a government endorsement of work relevant education. A further more detailed level of standards can be used both to aid design of courses and to offer a competitive advantage. The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA5) is an international framework used to categorize ICT jobs and corresponding training (Butler, Sheard, Morgan, & Weerasinghe, 2015). SFIA includes a skills definition for "Innovation" (INOV, Category: Strategy & ar145

chitecture, Subcategory: Business/IT strategy and planning, SFIA , 2015) and related skills such as "Business analysis"(BUAN, Category: Business change, Subcategory: Business change management, SFIA, 2015). These could be used to market the courses to institutions wishing to receive accreditation for their programs. Business Analysis Results Why This Business Will Succeed Canberra's universities are facing national and international competition for students. Currently they do not have a viable innovation education product, nor viable DE products. The universities will be under increasing competition, while hampered by traditional university structures and decision making processes. The offer to buy in quality courses, quickly, using known staff will be very attractive to them. Considerations to Move Forward The decision making and budgeting process at Canberra's universities is critical to the venture. The institution's executives are not likely to wish to admit they do not have the capability to produce competitive innovation DE courses from within current resources. The result is that external courses will seem unnecessary and expensive. There will therefore need to be some education of the university executive in how courses are developed and budgeted, as part of the marketing of the proposal.

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References ACS. (2015). Australian Computer Society Virtual College. Retrieved from https://www.acs.org.au/professional-development/Distance-Courses ACT Government. (2014, April 9). CBR Innovation Network: A New Approach To Promoting Innovative Businesses. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.business.act.gov.au/blog?sq_content_src= %2BdXJsPWh0dHAlM0ElMkYlMkZhY3Rnb3ZidXNpbmVzcy5ibG9nc3BvdC5jb20uYXUlMkYyMDE0JTJGMDQlMkZjYnItaW5ub3ZhdGlvbi1uZXR3b3JrLW5ldy1hcHByb2FjaC10by5odG1sJmFsbD0x ANU. (2014). Quick stats. Retrieved from https://unistats.anu.edu.au/statistics/quickstats/ANU. (2015a). Costs & fees. Retrieved from http://www.anu.edu.au/students/program-administration/costs-fees ANU. (2015b). ICT Sustainability COMP7310. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/comp7310#indicativeassessment ANU. (2015c). TechLauncher: Teams. Retrieved from http://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/teamListByTitle.html ANU. (2015d). Partnerships: College of Engineering and Computer Science - Articulation. Retrieved from http://www.anu.edu.au/about/partnerships?name_list=CN&field_colleges_target_id=5&field_partnership_type_tid_1=222&combine= ASIC. (2008). Search Name Results for "Innovation Learning Unit". Retrieved from https://connectonline.asic.gov.au/RegistrySearch/faces/landing/bn/Se archBnRegisters.jspx?_adf.ctrl-state=nkv7p72cm_4 Australia. Dept. of Industry (1900). Australian innovation system report 2014. Department of Industry, Canberra. Retrieved from http://www.industry.gov.au/innovation/reportsandstudies/Documents/Australian-Innovation-System-Report-2014.pdf

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Australian Bureau of Statistics (2001). Education and work, Australia. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/6227.0/ Australian National University. (n.d. a). Engineering Innovation ENGN3230. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/ENGN3230 Australian National University. (n.d. b). Entrepreneurship and Innovation MGMT3027. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/MGMT3027 Australian National University. (n.d. c). Innovation and Commercialisation MGMT7165. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/MGMT7165 Australian National University. (n.d. d). Technology and Innovation Management and Strategy MGMT7106. Retrieved from http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/MGMT7106Australian National University Act 1991 (Cth) s. 5 (Austl.). Retrieved from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/anua1991357/s5.ht ml AQF Advisory Board. (2013). Australian Qualifications Framework: implementation https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-universityrankings/2014-15/world-ranking/institution/australian-national-universityhandbook. Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) Advisory Board Retrieved from http://www.aqf.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/AQF-2nd-Edition-January-2013.pdf Avada, (2015). Innovation ACT. Retrieved from http://www.innovationact.org/ Butler, M., Sheard, J., Morgan, M., & Weerasinghe, K. F. S. A. (2015, January). Understanding the Teaching Context of First Year ICT Education in Australia. In Proceedings of the 17th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2015) (Vol. 27, p. 30). Retrieved from http://crpit.com/confpapers/CRPITV160Butler.pdf Department of Education and Training. (2007). National Code of Practice for Registration Authorities and Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students: Explanatory guide for Standard 9. 148

Retrieved from https://internationaleducation.gov.au/Regulatory-Information/Education-Services-for-Overseas-Students-ESOS-Legislative-Framework/National-Code/nationalcodepartd/Pages/ExplanatoryguideD9.aspx Department of Education and Training. (2014). 2014 First half year student summary tables. Retrieved from http://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/2014firsthalfyearstudentsummarytablesv2.xls Gauteng Department of Economic Development. (2013). Innovation Hub Competitions. Retrieved from http://www.theinnovationhub.com/gap/ Le, T., Carbone, A., Sheard, J., Schuhmacher, M., de Raath, M., & Johnson, C. (2013, March). Educating computer programming students about plagiarism through use of a code similarity detection tool. In Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTiCE), 2013 (pp. 98-105). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/LaTiCE.2013.37 Lucey, D. J. (2014). Blended learning: meeting the needs of distance education students. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/78068/1/Daniel_Lucey_Thesis.pdf MacKeogh, K., & Fox, S. (2008). Strategies for embedding eLearning in traditional universities: drivers and barriers. Retrieved from http://doras.dcu.ie/2166/1/ecel_2008.pdf Netspot. (2010). The University of Canberra A seamless implementation of Moodle puts power back into the hands of lecturers at the University of Canberra. Netspot. Retrieved from http://netspot.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/pdf-case-uc.pdf Parr, C. (2015, May 9). Mooc test agreement between FutureLearn and Pearson. Times Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/mooc-test-agreement-between-futurelearn-and-pearson/2020145.article Rastnam, R. (2015). SPARK innovation workshops. Retrieved from http://science.anu.edu.au/whats-on/all-events/spark-innovationworkshops

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Segal Quince & Partners (1985). The Cambridge phenomenon : the growth of high technology industry in a university town. Segal Quince & Partners, Cambridge SFIA Foundation Ltd, (2015). The purpose of SFIA: Skills Framework for the Information Age. Retrieved from https://www.sfia-online.org/v501/en/index.html TES. (2015). Australian National University: World University Rankings 2014-15 Times Higher Education Supplement. Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-universityrankings/2014-15/world-ranking/institution/australian-national-university Torrens University Australia. (2015). Academic Staff: Torrens University Australia. Retrieved from http://www.tua.edu.au/aboutus/academic-staff/ University of Canberra (2011). Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/tlUniversity of Canberra. (2012a). Managing change and innovation 7776.3. Retrieved from http://www.canberra.edu.au/coursesandunits/unit? unit_cd=7776&version_number=3&rownum=3165 University of Canberra. (2012b). Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 208JA.1. Retrieved from http://www.canberra.edu.au/coursesandunits/course? course_cd=208JA&version_number=1&location_cd=BRUCE University of Canberra Act 1989 (ACT) s. 6 (Austl.). Retrieved from http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/act/consol_act/uoca1989246/s6.h tml

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Business Strategic Plan Executive Summary: Overview of Business Opportunity A new stand-alone business, in the form of an Australian limited liability (Pty Ltd) for-profit company, provisionally called the "Innovation Learning Unit" (ILU) will provide courses in entrepreneurship "co-sourced" with Canberra's government and leading universities. ILU's business will be to provide innovation course materials as a product to universities and, optionally, provide tutoring so that the courses can be delivered as a service on behalf of universities. Pilot course material is in Worthington (2016). The company will be created using the start-up services of the joint government/university "Canberra Innovation Network" (CBRIN, 2015), which provides training, office space, start-up funding, accounting and marketing advice to university students, university academics, and former public servants in Canberra wishing to start a company. The company will be part owned by the the staff and students involved in its establishment. The company will provide DE courses to aid CBRIN in revitalizing the Canberra economy, transforming the city from one dependent on federal government agencies, to high-tech start-up center for private enterprise. These courses will then be marketed for similar start-up schemes around the world. As well benefiting Canberra directly through the delivery of courses in entrepreneurship, the ILU is intended to be a showcase for distance education course design and cooperation between private and public organizations, an area in which Canberra's universities are deficient. Business Overview In 2014 the ACT Government announced the "CBR Innovation Network" (CBRIN) to support "growth oriented companies and entrepreneurs" (ACT Government, 2014). CBRIN has an office in the Canberra CBD one block from the campus of the Australian Na151

tional University, but also has "a charter of outreach that establishes multiple delivery points or partner delivery arrangements" (ACT Government, 2014). CBRIN hosts start-up competitions for Canberra's university students, a "co-working" space where new companies can be established and a "incubator" to help fund the expansion of the companies. The aim is to uses these facilities to turn the Australian Capital Territory, where Canberra is located, into a location for high technology industry, similar to Silicon Valley USA. Market Potential The ANU and University of Canberra between them have approximately 34,000 students (Department of Education and Training, 2014). Two main fields of study which an innovation course is likely to appeal to are "management and commerce" and "information technology", which made up 24% and 3.3% of Australia's postschool enrollments in 2014 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014), giving a potential market for the course of more than 9,000 students in Canberra. Simes and O'Mahony (2015) predict a need for further 100,000 ICT professionals in Australia in the next six years. The authors emphasized that almost half (47%) of these workers will be working in other professions other than ICT, requiring skills skills beyond the technical. Competition. The major competition of a DE innovation course will come not from courses offered at Canberra's universities but from international partners of Australian universities and courses available on-line. Mitacs Globalink Research Internship (GRI): Nine Australian universities have entered into an agreement with Canadian not-forprofit training organization Mitacs, to provide innovation education (Universities Australia, 2015). However, currently the students are required to travel to Canada to participate, limiting participation to a small number of students. There is the risk that Canadian universities, such as UBC, who are members of Mitacs and have a distance education capability, will offer e-learning for Australian students to complement the program. 152

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS): Here are some innovation related MOOCS: 1. Innovation and Enterprise, from Loughborough University through FutureLearn: "Managing the innovation process is neither a scientific process nor a black art. We will explore a model for innovation." 2. 3.086x: Innovation and Commercialization, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, through edX: "Covers from human process of innovating to innovation ecosystems." 3. Entrepreneurship: Launching an Innovative Business, from University of Maryland through Coursera: "How to develop the business model with attention to value propositions, customer segments, channels, customer relationships, revenue models, partners, and resources, activities, and costs." ILU will seek to compete with these MOOCs by offering courses developed by Canberra based universities with an international reputation, but delivered in conjunction with local institutions and part of their accredited programs. Competition The major competition of a DE innovation course will come not from courses offered at Canberra's universities but from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS). Here are some innovation related MOOCS: 1. Innovation and Enterprise, from Loughborough University through FutureLearn: "Managing the innovation process is neither a scientific process nor a black art. We will explore a model for innovation." 2. 3.086x: Innovation and Commercialization, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, through edX: "Covers from human process of innovating to innovation ecosystems." 3. Entrepreneurship: Launching an Innovative Business, from University of Maryland through Coursera: "How to develop the business model with attention to value propositions, cus153

tomer segments, channels, customer relationships, revenue models, partners, and resources, activities, and costs." ILU will seek to compete with these MOOCs by offering courses developed by Canberra based universities with an international reputation, but delivered in conjunction with local institutions and part of their accredited programs. SWOT Analysis SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) provides a way to categorize internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external aspects (opportunities and threats) in a two dimensional matrix. Dooley and Murphrey (2000) carried out SWOT analysis on the distance education delivery at a "major Research 1 university" (most likely authors' own institution: Texas A&M University). The main focus of Dooley and Murphrey's 2000 work was the different perspectives of administrators, faculty and support staff, however they did find common SWOT factors for all groups. These factors form a suitable bases for the SWOT analysis of the ILU (Table 1). Strengths (Internal)

Weaknesses (Internal)

1. Use of technology to enhance teaching and learning

1. Limited incentives, development support and funding

2. Continuous improvement of DE technologies

2. Weak communication channels

3. Reputation content

quality

3. Slow action on critical issues

4. Ability to reach new audiences and existing demand

4. Current technological limitations

for

5. Administrative encouragement and support 6. Presence of early adopters and proximity to technology 154

5. Lack of skill, expertise and desire to develop interactive DE courses. 6. Limited knowledge regarding copyright and in-

tellectual property 7. Loss of interaction Opportunities (External)

Threats (External)

1. Enhance audience base to reach non-traditional students

1. Career and job security 2. Competition from private and public institutions

2. Create an individualism and enhanced interactive learning experience

3. Misinformation on the Internet

3. Extensive infrastructure and network

4. Quality measurement issues

4. Expansion of collaboration with private and public institutions

5. Dependence on outside developers and programmers

5. Provide unique and specialized courses and programs

6. Security concerns

SWOT factors for ILU (adapted from Dooley and Murphrey, 2000) SWOT Analysis Summary Strengths (Internal): ILU can build on the existing relationships between Canberra's universities, government and business working through the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN). These are in part formal agreements, but more importantly personal relationships between people from the different organization and sectors. This provides the infrastructure for establishing a new start-up company to provide innovation courses. There is a supply of funds from Canberra "Angel" investors and staff with e-learning expertise at Canberra's institutions. The use of a company which the university staff can work through will allow better use of the expertise available in the universities, without the restrictions imposed by internal university bureaucracy. At the same time improvement in DE technologies and techniques 155

can be applied without having to wait for university approval processes. At the same time the ILU can make use of the reputation for quality of the universities to promote its products and services. 1. Use of technology to enhance teaching and learning: ILU can build on the foundation of existing technology used by Canberra's universities for teaching (Moodle). This will allow teaching students across the the universities without the need for complex coordination arrangements. 2. Continuous improvement of DE technologies: While CBRIN supports any form of start-up, many are focused on web technology, some are already applicable to e-learning and more can be created to support the ILU. As an example, current projects include one for managing courses, analysis of student data and helping students select courses (ANU,. 2015b). This technology can be quickly transferred to ILU for teaching. 3. Reputation for quality content: While ILU will be a new organization, it can make use of the relationship with Canberra's universities and their rankings in university league tables. Also that courses for Australian university degrees are required to meet the government mandated Australian Qualifications Framework (2013), will be an advantage. 4. Ability to reach new audiences and existing demand: ILU will not have the impediment of having to maintain a fixed infrastructure for face-to-face courses. A small low cost service can be provided to support the local demand from Canberra's universities and then expanded as required. A cloud based LMS will allow the capacity to be expanded quickly to move from dozens, to hundreds to hundreds of thousands of students. 5. Administrative encouragement and support: Use of online learning and encouragement of innovation for students is a priority for Canberra's universities. ILU's initiatives are therefore likely to receive support. 6. Presence of early adopters and proximity to technology: ILU will be located in CBRIN's co-working office space in 156

Canberra's CBD, adjacent to the ANU campus, in an area favored by education and IT support companies. Weaknesses (Internal) Australia's university sector and government education expert programs are orientated towards on-shore face-to-face "in-bound" delivery. Distance education course development is therefore unlikely to receive support from university executive or government export programs, as they will be seen as threatening the current higher education business model. Canberra's universities may compete, rather than cooperate on course development. 1. Limited incentives, development support and funding: As ILU will primarily use part-time staff who are already employed at universities, their work for ILU will likely be a lower priority and will not provide the opportunities for academic advancement which faculty staff expect. The ILU will also use part time support which will be limited. While ILU can call on start-up funding through CBRIN, this will still be limited. ILU may not be able to apply for the development funding which universities receive for new initiatives. 2. Weak communication channels: As ILU staff will be part time and remote, there will be less of the informal "water cooler" communication from sharing an office. This will need to be countered with internal social media (such as using "Yammer" as already used by ANU). Also as, at least initially, most staff will be in Canberra and the university campuses are less than 10 km apart, regular staff meetings will be possible. 3. Slow action on critical issues: ILU will be, at least initially, a small organization which will not attract top priority support from the outsourced provider of the LMS, or from its part time staff. This can be overcome by using the same LMS host company as used by the universities and, where possible, using the same versions of software. Any problem ILU has will then likely be also a problem for the major customers of the system and receive priority support. 4. Current technological limitations: Use of Moodle restricts ILU to a dated looking e-learning interface, compared with App based mobile offerings. However, this reduces the support requirements

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and also makes the system more usable for those in developing countries on low bandwidth links. 5. Lack of skill, expertise and desire to develop interactive DE courses: The pool of talent available with e-learning skills is limited, as Canberra's universities have placed a priority on face-to-face courses. However, this is changing and ILU can exploit the frustration of e-learning developers in Canberra who feel the universities are not making use of their skills. 6. Limited knowledge regarding copyright and intellectual property: Development of courses to be shared by multiple educational institutions using part time staff, creates a problem for the management of intellectual property. This can be circumvented by using using a Creative Commons CC BY-SA license. The "SA" ("Share Alike") license not only allows multiple institutions to use the course content freely, it also requires any upgrades to materials to be made freely available. This will allow ILU to avoid complex IP negotiations with staff and institutions: part time staff can obtain academic credit for having developed courses, without their institution being able to claim ownership of the material. 7. Loss of interaction: By its nature DE imposes a lack of interaction on an educational system. Using an external company to deliver the DE can further distance the staff and faculty from each other. ILU will counter this by attempting to become as transparent as possible, connecting students to faculty online. Opportunities (External) The Australian Government's research indicates that "Australia ranks poorly compared to European Union countries on new-to-market goods and service innovation (9%), well behind countries like Germany (17%) or Sweden (26%)." (Australia. Dept. of Industry, p. 3, 2014). The report also notes that Australian R&D investment is concentrated in mining and primary industries, which are not potential growth areas for Canberra, being predominately a service sector center, providing government administration and education. The IUL would provide courses which fit with the ACT Government's innovation policies and initiatives, which are designed to stimulate new service industries in Canberra. Segal Quince & Partners (1985) noted that a lack of tenure at University of Cambridge was one factor driv158

ing start-ups: those wanting to remain in the city had to create their own jobs, due to a lack of alternatives. In a simian way the lack of jobs for graduates and for public servants being made redundant from the federal government provides an incentive for those wanting to remain in Canberra. The local educational institutions have an advantage offering courses to transition from students or public service to the private sector. The ANU and University of Canberra also jointly run the Univative Student Business Challenge (ANU, 2015). This was established by University of Wollongong (UOW) to enhance work-integrated learning (Corrin & Smith, 2007). The competition has subsequently been adopted by universities across Australia, with those in Canberra the latest to join. This is a shorter and more problem solving orientated competition for students than Innovation ACT, but it should be possible to use some of the same course modules for both. Currently there are no formal course materials for Univative and so any developed for Canberra might be resold to other universities nationally. Former government employees looking to set up businesses and requiring training in innovation and entrepreneurship provide a secondary market for courses. The government staff involved in the Australian Government Digital Transformation Office (DTO) projects provide a further market for training. Major corporations, such as the Commonwealth Bank, which has its own internal Innovation Lab, and Telstra Corporation with its Muru-d Incubator The potential international market for innovation courses includes students of universities which those in Canberra have partnerships with. ANU's strategic alliance partner universities, particularly those in China and India, would be prime candidates, given the emphasis placed on business growth in those countries. There is the potential for the same courses to be offered internationally and to the private sector. However, the courses would need to be proven locally first. Also the private sector may be reluctant to adopt an academic course. Enhance audience base to reach non-traditional students: In addition to degree program students at Canberra universities (and elsewhere), the ILU can offer courses to Canberra's government employees and ex-employees, as well as company staff. CBRIN has a local government funded initiative to train ex-government employees in 159

how to set up a private business and government agencies regularly seek training for staff who are about to leave government service: "CBR xPS is a social mobilization initiative to explore and highlight new ways that Canberra public service professionals may choose to build on their unique expertise and experience to transition their skill-set (and mindset) from an exclusively public sector context into other work-life opportunities, including start-up enterprise." (Cofluence, 2015). In addition, the Australian Government this year established the Digital Transformation Office (DTO), with $250M funding, to seek innovative new ways for running the country. The ILU's course offerings could be attractive to the ILU in teaching those in the government to consider more innovative ways to work. Create an individualism and enhanced interactive learning experience: The topics of innovation and entrepreneurship which ILU will be providing courses in are more suited to an on-line environment than a traditional large lecture theater. The e-learning environment can offer the chance for the budding entrepreneur to explore the topic in a small group and work on their own project, at their own pace. Extensive infrastructure and network: Canberra is the national capital and has extensive fiber-optic connections to the rest of Australia and to multiple international links. This provides for reliable and high speed network access with good local local technical support. Expansion of collaboration with private and public institutions: The Australian Public Service Commission and the Australian Department of Defence are based in Canberra and responsible for training of civilian and military personnel across Australia. This provides the opportunity of delivering training by ILU to these employees. Provide unique and specialized courses and programs: while ILU will initially deliver standardized courses designed for universities, there is also the opportunity to tailor these for specific audiences, such as government employees and military personnel.

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Threats (External) The availability of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) may make institutions and individual students reluctant to sign up for the ILU's small closed courses, where fees are charged. University staff, and the students, will ask why they should purchase a DE course, when they can get a MOOC for free. MOOCS do not offer accredited, recognized qualification and are mostly not "free" and so are not real competition for IUL. However, this perception of "free" courses will be difficult to combat and it is therefore necessary to look at what MOOCS offer and how to compete with them. Canberra's universities cooperate in operating CBRIN and their students jointly undertake the Innovation ACT start-up program at CBRIN (Avada, 2015), however, each university is more used to completion, rather than cooperation, when it comes to developing and delivering formal fee paying courses. Where these universities cooperate it tends to be with institutions located outside Canberra. As an example, the ANU joined edX consortium in 2013 (Unis to leap on edX, 2013), whereas University of Canberra has not joined. The University of Canberra has run a Cross-Institutional Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education with four other Australian regional universities (Vale, Tynan, & Smyth, 2009), whereas ANU went farther afield joining the UK's Higher Education Academy teacher recognition scheme (Jacob, Xiong & Ye, 2015). However, there is informal contact between the staff of all Canberra's universities at academic conferences, research projects, research grant applications and professional bodies. It is likely that such cooperation can be extended to Innovation course design and delivery, where cooperation president has already been set. Career and job security: The ILU will be mostly making use of part time staff and this may be seen as a threat to job security by faculty at universities. However, universities will be under increasing competition from off-shore e-learning providers and a part time job at ILU providing courses delivered in conjunction with their university may be see as a useful way to keep their day job. Competition from private and public institutions: ILU will need to compete with MOOCs and conventional e-learning courses offered to universities and directly to students. ILU can compete by partnering with the local institutions so as not to be seen as compet161

ing with them and as being seen as a quality endorsed part of the accredited Australian higher education system. Misinformation on the Internet: ILU will need to combat the perception that e-learning courses are not to a high academic standard and that students are cheating. This can be overcome by emphasizing quality standards in marketing material, particularly the requirements of the Australian Qualifications Framework (2013). Quality measurement issues: Courses which are on-line and have an emphasis on project work (as required for innovation) create problems for the conventional quality control systems used by universities and external quality agencies. However, ILU can make use of e-portfolio assessment to comply with Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority requirements (TEQSA, 2013). Johns-Boast (2014) discusses the use of e-portfolios for project based work at a Canberra university. Dependence on outside developers and programmers: ILU will be dependent on contracted course developers and technical staff. This will be less a a problem for a typical company as these personnel will, in the main, drawn from Canberra's universities and so will be relatively stable and have a common set of qualification and training. Replacing one person from the same pool of talent will therefore be relatively straightforward. Security concerns: All students and staff will require access to the LMS from the cloud service provider. This system will therefore need to be accessible via the Internet and so may attacked. Also the staff will have access to student data. Use of a specialist service provide who is familiar with the educational software used and so can apply appropriate security will reduce the threat. Use of contract staff who are already working at Canberra's public universities and so vetted will reduce the threat of insider attack. Vision and Mission Vision: Design educational materials and deliver on-line courses s on innovation and entrepreneurship, to build skills within Canberra's university students, foster those skills in Canberra and beyond. {The vision, mission and values statements draw on that of the Cambridge 162

University Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, as described by Vyakarnam (2005).} Mission: Provide provide free open access course-ware and for-fee courses to help university students learn enterprise, innovation and creativity. Ensure the service is not dependent on grants and is therefore sustainable and can grow, with revenue from courses, using the freemium strategy. The organization will work with Canberra's governments and leading universities to support existing entrepreneurial initiatives and thereby provide a model for similar start-up schemes around the world. Organizational Values - The organization will be committed to the values of academic pursuit of knowledge, integrity, collegiality, diversity staff and students and engagement with the community {derived from the strategic plan of ANU (2011)}. A spirit of co-operation and collaboration is emphasized, with a balance between academic and practical group learning. The organization aims for a triple bottom line: addressing social, environmental and financial goals, thinking globally and acting locally. The aim is to assist local educational institutions and local economies with course-ware to educate students to create new businesses. The organization will demonstrate its values by providing course-ware at no charge with a open access license. Courses will address the human side of innovation, by encouraging students to explore the role of not-for-profit enterprises, as well as for-profit ones and humanitarian as well as economic goals. These values will be reflected in the organization's approach to its own employees, customers and institutions, through "co-sourcing", which involves relationship building all in all stages of production. While a private for-profit institution, the organization's staff are drawn from academic institutions and are required to observe ethical standards for teaching as well as the standards of their professional discipline. Multi-Year Strategic Goals:The measurable objectives suggested by Vyakarnam (2005) for an entrepreneurial learning unit are used: "the development of appropriate courses, increased student numbers and financial prudence". The one overriding strategy is to work with the Canberra's universities, so as to not be seen as a competitor. The local universities would have part ownership of ILU, using the standard processes the universities have in place for investment in start163

ups through CBRIN. Academics would be paid consultants to ILU, as the are encouraged to do by their institutions (up to a set number of hours per year). The marketing plan will use social media and use Murphy and Thomson's "Loyalty Based Business Model" (p. 9, 2014). Product development undertaken by students and staff of the universities, sales online, finance via the Canberra Innovation Network's incubator and angel investors. 'Nudge Theory' would be used to use staff effectively and increase student retention to lower costs, as suggested by Simpson (p. 33, 2010). Some nudges would also be automated to improve student retention, performance and reduce staff costs. As an example, the assignment submission system would indicate to a student that their peers have submitted, thus prompting them to do so. Incentives for staff will be established as part of the HR plan. In particular, the incentives will be aligned with research finding on how students learn, so staff time is used most productively. Goals Strategic Goals

Related Strategic Objectives

1. Establish, manage and 1.1 Submit proposal to start-up process maintain the infrastructure required to support 1.2 Form company. the unit and its growth. 2. Produce and manage a 2.1 Produce and manage a start-up budthree year financial plan. get. 2.2 Produce annual operating budgets. 2.3 Seek additional start-up funding and revenue to support business operations and planned growth. 2.4 Conduct annual audits of the unit budget process.

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3. Produce a human re- 3.1 Produce HR Plan which includes code source (HR) plan, in- of conduct for staff and draft contracts. cluding for contract staff. 4. Produce and imple- 4.1 Sort term plan for first year (Local ment a three year mar- presentations to senior Canberra univerketing and sales plan. sity and government officials, Mobile compatible web site, course sample, "white" paper on strategy) 4.2 Detailed plan for three years (weekly blog posts, twice annual paper in an open journal, video introductions) 5. Design and develop 5.1 Produce pilot course based on that alcourseware. ready prepared for MDDE 604 and MDDE 622. 6. Create and implement 6.1 Prepare QA plan based on university an evaluation, quality as- and government education standards. surance and performance 6.2 Prepare performance measures based measurement system. on university and government education standards.

7. Create, manage and 7.1 Set up minimal LMS using cloud maintain an online learn- provider. ing environment. 7.2 Expand the LMS for student growth. 8. Provide e-learning ser- 8.1 Set up on-line student support using vices and student sup- cloud provider. port. 8.2 Engaging on-line part-time staff to support students. 9. Deliver courseware.

9.1 Create courseare offering 9.2 Create courseware

10. Deliver courses.

10.1 Create course package 165

10.2 Deliver package Tasks Goal/Objective

Tasks

1.1 Submit proposal to 1.1.1 Prepare proposal as an ANU Techstart-up process Launcher start-up project for students to work on from 20 July 2015 AEST (start of ANU Semester 2) 1.1.2 Prepare project for to the Innovation ACT Program a business start-up by 12 August 2015 AEST 1.2 Form company.

1.2.1 Submit formal paperwork to Securities Commission to form company. 1.2.2 Have project selected as a Griffith Accelerator assisted start-up, located at CBRIN, 31 October 2015.

2.1 Produce and manage a 2.1.1 Obtain initial funding from universtart-up budget. sities and angels associated with CBRIN Objective 2.2 Have innovation and Entrepreneurship course ready for pilot with 100 Innovation ACT students, 18 July 2015 2.2 Produce annual oper- 2.2.1 Budget 2015/2016 ating budgets. 2.2.1 Budget 2016/2017 2.2.1 Budget 2017/2018 2.3 Seek additional start- 2.3.1 Obtain second round funding to up funding and revenue to support full scale Canberra course support business operations and planned growth.

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2.4 Conduct annual audits 2.4.1 Audit 2015/16 of the unit budget 2.4.3 Audit 2016/17 process. 2.4.4 Audit 2017/18 2.4.5 Audit 2018/19 2.4.6 Audit 2019/20 4 Produce and implement a three year marketing and sales plan.

1. Contact Australian Government's Business Enterprise Centre (BEC) for marketing advice. 2. Produce three year plan with BEC assistance, based on Murphy and Thomson's "Loyalty Based Business Model" (p. 9, 2014).

5.1 Produce pilot course 5.1.1 Review and release pilot first based on that already pre- course in Canberra, July 2016. pared for MDDE 604 and 5.1.2 Release revised Innovation and EnMDDE 622. trepreneurship course, ready for 1,000 University of Canberra and ANU students, Semester 1, February 2017 Tasks Resource Requirements 1. Funding to start and grow: An application will be made through CBRIN for start-up funding through the ACT Government. No salaries will be paid for the start-up phase with participants receiving equity in the company. 2. Qualified professionals for marketing plan: Canberra marketing students participating in Innovation ACT at CBRIN will be invited to join the project and prepare the marketing plan, in return for equity in the company.

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3. Qualified professionals to produce financial plan: The initial financial plan will be prepared by participants under advice from chartered accountants Duesbury Nexia, who provide free advice and training to CBRIN participants. 4. Qualified professionals to produce and manage the course development and delivery process: Staff from Canberra's universities will be contracted to undertake the management, production and delivery of courses. 5. Physical space to meet and work: ILU will use CBRIN rented office space. One "seat" will be sufficient for first three years of operation (provides access to meetings rooms). 6. Access to hosted LMS: LMS will be via cloud provider. Capacity will be increased as required. Planning Requirements Major issues/tasks: The major issue is to identify if there is a need for such courses and what is the likely future delivery mode for courses in Canberra and in potential markets in developing nations. A problem exists where Canberra's universities are marketing themselves as face-to-face educators but actually providing blended courses with a large, poorly designed, on-line component. There is a risk the universities will refuse outside assistance to produce quality How the perspectives of administrators, faculty, and support units impact the rate of distance education adoption on-line courses and then suffer a loss of students to those institutions elsewhere who can. It may be that the universities will not realize their vulnerability to completion until it is too late.

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Corrin, L., & Smith, M. (2007). Development of a cross-faculty model for the enhancement of academic standards in assessment of work-integrated learning programs. Retrieved from http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10081&context=infopapers Department of Education and Training. (2007). National Code of Practice for Registration Authorities and Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students: Explanatory guide for Standard 9. Retrieved from https://internationaleducation.gov.au/Regulatory-Information/Education-Services-for-Overseas-Students-ESOS-Legislative-Framework/National-Code/nationalcodepartd/Pages/ExplanatoryguideD9.aspx Dooley, K. E., & Murphrey, T. P. (2000). How the perspectives of administrators, faculty, and support units impact the rate of distance education adoption. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 3(4). Jacob, W. J., Xiong, W., & Ye, H. (2015). Professional development programmes at world-class universities. Palgrave Communications, 1. Retrieved from http://www.palgrave-journals.com/articles/palcomms20152"http://www.palgrave-journals.com/articles/palcomms20152 Johns-Boast, L. (2014). Developing Personal and Professional Skills in Software Engineering Students. Overcoming Challenges in Software Engineering Education: Delivering Non-Technical Knowledge and Skills, 198-228. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-5800-4.ch011 Murphy, G. D., Thomson, S. A., & Savage, S. M. (2014). "Back to the future"-a retrospective analysis of university business models. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/80112/1/Murphy%20%20Back%20to%20the%20future%20-%20business%20model %20perspectives%20%20ANZAM.pdfhttp://eprints.qut.edu.au/80112/1/Murphy%20%20Back%20to%20the%20future%20-%20business%20model %20perspectives%20-%20ANZAM.pdf Segal Quince & Partners (1985). The Cambridge phenomenon : the growth of high technology industry in a university town. Segal Quince & Partners, Cambridge

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Simes, R. & O'Mahony, J. (2015). Australia's Digital Pulse, Deloitte Access Economics. Retrieved from http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/Economics/deloitte-au-economicsaustralias-digital-pulse-160614.pdf Simpson, O. (2010). 22%-can we do better?. The CWP Retention Literature Review. Final Report. Retrieved from http://www.ormondsimpson.com/USERIMAGES/Retention%20literature%20review.pdf TEQSA. (2013). Application Guide: Application for Accreditation of a Higher education course of study (AQF Qualification). Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority. Retrieved from http://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/GuideCourseAccredAQF _v2.3.pdf Unis to leap on edX.(Features). (2013-03-27). In The Australian (National, Australia). 26. Retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/unis-to-leap-on-edx/story-e6frgcjx1226607065444 Universities Australia. (2015, 8 Jul). UA partners with Canada in global research internship programme. Retrieved from https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/news/media-releases/UApartners-with-Canada-in-global-research-internship-programme Vale, D., Tynan, B., & Smyth, R. (2009). GCTE: a national certificate in tertiary education. Retrieved from http://oro.open.ac.uk/37955/7/PP7-339%20UNE%20Tynan %20GCTE%20Final%20Report%202009.pdf Vyakarnam, S. To inspire, inform and help implement-The role of entrepreneurship education Second AGSE International-Entrepreneurship Teaching Exchange 14-16 February 2005, Melbourne. Retrieved from http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/research/publications/downloads/vyak arnam_inspire_2005.pdf Worthington, T. (2016, May 6). Designing an Innovation Course: Part 6: Outline [Weblog post]. Retrieved from http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2016/05/designing-innovation-course-part6.html 171

Business Plan Executive Summary ILU will design educational materials and deliver on-line courses s on innovation and entrepreneurship. Initially this will be for Canberra's universities and government. The company will minimize upfront costs by using the serviced offices of the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN), work contributed by the founders and a cloud based computing platform. The company is expected to be profitable in two years. Business Name: Innovation Learning Unit (ILU) Business Environment The ILU can fill a gap in the market, providing on-line courses in entrepreneurship and innovation, initially to Canberra university students and government employees. The ILU can make use of CBRIN to establish itself at the center of the innovation business in Canberra, with links to universities and business. Delivering courses to Canberra university students will provide the initial revenue. The product can then be offered tailored for other regions world wide. However, this business plan is based on the conservative assumption that revenue will come only from fees for delivering the standardized courses, without any revenue from customization. Business Strategic Direction Vision Foster innovation and entrepreneurial skills within Canberra and beyond. Mission Provide provide free open access course-ware, customized courseware and full service tutored courses to help university students 173

learn enterprise, innovation and creativity. Ensure the service is not dependent on grants and is therefore sustainable and can grow, with revenue from courses, using the freemium strategy: standard courseware free online, fees charged for customization and course delivery. The organization will work with Canberra's governments and leading universities to support existing entrepreneurial initiatives and thereby provide a model for similar start-up schemes around the world. Note: The vision, mission and values statements draw on that of the Cambridge University Center for Entrepreneurial Learning, as described by Vyakarnam (2005). Business Description Legal Status and Form of Business Australian limited liability (Proprietary Limited) for-profit company, registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC, 2015). Business Location/Geographical Location CBRIN, Level 5, 1 Moore St, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia Business Products and Services Products to be developed: Distance education innovation course materials provided free for use in Canberra's university degree programs and post-government employment transition. Custom versions of the course-ware will be offered to other regions around the world, for a fee. Services that will be provided to customers: Consulting service to tailor the course materials to other locations will be offered. A full turn-key service will be available as an option, where ILU tutors deliver the courses on behalf of universities, innovation centers and government agencies.

174

Governance Process Reporting Structure: Conventional company structure with a board of directors and chair for policy and a CEO reporting to the Chair for implementation. The Australian Corporations Act (2001) provides a set of default rules for the governance of companies (called "replaceable rules"). Decision Making Process: Board of directors meets for major decisions. Chair and CEO decide minor matters. The Director of Studies will oversea the day-to day design and delivery of courses. Regulations and Guidelines that impact the business: Under Australian federal legislation, the company must be registered with and report annually to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC, 2015). The company must be registered with and report annually to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Also the company must register for Goods and Services Tax (GST) with the ATO, submit a Business Activity Statement (BAS) quarterly and remit GST collected. When the company has employees it must also remit and report Pay As You Go (PAYG) Withholding Tax and Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) installments. Under Australian Capital Territory law, the company must take out Workers Compensation Insurance for all employees. Public Liability and Professional Indemnity Insurance is not required by law, but Australian universities and government agencies require Management Team Qualifications and Experience: The CEO will have qualifications in education (minimum Australian Certificate IV in Training and Assessment) and management (minimum Australian Certificate IV in Leadership and Management), plus experience heading an education business unit. The board members will have either qualifications in education or management (minimum Australian Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and/or Leadership and Management), plus experience in education or management. The Director of the Board of studies will have Australian Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.

175

Roles of the Management to Team: CEO runs the company under the direction of the Chair. The Director of Studies runs the day-to day design and delivery of courses. Organizational Structure. Board > Chair > CEO. Relationship to Other Organizations Internal Relationships: Company will be too small to need a complex structure. External Relationships: Board members will hold positions at Canberra's universities or other Canberra based companies, to provide connections to these organizations. University student interns will be integrated into the unit. Marketing and Sales Marketing Strategies/Plan. Marketing will use word of mouth within the university community, academic social media forums, emphasizing the leading universities involved. A detailed marketing strategy is appended. Detailed Sales Projection Year

Sales

2015

Zero

2016

100

2017

1,000

2018

10,000 Sales Projection for Courses Per year

176

Business Requirements. Workflow Plan List of major tasks/products and services to be created/supported. Moodle cloud based LMS, Innovation Course-ware: 1. Innovation and Entrepreneurship pilot course for 100 Innovation ACT students, July 2016. 2. Revised Innovation and Entrepreneurship course ready for 1,000 University of Canberra and ANU students, February 2017 Online support system for students: cloud based web service using free open source software. Innovation course delivery. Type of personnel needed to complete work. Initial start-up from July 2015: Two days work by one person with introductory knowledge of DE course design and DE business planning (ie Tom Worthington, a MEd student). Submission to the Innovation ACT Program by August 2015: Six days of work by ANU TechLauncher team members (one fourth year, four third year students, plus Tom Worthington as "client"). Enter Griffith Accelerator competition at CBRIN by 31 October 2015: Twelve days work by ANU TechLauncher team members (one fourth year team leader, four third year students (user interface, multimedia, database and coders), plus Tom Worthington as "client"). Obtain initial funding from universities and angels associated with CBRIN: Two days work by team leader and client. Initial Course design: four weeks work by one instructional designer. Five days work for subject matter expert and multimedia developer. 177

Human Resource Requirements/Plan Personnel requirements based on findings from workflow plan. Year 1: No staff: work will be undertaken by the company directors/founders. Year 2: One part time administrator two hours per week. First course designed by founders. First courses delivered to 100 students by tutors: 80 day work (each student requires about 0.8 of a day tuition). This would require two full time tutors, or more realistically six one quarter time tutors. Year 3: One part time administrator 20 hours per week. Second course design: 105 hours work. Courses delivered to 1000 students: 800 days tuition. This would require thirty half time tutors. Year 3: One full time administrator 5 days per week. Second course design: 105 hours work. Courses delivered to 1,000 students: 8000 days tuition. This would require three hundred half time tutors. All personnel part -time on contract. Work Processes and Procedures Standardized processes and procedures to guide work: Processes and procedures will be an amalgam of those typical for a university and software development company. List of existing guidelines/manuals: None. List of guidelines/manuals that must be created: Finance, HR manuals and forms (Performance Development Review, Statement of Expectations, Contracts and Timesheets). Course development guidelines. Course implementation guidelines (can leverage the work of the Intelledox Digital Transformation Centre at ANU). Resource Requirements Infrastructure/Office Requirements The ILU will operate for the first three years from the services offices of CBNRIN and with IT services provided "in the cloud", re178

quiring a minimum of capital costs for equipment. The major intangible asset for the organization will be the course-ware. As this is provided free open access (as the primary marketing method), the real asset will be the good will this engenders in potential customers. 1. Office Furniture & Equipment: Initially one desk and chair, provided in serviced office rental (more rented as business grows). 2. Office Computer Hardware and Software: One laptop computer (all other software and systems to be provided "in the cloud"). 3. Office Space based on personnel requirements: One "seat" in the shared co-working space at CBRIN ($396 per year). This also provides access to printers, office equipment, meeting rooms for board meetings. Information and Communications Technology Requirements Types of ICT software and tools required: Web site domain at $12 per year, plus 10 user Google Apps web site at AU$60 per user, per year. LMS/LCMS requirements: Hosted Moodle service for 100 students, AU$1700 per year, then expanding to Moodle service to 1,000 students, AU$8500 per year. This is based on eCreators Pty Ltd published rate, for a Moodle service hosted in Australia (in-country hosting makes it simpler to meet student confidentiality requirements). Social Networking tools: Google Blogger blog for external social media and Yammer for internal communications (free). Technology Support for learners and faculty LMS support will be provided by vendor.

179

Financial Plan Start-Up Projections/Budget Start-Up/Implementation Activities for Year 1

Expenditure

Legal/Incorporation Fees

$2,078.00

Insurance

$4,000.00

Co-working space for four staff

$1,584

Computer Hardware (laptop)

$500.00

Website and cloud service

$612.00

LMS/LCMS Setup

$1,700.00

Total Start-Up/Implementation Expenses

$10,474.00

Cost to set up a business is AU$78 for three years, plus a web site at $12 per year (AU$12 per year for a domain name, plus 10 user Google Apps web site at AU$60 per user, assuming 10 users). Establishment of company, accounting and legal ($2,000.). Course design: AU$3,078.00. Based on twenty days work by one instructional designer, ten days work for a subject matter expert and ten for a multimedia developer, two days work by course convener and twelve days work by tutor. An hourly rate of AU$57 is assumed, based on that for Australian National University casual lecturers (ANU, 2015a). Website costs: Hosted Moodle service for 100 students, AU$1700 per year (increasing to AU$8500 per year for 1,000 students). This is based on eCreators Pty Ltd published rate. For a Moodle service hosted in Australia (in country hosting makes it simpler to meet student confidentiality requirements). Office costs: Office space for the equivalent of one person full time in the co-working space at CBRIN: $396 per year($1,584 for four seats).

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Source of Start-Up Funds The GRIFFIN Accelerator at CBRIN provides up to $25,000 for each startup (in return for a share of equity in the company). Revenue Projections Year

Number of students Assuming fee per student $750

Revenue $

2015

0

$0

2016

100

$75,000

2017

1,000

$750,000

2018

10,000

$7,500,000

Revenue Projection per Year Cash Flow Projections/Multi-Year Budget Amounts in $1,000's

Year Year Year Year one two thre four e

Cash balance at start of year

$0

$9 $33

Total

$306

Operating revenue Cash receipts from customers

$0 $50 $500 $5,000 $5,550

Total Operating Revenue

$0 $50 $500 $5,000 $5,550

Other Sources of Cash Inflows Captial

25

50

0

0

$75

Funds borrowed

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

Tax refund/rebates

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

181

Other sources of cash inflow

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

Total other cash inflows

$25 $50

$0

$0

$75

Total Annual cash in

$25 $100 $500 $5,000 $5,625

Cash out General & Administrative Bank charges

$0

$1

$5

$10

$16

Accounting/Legal/Consultant fees

$1

$2

$3

$10

$16

Office Supplies

$0

$1

$2

$4

$7

License fees

$0

$0

$0

$0

$0

Business insurance

$2

$4

$8

$20

$34

Total General & Administrative

$3

$8 $18

$44

$73

Advertising

$0

$5 $50

$50

$106

Editorial for social media

$2 $20 $20

$40

$82

Total Marketing & Promotional

$3 $25 $70

$90

$188

Travel/Accommodation

$4

$8 $20

$30

$62

Equipment hire

$2

$2

$4

$14

$22

Total Operating Expenses

$6 $10 $24

$44

$84

$1

$1

Marketing & Promotional

Operating Expenses

Website Expenses Domain name registration

$1 182

$1

$1

Hosting expenses

$1

$2

$4

$20

$27

Total Website Expenses

$1

$2

$4

$20

$27

Salaries/Wages

$0 $20 $40

$80

$140

Workcover Insurance

$1

$4

$8

$15

Total Employment Expenses

$1 $22 $44

$88

$155

Telephones

$1

$2 $10

$77

$90

Rent

$1

$5 $50

$100

$156

Total Occupancy Costs

$2

$7 $60

$177

$246

Purchase of assets

$1

$2

$4

$8

$15

One-off bank fees

$1

$1

$3

$30

$33

Total Other Cash Outflows

$1

$2

$7

$38

$49

$16 $76 $227

$501

$820

Employment Expenses

$2

Occupancy Costs

Other Cash Outflows

Total Annual cash out Net difference ?

$9 $24 $273 $4,499

Cash balance at end of year

$9 $33 $306 $4,805

Performance Management Plan Overview of Performance Management Approach The ILU will be a small organization with a few customers (universities in Canberra) a small number of products (innovation courses). Therefore the acceptance of courses by universities, enrollments by their students and cash-flow from courses are key performance indi183

cators. Less tangibly, the maintenance of relationships with the universities (and the local government) is important, as measured by ILU staff who hold university and government positions. Complete Balanced Scorecard

Performance Indicators based on strategic goals. The ILU, while a commercial for-profit company, is also an academic institution. As a result the performance indicators are a mix of commercial and academic. Finance •

People development

Course income

Capability

•

Interns

•

Staff training

Output

•

Core staff

•

Published course materials

•

University connections

•

Social media posts

•

Equipment

•

Journal papers

•

Conference presentations

Balanced Scorecard. Adapted from figure 3, (Philbin, p.7, 2011). However, Neely (2008) carried out an empirical analysis which found no evidence that balanced scorecard improves business outcomes. Method of measurement, frequency of measure Twice Yearly •

Number of staff with government positions (voluntary committees, panels and boards) 184

•

Number of staff with university affiliations (adjunct or full time staff).

Quarterly: •

Number of courses and universities they are approved at.

•

Student enrollments in courses

Monthly •

Cash-flow from courses.

Timeline for Implementation Priorities of work. 1. Initial start-up by Tom Worthington. 2. Submission to the Innovation ACT Program by ANU TechLauncher team. 3. Obtain initial funding by ANU TechLauncher team. 4. Initial Course design by instructional designer. 5. Initial Course delivery by tutor. Major Implementation Milestones Year 1: Establish company. Year 2: First course designed by founders. First courses delivered to 100 students. Year 3: Second course design. Courses delivered to 1000 students. Year 3: Courses delivered to 10,000 students. Conclusion There the potential to create a company to provide on-line courses in entrepreneurship and innovation, initially to Canberra university students and government employees. This can make use of innovation 185

center set up by Canberra's government and universities, then being able to help government and the universities to to foster entrepreneurial spirit in students and the public sector. This will provide a firm base from which to offer courses would wide.

186

References ASIC. (2015). Starting a company,. Retrieved from http://asic.gov.au/for-business/starting-a-company/how-to-start-a-company/ ANU. (2015a). Academic casual sessional rates. Retrieved from http://hr.anu.edu.au/employment-at-anu/salaries-and-conditions/academic-casual-sessional-rates ANU. (2015b). TechLauncher: Teams. Retrieved from http://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/teamListByTitle.html Kirk, Kate & Cotton, Charles & Gates, Bill. (2012). The Cambridge Phenomenon : 50 years of innovation and enterprise. Third Millenium, London Mathews, R., & Wacker, W. (2008). What's your story?: storytelling to move markets, audiences, people, and brands. FT Press. Neely, A. (2008). Does the balance scorecard work: an empirical investigation. Retrieved from https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/bitstream/1826/3932/1/Does_the_balanced_scorecard_work-RP108.pdf Oyston, D. (2014). Big Book Of Practical Marketing Advice. Content Grasshopper. Retrieved from http://contentgrasshopper.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/BigBook-Of-Practical-Marketing-Advice.pdf Philbin, S. P. (2011). Design and implementation of the Balanced Scorecard at a university institute. Measuring Business Excellence, 15(3), 34-45.

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Marketing Plans Marketing Plan Summary The Market Target market: Universities in cities looking to foster start-up industries.Proven eleaning courses already in use at world ranking would be offered to universities in those cities. Marketing strategy: Initially ILU will sell to the Canberra universities involved in the Canberra Innovation Network Marketing will be low key, using the part time staff with links to universities and government to make the product known through academic and industry social media forums. Establishment of the company will be turned into an origin story (Mathews & Wacker, 2008), about how a small group of people started up an innovation education business. This will draw on the Silicon Fen origin story of how a few ex-academics met in the Eagle pub in Cambridge and founded a multi-billion dollar industry around Cambridge University (Kirk, Cotton & Gates, 2012, p. 45). To help strengthen this the ILU course-ware will be offered free to Cambridge University to teach their students. Products/services Product/Service

Description

Price

Innovation Course-ware

Course materials for a 12 week, Free open 10 hours per week course module. source.

Innovation Course

The course-ware delivered online, with $750 per tuition and assessment. student. 189

Market position: This are intended to be high end products for universities offering students tuition by a qualified academic in small groups. That this is not a MOOC, but a real university course, with a human tutor assessing student work, will be emphasized. will be emphasized. MOOCs are being offered for less than $100 per student, but the completion rate is low and the quality questionable. Unique selling position: Course materials already in use and proven at leading universities. Real human tutors who are experts in the field: real assessment, not just multiple choice quizzes. Anticipated demand: Elective for all students, expected to be taken by 25% of business, IT and engineering students in Canberra. Pricing strategy: Priced at around 50% ore than a contractor currently gets paid to delver a course for a university in Australia. Universities will be told they are getting a quality product, but one which will save them overheads. Value to customer: Universities like to buy courses already proven at other institutions. Offers a low risk way to quickly address the demand for more realworld student skills. Universities are under pressure to provide entrepreneurial skills to STEM students. Growth potential: Growth planned at power of ten per year for first two years. Word of mouth in academic community and by former students will drive demand.

190

Sales/marketing personnel No marketing or sales personnel. Initial advice to be provided free as part of the CBRIN program. The CEO will be expected to do the marketing and sales. The Market Unique selling position Serious course content already used in accredited degrees by leading Australian universities, free for reuse and available with optional tutoring available for a fee worldwide. Your customers/clients Initial: ANU, University of Canberra.

Customer demographics Universities lacking in-house e-learning capability located in second tier cities.

Key customers 1. Australian National University. 2. University of Canberra 3. Canberra Innovation Network 4. Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at University of Cambridge

Customer management University staff will be contracted to produce and teach ILU courses. Courses will be designed to meet the university and national quality standards for education. Staff will be part of internal university quality control processes, as well as being qualified in e-learning and their subject area. 191

Your competitors The major competition of a DE innovation course comes not from courses offered at Canberra's universities but from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS). University staff, and the students, will ask why they should purchase a DE course, when they can get a MOOC for free. As detailed below, these MOOCS do not offer accredited, recognized qualification and are mostly not "free" and so are not real competition for IUL. However, this perception of "free" courses will be difficult to combat and it is therefore necessary to look at what MOOCS offer and how to compete with them. Here are some innovation related MOOCS: 1. Innovation and Enterprise, from Loughborough University through FutureLearn: "Managing the innovation process is neither a scientific process nor a black art. We will explore a model for innovation." 2. 3.086x: Innovation and Commercialization, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, through edX: "Covers from human process of innovating to innovation ecosystems." 3. Entrepreneurship: Launching an Innovative Business, from University of Maryland through Coursera: "How to develop the business model with attention to value propositions, customer segments, channels, customer relationships, revenue models, partners, and resources, activities, and costs." Products and services: The edX consortium (set up by MIT) offers "Verified Certificate of Achievement" for individual courses and "XSeries Certificates" for specific sequences of courses. The Verified Certificate of Achievement typically cost US$25 to US$100. There is no Innovation related XSeries Certificate currently offered by edX, but that for "Educational Technology", costs US$275 (four courses at US$50 each plus US$75 program fee). The FutureLearn consortium (set up by Open University UK) will be offering a "Statement of Attainment" by examination, through an agreement with Pearson for £119 (approximately US$189) for some courses (Parr, 2015). However, it is still not clear if this statement will be accepted by accredited unviersities.

192

Coursera, unlike edX or FutureLearn, has a "Specialization" in innovation. This consists of three courses and a "capstone" (in place of an examination). The capstone has assignments very mistrial to that of a conventional course on the topics: business model, Customer analysis, Marketing and sales strategy, Business plan and pitch. The specialization costs US$204 and takes a minimum of 60 hours study (3 courses x 4 weeks x 3 hours a week + 1 capstone x 6 weeks x 4 hours per week). Market research The ANU and University of Canberra between them have approximately 34,000 students. Two main fields of study which an innovation course is likely to appeal to are "management and commerce" and "information technology", which made up 24% and 3.3% of Australia's post-school enrollments in 2014 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014), giving a potential market of more than 9,000 students in Canberra. The ANU's TechLauncher program, which commenced in 2015 has 118 participants in 24 teams, undertaking projects in conjunction with CBRIN and so provide a useful group to pilot the course with (no equivalent statistics were available for University of Canberra). Market targets Year

Number of Students

2015

Zero

2016

100

2017

1,000

2018

10,000 Target number of students per year

Environmental/industry analysis The ANU's TechLauncher program, which commenced in 2015 has 118 participants in 24 teams, undertaking projects in conjunction 193

with CBRIN and so provide a useful group to pilot the course with (no equivalent statistics were available for University of Canberra). Three of the TechLauncher projects being undertaken by the students are to build on-line tools to support the program itself: "Online Platform for InnovationACT", "TechLauncher Management System" and "Better Webinar Tool For Teaching" (ANU, 2015b). The third of these is planned to be a student startup company, indicating the willingness of the ANU staff to foster and work with the private sector. For ANU in 2013 (the latest year statics are available for), 74% of the students are domestic and 26% International (ANU, 2014). The high proportion of international students may provide an opportunity for DE courses. There are sightly more female (52%) than male students (ANU, 2014). The students are predominately full time (68%) also providing scope for more part time DE students. Marketing strategy The "Marketing through teaching" approach will be used (Oyston, 2014). The ILU will give away content on-line. Part time staff will be employed in universities, so that the company and the universities will work together. Marketing activity/milestone

Person Date of Cos Success indicarespon- expected t ($) tor sible completion

Academic social media, CEO such as specific Twitter hash tags (such as #highered), LinkedIn and Google lists.

Ongoing

Launch of company in CEO CBRIN's events space, with ACT Chief Minister \to be the guest of honor..

Mid year $1,0 Coverage in 1 00 Canberra Times (the local newspaper), local TV.

194

Nil Number of reposts.

Educational Technology Applications 1. 2. 3. 4.

Course Definition Innovation Course Description SECTIONS Analysis Learn Something from CAI

5. Mobile-Ready Blended Innovation Course, Incorporating ePortfolios

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Course Definition This is a description of the new course "Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship in Technology" (Innovation Tech). This is proposed for students undertaking STEM degree programs at Canberra's universities. The design was developed as outlined previously. It is in response to the need to formalize and recognize the learning of students through entrepreneur programs run as extracurricular activities for Canberra's university students. Current Status of the Course Innovation Tech is a proposed design for a course to introduce students to entrepreneurship. A brief description is appended. The course has two parts: Innovation and Business Analysis, each sub-divided into three equal length segments. The instruction was assumed to be by asynchronous on-line distance education, providing students with an e-book of course notes, electronic readings, and videos. Students would work through the weekly topics, reading the supplied readings and addressing set questions as a cohort with the help of a Learning Management System (LMS). The assessment was assumed to be in part based on forum contributions (peer assessed), but the majority of written assignments (instructor determined). The course design assumed no face-to-face component. If required, classroom instruction could be added. As an example, students studying in Australia on international visas are required by law to undertake a set amount of campus-based tuition (Department of Education and Training, 2000). However, an alternative form of face-toface engagement for students was envisaged, where students take part in an extra-curricular start-up competition, such as Innovation ACT (2016). This is intended to address demands from employers for work-relevant skills and the Australian government's innovation agenda (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015). Innovation ACT Innovation ACT is a ten-week program where students at Canberra universities work in teams to develop a business idea and compete for start-up funding (Innovation ACT, 2016). The program is spon197

sored by local government, businesses, and the city's universities. Students attend workshops and seminars at an innovation hub located in the city center, where they learn the language and techniques of "lean" development and "sprints" (Knapp, Zeratsky & Kowitz, 2016, p. 17). Students then prepare a document describing their business idea (the business model) and make a presentation (the pitch), which are judged by a panel of industry experts. Innovation ACT uses face-to-face workshops and live pitch competitions. The program is run with the help of bespoke web based software, which has similar functions to an LMS. Similar events are sponsored by universities, government, and industry worldwide. Vanevenhoven and Drago (2015, 126) report that 47% of 300 university entrepreneurship programs surveyed had incorporated a business plan competition. Institutions to Offering the Innovation ACT Program Innovation ACT was set up by the Australian National University (ANU), and the primary partners are University of Canberra (the city's other major university), the ACT Government (the Canberra city and provincial government) and IP Australia (the national government's Intellectual Property Agency). Both universities offer courses and full degree programs in innovation and entrepreneurship. There are some attempts to use Innovation ACT to complement learning in the formal programs, but these are hampered by the difficulties of aligning a competition with the requirements of academic programs. The proposed Innovation Tech course was designed to bridge the gap between a competition and a formal program, by providing an educational framework around the competition. ANU TechLauncher Program One example of a program which has attempted to incorporate the Innovation ACT competition is TechLauncher at ANU (Flint, 2015, p. 19). Starting in 20015, software engineering students undertaking their group software project had the option of entering their project in the Innovation ACT competition. The participation in the competition workshops and artifacts, then formed part of program assessment: 198

"During the InnovationACT competition, your TechLauncher examiners and tutor will have access to your InnovationACT work products (mainly documents). This work and your progress through the InnovationACT competition should be presented during your Project Review and will be assessed as part of your Project Work (Section 5.2)." (Flint, 2015, p. 19) This tight coupling to Innovation ACT caused difficulties, with the conflicting requirements and was dropped when the TechLauncher program was revised for the next year (ANU, 2016). Students could still use an Innovation ACT project for TechLauncher, but participation in the competition workshops and competition artifacts did not form part of the program assessment: "TechLauncher students can form teams to work on student or externally generated ideas for software-based start-up enterprises. These projects will normally run over a two year period. In the first year, students will develop their idea and an initial product. In the second year, students will work towards entering external development programs such asThe Griffin Accelerator." (ANU, 2016) Techlauncher uses face-to-face lectures, workshops, presentations, and tutorials. This is supported with a Wiki based manual, an LMS (Moodle: used primarily for providing video recordings of the live events and submission of assignments), an e-portfolio system (Mahara: used for e-portfolios), and a social media site. Students also use project management and software management tools. Techlauncher has a complex mix of technologies. If the proposed Innovation Tech course adds further technology, this may be too high a burden. Rationalizing the current technology mix, or at least not increasing it, needs to be considered. SECTIONS model Bates "SECTIONS model" (2015), is intended to assist decisions about the media to be used for learning: 199

• • • • • • • •

Students Ease of use Costs Teaching functions Interaction Organisational issues Networking Security and privacy

It should be noted that Bates refers to "media," which might suggest, for example, that the model might be used to compare the relative advantages of still images with text (paper or e-book) and moving images with sound (a live lecture, analog movie or digital video). From an educational point of view, an e-book is the same technology as a book and an old fashioned live lecture is the same technology as a digital video recording. However, Bates then discusses examples such as smartphones and MOOCS, so the term "technology" appears more appropriate than "media" and will be used here. Bates (2015) claims "There is currently no adequate theory or process for media selection.". However, the technology could be matched to the educational approach being used. As an example, Dougiamas claimed to have developed Moodle to support a constructionist approach (Dougiamas & Taylor, 2003), so Moodle and similar LMS presumably are suited to a constructionist approach. There a large body of literature in the software engineering discipline, on the evaluation of software, including the use of formal international standards, such as the Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) Standard (ISO/IEC JTC 1, 2011). Franch and Carvallo (2003) propose a methodology based on such standards and in one example they use evaluation of e-learning software: "The e-learning domain provides more than one example. Consider the term virtual classroom. Some packages use this term and course as synonymous, referring to the contents of particular subjects. Other packages use different semantics for virtual classroommeaning, for instance, the interface (such as the base URL where the contents of a course are to be placed) or the list of tasks to be performed during the course." 200

Franch and Carvallo (2003) Applying SECTIONS Model Addressing each of Bates "SECTIONS model" (2015) items for the proposed Innovation Tech course: Students Students of the Innovation Tech course would be final year undergraduates or coursework masters in a Science, Technology Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. As an example, the ANU Techlauncher students are typically enrolled in a Bachelor of Software Engineering or Masters of Computing (ANU, 2016). As a result, the students have advanced computer skills and access. ANU has a significant enrollment of international students, with more than 60% from China (Joske, 2016). The University intends to target students from other Asian countries, particularly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore, including arrangements for in-country teaching (Joske, 2016). This could change the mix of students and their broadband access, if distance education or satellite campuses are used to reach these students. While students on campus in Canberra have high-speed broadband, those in the Indo-Pacific region may not. 1. Do students have easy access to the technology necessary for this technology? Yes. Students at Canberra's universities have access to desktop computers on campus with broadband access. They typically also have a high capability mobile device. 2. Do students have access to broadband Internet? Yes, students have WiFi broadband on campus, wired broadband to campus desktop computers and broadband in on-campus accommodation. Much of Canberra is serviced by Fibre-to-theHome (FTH) and Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) high speed broadband access, providing students with high speed, reliable access at home.

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3. Do students have access to power to run/charge their devices? Yes, student learning centers (libraries) provide mains and USB charging. 4. Are transferable skills being developed? Yes, the objective of the innovation tech course is, in part, to provide technology students with the ability to communicate with non-technical people. 5. Does the technology allow for an appropriate degree of openness to the community beyond registered course participants? Yes, the innovation tech course materials are designed to be open access, and the ANU TechLauncher project has a public community interface. However, some student projects are for companies and government agencies, so cannot be open to the community. Also, Canberra's universities are subject to national privacy legislation and are required to protect the students. There must, therefore, be the option for students not to make their details, or work, public. 6. Can students show their work via web link (URL)? Yes, students need the option of providing some details of their project public, but also have the choice not to. Ease of use The students can be assumed to be very advanced computer users, having already completed two years of computing courses. Students should be familiar with the technology routinely used for university courses: e-mail, lecture video recordings and a Learning Management System, but not have encountered other technology. In particular, IT students are not trained to write e-portfolios or discuss projects via social media. Costs Canberra's universities receive government funding to support teaching and charge full fees for international students. There is, therefore, funding available to cover the cost of technology. In any case, the technology is a relatively low cost compared to teaching staff

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salaries. However, if the universities offer courses more widely in the region, then cost may be a factor in poorer countries. Teaching functions Innovation Tech assumes a blended mode of instruction. The student self-studies the theory using an on-line system and the practice in groups in face-to-face workshops as part of Innovation ACT. One issue is the high staff cost of the face-to-face teaching and assessment. ANU Techlauncher has students working in groups as small as three, each with a mentor, "client" and a tutor. Student's project work, including presentations, also requires assessment by paid instructors who have both teaching and IT skills. Some peer assessment is used, but this also requires coordination of the large numbers of groups. Assessment of individual learning portfolios also currently is by instructors. However, this may be changed to use peer assessment after on-line training, which has been found useful in another Canberra course (Caldwell &Gedeon, 2015). Projects are real-world and so all different, with results which cannot be easily anticipated. An example of a project is Australia's first indigenous-language video game (Travers, 2016). The game is being developed in conjunction with a remote indigenous community, raising issues which are a useful learning experience for the students, but require careful oversight by instructors. Interaction Innovation Tech assumes multiple levels of interaction. Students need to be able to communicate with the instructors, with stakeholders outside the university environment (mentors and clients). Also, students need to be able to conduct intense interaction with small teams. In addition to the conventional learning technology (LMS and ePortfolio), the students require specialist software development and project management tools. Ideally, students should use real-world tools. However, this can make the assessment of the work developed with these tools harder, as they may not have built-in assessment. An example of the software typically used is a project management tool. 203

The products Gitlab, Trello, and Slack, have been used for Techlauncher (Flint, 2015). Zamyatina and Mozgaleva (2013) provide a brief assessment of the suitability of such products and more general purpose tools (such as Google Docs) for developing project management competencies. Organizational Issues Canberra's universities provide LMS and e-Portfolio tools for all students. Moodle and Mahara are used at the ANU and the University of Canberra, with specialist in-house support staff, backed up by commercial contractors. There is good support for the software in Canberra, with some of the developers of Moodle and Mahara in the city. The universities provide in-house face-to-face training for instructors and the companies train-the-trainer. The universities have IT support staff during office hours and a help desk. Moodle and Mahara have import and export functions, allowing instructors to move content quickly (University policies allow staff to change the course content without approval from a third party). Students can import and export their work. Moodle and Mahara systems are under unified access control systems, linked to the student management system, so instructors do not have to manually add students and students do not have to log into each package separately. The packages are in widespread use, but a significant proportion of instructors are not happy with the software, and a few are not satisfied with the utilization of any software for teaching. Networking Many of the projects worked on by students have a social media component. That is the students are building new social media software, are interfacing to existing systems or are using social media as a marketing tool for their product. Some access to social media would, therefore, be useful. However, this represents several challenges, discussed below under "security and privacy." An alternative is the use of an internal social media tool, only accessible to the university community, the course, or student cohort. TechLauncher makes use of the Piazza forum tool, although an issue to be consid-

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ered is if this is sufficiently superior to Moodle's forums, to be worth the inclusion of an additional software package. Security and privacy Use of on-line systems, particularly social media, exposes the students to risks to their privacy, safety and liberty. Students risk releasing sensitive details of themselves and their projects. In the extreme case, international students who express views critical of their government online could face imprisonment, or execution, when they return home. As Australia's seat of government, Canberra organizations are a prime target for cyber-attack, by hackers collecting sensitive information. Canberra's universities educate government personnel, military officers, and the children of members of parliament, making them a target for hacking. Cloud-based and social media systems, therefore, are something to be considered cautiously. Advantages of Aligning Academic Requirements with Innovation Competition Combining a course with an innovation competition provides several benefits. Industry experts can bring their expertise and enthusiasm to the education of students. The competition offers excitement and a realistic challenge for the students, beyond the usual rigidity of academia. As innovation competitions are run worldwide, the student can take part in a face-to-face group learning activity, as a complement to their on-line course. Advantages for the course organizer is that they do not have to resource or schedule the innovation competition or face-to-face activities. Problems with Aligning Academic Requirements with Innovation Competition As an entrepreneurial competition (such as Innovation ACT), is independent of a program (such as TechLauncher), they may not be aligned regarding content or timing. Innovation programs use the same general approach. However, the terminology may differ, requiring the student (and instructor) to be able to translate. The timing of competition is unlikely to coincide with that of a fixed schedule 205

university course. In particular, extra-curricular activities tend to be scheduled during teaching breaks. Extra Educational Technology Which May Help Examples of technology which may help integrate an entrepreneurial competition with an educational program are an e-portfolio and Learning Management System (LMS), both of which could support assessment using a competency framework. Examples which are under consideration for use in Canberra's universities are Mahara SmartEvidence (an e-Portfolio) and Moodle Competencies (an LMS). The Problem of Accrediting Degree Programs Vocationally orientated university programs, which Canberra's universities incorporate entrepreneurial skills into, need to ensure that every student has met every requirement. Beyond just entrepreneurial skills, the availability of educational technology to support tracking competencies could provide a more flexible way to meet national and international accreditation requirements. Meeting all competency requirements is of particular importance where a degree is accredited by a professional body or licensing board. As an example, the Australian Computer Society (ACS) accredits computing degrees in Australia, and the CIPS does this in Canada. A complex process is required to ensure that every graduate of every accredited program has the required Body of Knowledge. The Innovation Tech module is designed around two skills definitions from the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). SFIA is used by the ACS for course accreditation (Holt et al., 2016, p. 3). Scope for changing what a national IT professional body requires is limited, as there is an international agreement as to what a computing professional should be able to do (the "Seoul Accord"), to which ACS and CIPS are signatories. Accreditation is not just a matter of a university getting a badge so students will enroll. ACS Certified Computer Professionals have their liability limited by Australian

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law, and CIPS members have their status legally recognized in some Canadian provinces. The usual way a university constructs a university degree program is from a set of courses. The institution must ensure that all skills are covered somewhere in the courses offered. This results in complicated rules about which courses the student has to take, with less flexibility and less scope for broad and deep learning. Fitting project based "entrepreneurship" into a course in a program is a difficult task. An alternative approach is to define the required competencies and allow the student to demonstrate these in activities of some courses and extra-curricular activities, such as a competition. The problem then is to do this in a way which does not require excessive administration, instructor or student time. Thus the need for supporting educational technology. The Mahara e-portfolio, as used for the MEd Capstone demonstrates the limitations of the technology. The e-portfolio can be used to provide copies of artifacts as evidence of competencies and a place for the student to reflect and integrate their learning. However, the current version of Mahara requires the student and instructor to identify and check off progress with the acquisition of competencies manually. This process will be much more complex where there are multiple sets of competencies to acquire, to meet university, industry and government requirements. Shankararaman and Gottipati (2016) propose automated mapping of skills to the SFIA framework. However, while that would be desirable for the envisaged application of suggesting which jobs graduates may be qualified to apply for, it is unlikely to meet accreditation requirements for university programs. A less ambitious approach is to have the skills required listed in a framework in the LMS or ePortfolio and have the instructor and student jointly check off which have been met, with the technology acting as an automated bookkeeper and check. Conclusion The Innovation Tech module could use a range of technology to formalize and recognize the learning of students in extracurricular activities. The use of e-learning for start-up education could be use207

fully applied beyond STEM programs. Tools for competency based assessment could be implemented more widely to university programs. Postscript Iriti, Bickel, Schunn, and Stein (2016) note that the US and the European Union government, as well as the private sector, had invested in EdTech ventures. Perhaps innovation is an area Athabasca University could usefully explore with students of the MEd?

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References ANU. (2016). TechLauncher Projects, Australian National University. Retrieved from https://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/projects.html Bates, Tony (2015). Teaching in a digital age. Vancouver Victoria BCcampus Open Textbooks. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/ Bates, T. (2016). Teaching in a digital age (Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2429/56935 Caldwell, S., and Gedeon, T.D., (2015). Optimising Peer Marking with Explicit Training: from Superficial to Deep Learning, 1st International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Valencia, Spain, paper DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/HEAd15.2015.441. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300487262_Optimising_Pe er_Marking_with_Explicit_Training_from_Superficial_to_Deep_Le arning Department of Education and Training. (2000). Online and distance: National Code: Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000. (Part D, Standard 9). Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved from https://internationaleducation.gov.au/Regulatory-Information/Education-Services-for-Overseas-Students-ESOS-LegislativeFramework/National-Code/nationalcodepartd/Pages/ExplanatoryguideD9.aspx#onlineanddistance Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. (2015)., National Innovation and Science Agenda, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved from http://www.innovation.gov.au/system/files/casestudy/National%20Innovation%20and%20Science%20Agenda%20%20Report.pdf Dougiamas, M., & Taylor, P. (2003). Moodle: Using learning communities to create an open source course management system. Retrieved from http://research.moodle.net/33/1/Moodle%20Using %20Learning%20Communities%20to%20Create.pdf 209

Flint, Shayne. (2015). TechLauncher 2015: Semester 2 Course Guide, COMP3100/3500/3550/4500/8715. Australian National University. Retrieved from https://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/courseGuide.pdf Franch, X., & Carvallo, J. P. (2003). Using quality models in software package selection. IEEE software, 20(1), 34-41. DOI: 10.1109/MS.2003.1159027 Holt, D., McGuigan, N., Kavanagh, M., Leitch, S., Ngo, L., Salzman, S., ... & McKay, J. (2016). Academic leaders' perspectives on adopting ePortfolios for developing and assessing professional capabilities in Australian business education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 32(5). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicholas_Mcguigan/publication/305210524_Academic_leaders'_perspectives_on_adopting_ePortfolios_for_developing_and_assessing_professional_capabilities_in_Australian_business_education/links/5784e3da08aeca7daac57d21.pdf Innovation ACT. (2016). Innovation ACT Program. Retrieved from http://www.innovationact.org/about/program/ International Organization for Standardization & Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 (2011). Systems and software engineering : systems and software Quality Requirements and evaluation (SQuaRE) : system and software quality models (1st ed., 2011-0301). ISO/IEC, Geneva, Switzerland Iriti, J., Bickel, W., Schunn, C., & Stein, M. K. (2016). Maximizing research and development resources: identifying and testing "loadbearing conditions" for educational technology innovations. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(2), 245-262. Joske, Alexander. (2016, October 4). ANU Moves to Decrease Dependence on Enrolments from China. Woroni. Retrieved from http://www.woroni.com.au/news/anu-moves-to-decrease-dependence-on-enrolments-from-china/ Knapp, J., Zeratsky, J., & Kowitz, B. (2016). Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. Simon and Schuster.

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Shankararaman, V., & Gottipati, S. (2016, April). Mapping information systems student skills to industry skills framework. In 2016 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) (pp. 248-253). IEEE. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2016.7474561 Travers, Penny. (2016, 6 October). First Australian Indigenous-language video game offers new platform for ancient culture, 666 ABC Canberra. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-1006/first-australian-indigenous-language-video-game-in-development/7907414?section=technology Underhill, C. (2010). Assessing technology. Using the SECTIONS model. Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at The University of British Columbia. Retrieved from https://wiki.ubc.ca/images/1/19/SECTIONS_Framework.pdf Vanevenhoven, J., & Drago, W. A. (2015). 6 The structure and scope of entrepreneurship programs in higher education around the world. Entrepreneurial Learning: New Perspectives in Research, Education and Practice, 117.

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Innovation Course Description The design of this course was developed in assignments for "Instructional Design in Distance Education" (MDDE 604) and "Introduction to Mobile Learning" (MDDE 623), but has not yet been implemented: Title: Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship in Technology Short Title: Innovation Tech Level: 3rd-year undergraduate and postgraduate versions Course Description: Innovation requires the ability to recognize the opportunities provided by technology and know how to exploit them in business. The aim is more efficient and effective organizations, be they for-profit or not, existing or new start-ups. This requires documented investigation, analysis, and review. A methodical investigation of functions and processes, requirements, costs, sustainability and business benefits is needed, with specifications and acceptance criteria. Twelve weekly topics introduce the materials to students with interactive quizzes and forums to help build the skills needed for assignments. The student can undertake this course in parallel with Innovation ACT, or another entrepreneur program, and submit artifacts from that program for assessment. Rationale: Course to provide recognition of the work of students undertaking entrepreneur programs such as Innovation ACT. Structure and Content: The course consists of two parts, corresponding to the skills: A. Innovation 1. An Introduction to Innovation 2. Business Model Thinking 3. Stakeholder Engagement B. Business analysis 4. Concept Generation 213

5. Value Capture 6. Documenting Learning Outcomes: After completing this course, student will be able to: 1. Innovate: Prepare a plan to exploit business opportunities provided by technology, for more efficient and effective performance of an existing or new businesses, 2. Analyze: Document an analysis of business regarding functions and processes, by identifying and quantifying improvements to reduce costs and enhance sustainability. The learning objectives are based on the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) skills definitions: "Innovation" and "Business analysis." Workload: To complete the subject you will need to spend 8-10 hours each week reading, communicating with colleagues and tutors, and preparing assignments. Assumed Knowledge: It is assumed the student is familiar with basic computing concepts, from an introductory university course. The student will need to be able to use a computer and the Internet to complete this on-line course and be familiar with academic writing and referencing to undertake assignments. Assessment: There are two areas of assessment in the course: 1. Weekly Assessment (20%): Contributions to weekly discussion forums (10%) and completion of a weekly quiz (10%), 2. Assignments (80%): midcourse (40%) and at the end (40%). To pass the course at least 10/20 for Weekly Assessment and 40/80 for Assignments is required. Grades of 70% and higher (Distinction and High Distinction) are based only on Assignments. Assessment Rationale: The questions each week are on topics to be covered in the assignments, allowing students to build their skills. Each major assignment corresponds to a learning objective for the course: 1. Innovate: Prepare a plan to exploit business opportunities 214

provided by technology, for more efficient and effective performance of an existing or new businesses, and, 2. Analyze: Document an analysis of business regarding functions and processes, by identifying and quantifying improvements to reduce costs and enhance sustainability.

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SECTIONS Analysis Some of the technologies which might be used in the course "Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship in Technology" (Innovation Tech) are examined here. The approach used is Bates' SECTIONS model (Bates, 2015) as applied by Underhill (2010). In particular, e-mail, list servers, electronic portfolios, Learning Management Systems (LMS), videoconferencing, computer-based education, Social software (Elgg/Landing), Web 2 (RSS, Blogs, and Wikis), Podcast and Cloud Computing are examined. "Innovation Tech" is a new course proposed for students undertaking STEM degree programs at Canberra's universities. SECTIONS model The features and limitations of the Bates "SECTIONS model" (2015), was discussed earlier. Here the eight items are applied: • • • • • • • •

Students Ease of use Costs Teaching functions Interaction Organisational issues Networking Security and privacy

The approach of Underhill (2010), with the supplied spreadsheet template, has been used to: 1. Define 2. Assess 3. Implement 4. Refine However, the emphasis is on the first two steps (Define and Assess).

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These steps are carried out in the accompanying spreadsheet. The process of defining requirements was reasonably straightforward, using the description of the course from previous work. Assessing individual technologies was made difficult due to the author's familiarity with LMS. Having used a purpose designed LMS (Moodle) daily for several years, as a student and teacher, makes it difficult to conceive using other technologies. The problem is to break out of a habit of thinking just regarding the features the LMS offers and think of other ways to teach which could be supported by other technologies. It is also difficult to assess technologies in isolation. As an example, an e-portfolio would not normally be used on its own, but alongside an LMS. E-mail might be used to supplement other technologies, but using it on its own would be, in many ways, as a step backward, to something not more advanced than DE using paper, delivered by the postal service. E-mail can cause considerable problems, both for students and teachers, with important course-related messages being lost in a flood of other e-mail. E-mails from students can be easily overlooked, and it is a time-consuming task to manually archive all these messages (as required by Australian law). A list server could be used for education, as a way to provide some automation of the e-mail (and archiving). However, one-to-one and one-to-many communication options were built into LMS (such as the Dialogue and Form tools in Moodle) specifically to support education and so are better suited to this task. The issue which Bates "SECTIONS model" (2015), does not help with is how to use combinations of technologies. An educator would not normally be faced with the task of choosing one technology over another, but choosing what features to use in overlapping bundles of technologies. An e-portfolio and an LMS are not each one technology, but bundles of features. As an example, the e-portfolio and LMS both provide a way to communicate with one person (as with email) or a group (as with a list server). Given that the Educator will be provided with e-mail, a list server, e-portfolio, and LMS, which should be used for one-to-one and one-to-many communication? In the case of the Innovation Tech course, the assumption is that an LMS will be used as the primary tool, supplemented by an e-portfolio. However, when this is incorporated into the TechLauncher pro218

gram at ANU (Flint, 2015), the problem is compounded by the use of additional tools, each of which has provision for communication with students. The use of multiple tools can be very confusing for instructors and students. Better Taxonomy of Learning Technology Required The division of learning technologies into the nine categories, used in the analysis did not prove to be particularly useful. It is suggested that a multidimensional taxonomy of the affordances of the technologies is required. That is, what does the technology allow the student and the teacher to do? Different "technologies" would offer different, most likely overlapping bundles of actions which those involved in learning can carry out. Ideally, the learning designer and the student could mix and match what they needed. Anderson and Dron (2010) suggest matching the distance education pedagogy being used to the educational technology. They suggest Cognitive-behaviourist models were pre-Web and social-constructivism "flourished in a Web 1.0". There claim that "connectivism is at least partially a product of a networked, Web 2.0 world" is perhaps overemphasizing the role of the web, but does acknowledge the interrelationship of education and technology. Anderson and Dron (2010) go on to speculate about how the semantic web or "Web 3.0" could be used for education. However, there other digital technologies which could be adapted for education. Software Engineering Tools for Education Software engineers have developed tools for managing large computer programming tasks and adapted tools from hardware manufacturing. Two examples which could be used for education are version control systems and project management. Version control systems allow large teams of programmers (in some cases tens of thousands of people), to contribute to one software development project simultaneously. The GitHub version control software is used for teaching software engineering and has been proposed as a more general application for education (Zagalsky, Feliciano, Storey, Zhao & Wang, 2015).

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Project management software, specifically that implementing the Kanban system is used for teaching rapid software development techniques. Web based Kanban products, such as Trello allow a team of students to coordinate their work on a project (Seppälä, Auvinen, Karavirta, Vihavainen & Ihantola, 2016). What communication tools students use in software projects and how do different tools suit different parts of project work?. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (ACM, pp. 432-435). These tools could be used for small scale e-learning, with individual students, small teams or massive open on-line courses with thousands, where the students coordinate their work together. In the case of design thinking, they might be used to have students organize their ideas, as well as implement their work. Conclusion The results of this analysis are inclusive. An e-portfolio tool is, not surprisingly, suitable for the students to prepare an e-portfolio. Email and list servers are of little use, unless more specialized tools designed for education, are not available. Videoconferencing, computer-based education, Social software (Elgg/Landing), Web 2 (RSS, Blogs, and Wikis), Podcast and Cloud Computing are useful as components of an overall learning environment. However, using standalone implementations of all those technologies would be complex for the instructor, the student and to support. An LMS provides a useful way to have these technologies bundled up and supported together. The LMS does have the limitation of being designed for conventional coursework, however, when supplemented with the e-portfolio for project work, it provides a balanced set of tools. The LMS might be supplemented by tools from software engineering, for version control and project management.

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References Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2010). Three generations of distance education pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12(3), 80-97. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/890/1663/ Bates, Tony (2015). Teaching in a digital age. Vancouver Victoria BCcampus Open Textbooks. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/ Flint, Shayne. (2015). TechLauncher 2015: Semester 2 Course Guide, COMP3100/3500/3550/4500/8715. Australian National University. Retrieved from https://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/courseGuide.pdf Seppälä, O., Auvinen, T., Karavirta, V., Vihavainen, A., & Ihantola, P. (2016, May). What communication tools students use in software projects and how do different tools suit different parts of project work?. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (pp. 432-435). ACM. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1145/2889160.2889196 Underhill, C. (2010). Assessing technology. Using the SECTIONS model. Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at The University of British Columbia. Retrieved from https://wiki.ubc.ca/images/1/19/SECTIONS_Framework.pdf Zagalsky, A., Feliciano, J., Storey, M. A., Zhao, Y., & Wang, W. (2015, February). The emergence of github as a collaborative platform for education. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 1906-1917). ACM. Retrieved from http://alexeyza.com/pdf/cscw15.pdf

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Learn Something from CAI Here is how I learned "something" using Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI). This content is extracted from a page of my electronic portfolio (e-portfolio), and was an exercise to see how readily available e-learning materials is in practice. Why I Chose This Subject As I wrote in my portfolio, CAI, also known as Computer-managed instruction (CMI) and Computer-based testing (CBT), is a field I had little experience of and none of it good: "... I have had to undertake compulsory CAI training units on work-place safety and similar topics. These usually are Flash-based, with Powerpoint-type slides, simple animation, a voice-over and multiple choice questions. Usually, I skip the animation, read the summary page and do the quiz. Some of these courses were about what attitude I should have in the workplace and what I should believe, rather than skills or knowledge and were more brainwashing than teaching. I tried to get them over with as quickly as possible, by attempting to mimic the behavior expected, feeling like a lab rat in a Skinner Box undergoing operant conditioning." From e-portfolio, 2016 The first problem was that I was not clear as to what a CAI was. The example provided was Lynda.com, so I started there. The next problem was what to learn. I did not want to produce a demonstration website (I have produced many of those) or use Flash (I never want to have to use flash, ever, again). Retouching photos in Photoshop does not appeal (and I don't have Photoshop), I don't play the guitar and failed high-school French. But perhaps I could learn to be entrepreneurial (there were93 entries for this in Lynda.com).

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What I hoped to learn A recent interest of mine is teaching "Design Thinking," so I looked for CAI on this. A web search for "free online course in 'design thinking' self-paced," turned up Class-central.com as the first hit, with approximately 100 courses. Of these courses, fifteen wereselfpaced. The top three rated courses were: 1. Model Thinking, the University of Michigan via Coursera 2. Designing A New Learning Environment, Stanford University via NovoEd 3. Responsive Web Design Fundamentals, Google via Udacity However, while I searched for self-paced courses, the first is on a scheduled date. The second requires 4 hours a week for nine weeks, which is more time than I can afford to "learn something." The third course is six hours a week for two weeks, which is feasible, but it is about Responsive Web Design, not design thinking. This illustrates a problem with "free" on-line courses: there is considerable effort required just to find a suitable course. I am a member of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), a professional body equivalent to CIPS in Canada. The ACS provides a library of educational material for members, boasting "Over 28,000 digital learning assets, made available exclusively to ACS members.". However, a search for "design thinking," produced no courses. A search of categories indicated there were several dozen videos on "Agile Project Management" which is a more technical topic than I was looking for. In any case, these appear to be just videos, not courses. Next, I tried the IEEE Course Library, which offers self-packed courses for engineers and computer professionals. As search for "Design Thinking" produced more than six thousand results, but only five of these were courses (the rest are publications): •

Thinking like a Leader: the TILL System, Kim SydowCampbell, 2010

•

Software Configuration Management and IEEE Standards Bundle, Rob Oshana, 2013 224

•

Software Configuration Management, Massood Towhidnejad, 2012

•

Software Configuration Management, Rob Oshana, 2011

•

A Primer on Clustering: II. Tendency Assessment and Cluster Validity, James Bezdek, 2008

Only the first of these is on-topic, and that costs US$70. Clearly, I needed to look elsewhere to find something to learn. After some thought, I recalled I had come across a course in "Invention and innovation," when working on a project for MDDE 604 (Instructional Design in Distance Education). A web search found this was an Open University UK (OUUK) free on-line course, but at 55 hours this was more than needed for the current exercise. However, in the same category "Design and Innovation," under "Engineering and Technology", were twenty-nine courses from the pen Learn consortium (establish by OUUK). Of these nine were free courses. Of the nine, the shortest and most relevant were: "Design Thinking: Introductory level," Duration 10 hours, Updated 29 Mar 2016 and "People-centred designing: Introductory level," Duration 12 hours, Updated 17 Mar 2016. So I signed in to try the first of these. Design Thinking from OUUK Design Thinking is an extract from the OUUK for-fee distance education course:"Design thinking: creativity for the 21st century" (U101 ). As such, it looks very much like Athabasca University's MEd courses, but with what appears to be a heavily customized version of Moodle. The course begins with learning objectives: There are a menu column and a column for content. What becomes apparent is that this is not so much a "course" as a slightly intelligent e-book. The content is text with images. The narrower column is an interactive table of contents, which keeps track of which sections you have completed: an empty circle indicates a section yet to be attempted, a half circle for partial completion and solid circle for completed: What is interesting about this is that the modified interface looks very different, and much more appealing, than the default Moodle 225

interface used by the five institutions where I have been a teacher or student. It may be possible to refresh conventional DE courses, in this way, to make them more like the MOOC and App content students increasingly expect. This is a self-paced adaptation of a DE course. What would normally be group discussions between students have been adapted to have "reveals." As an example, the first activity "Design in an office" asks the student to identify what has been designed nor not designed. The student then presses "Reveal Discussion" and suggested answers are displayed: This is a much less rich student experience than having fellow students to discuss the topic with. Moodle does have the capability of providing some limited text-matching, but that would likely be more frustrating than useful (and multiple choice questions are not appropriate here). Overall the Design Thinking course from OUUK was not a satisfying experience. There is very much the sense this is a cut-down sample of an old style DE course, with not much effort has put into making it CAI. However, some of these techniques might be useful integrated into DE courses, such as those run for the MEd. The student could undertake a small module on their own, with some automated testing. They would then take part in a student forum, and perhaps live session with an instructor. This would then be a form of on-line flipped instruction. There could be a small allocation of marks to encourage students to complete each self-paced component before the forums and live sessions (perhaps one mark per week). Learn Something: AWS Educate Not having much success with learning something from traditional educational institutions, I tried a corporate site: AWS Educate. This offers training for users of Amazon's Cloud computing service. One of the advantages of this service is that it offers the option of selecting where your application will run. I chose Sydney, as the only option provided by Australia. Many cloud services do not give you a choice of location, so your application may be running in a country which has laws incompatible with those of your own. As an example, Australian educational institutions fall under federal law based 226

on the European Privacy Principles, which are not followed in the USA. This can cause difficulties where USA based cloud services are used by Australian institutions. I signed up as an educator for AWS Educate and had to verify I was who I said I was, by providing an email address and web address at an educational institution. I was then offered options of "Build Your Course," "Skill up on AWS," "Collaborate," and "Free Access to AWS." I selected "Build Your Course" and searched for "Design Thinking," which found 59 learning materials. None of these were full courses: twelve were lectures, eight were assignments, four were case studies, four syllabi, and five were teacher guides. I selected the first course in the list "Big Data" by Juliana Freire, New York University (2014). This provides a comprehensive set of materials, including a Course Overview, notes for four "lab" exercises, and the materials for three assignments. These are designed for a classroom based course. They could be adapted for DE, but it is interesting that the author has not attempted to do so, given that would be a way to package the materi als, even for a classroom. Grok Learning Coding Environment for Children The OUUK course is a long way from something like Australian company, Grok Learning's coding environment for children. Grok's one-hour coding exercises on "Frozen Fractals" (Python Turtle and Blockly Turtle) is designed for an iPad, but will work on a laptop. The exercise is on drawing a snowflake using "turtle graphics" to learn geometry and iteration. Two versions of the exercise are offered: one using a visual programming language (Blockly) and one using Python. The approach used by Grok is similar to the "Snap!" programming environment and UC Berkeley's "Beauty and Joy of Computing" (Harvey, 2012). Turtle graphics for teaching were developed by Solomon and Papert (1976). It has taken 40 years for the hardware to catch up with these teaching ideas. The student first runs the code, observes the result and when satisfied submits it for marking. The system shows what the student's code does and then overlays the desired outcome. As this is an auto227

mated test, the student's result must be identical to the expected result. As an example, one exercise was to draw a square. I left the turtle pointing a different direction to the model answer, and although this was not relevant to drawing a square, this was not marked as correct by the system. Grok's software is being improved all the time. Overall the exercises work well for teaching programming fundamentals. However, these exercises would only really be useful where the student was able to obtain help from a human tutor (in person or on-line). On its own, for a distance education student, the exercises would be frustrating. Benefits and detriments of CAI The benefits of CAI are that a student can obtain assistance with learning at their pace, without having to wait for a cohort of other students. The computer provides infinite patience, prompting the student and offering feedback consistently day and night. However, the materials and topic have to suit CAI. Design Thinking is a group activity, being about how to work in teams to come up with products. This requires the student to work with other trainee designers, clients, and mentors. The best the computer can do is to introduce the student to the terminology and provide some of the simpler responses to common learning difficulties. Even environments developed for relatively closed environments such as computer coding struggle to replace a human instructor. The detriment of CAI is that the topic has to be reduced to a standardized format and one for which there will be sufficient students to amortize the cost of developing the materials. The problem is seen clearly with Design Thinking, where the aim is to have the student learn how to think of new approaches: a difficult task for CAI to help with. However, despite the limitations, I suggest CAI could be used as part of DE courses which have cohorts of students and human instructors. Students would learn with CAI and then discuss what they learned with peers and the instructor, to deepen that learning. Caldwell and Gedeon (2015) suggest that even simple multiple choice quizzes can help students with deeper learning.

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References Caldwell, S., and Gedeon, T.D., (2015). Optimising Peer Marking with Explicit Training: from Superficial to Deep Learning, 1st International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Valencia, Spain, paper DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/HEAd15.2015.441. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300487262_Optimising_Pe er_Marking_with_Explicit_Training_from_Superficial_to_Deep_Le arning Harvey, B. (2012). The Beauty and Joy of Computing: Computer Science for Everyone. Proceedings of Constructionism, 33-39. Retrieved from http://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/BJC.pdf Solomon, C. J., & Papert, S. (1976, June). A case study of a young child doing Turtle Graphics in LOGO. In Proceedings of the June 710, 1976, national computer conference and exposition (pp. 10491056). ACM. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1145/1499799.1499945

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Mobile-Ready Blended Innovation Course, Incorporating e-Portfolios This is written as a proposal to an education institution to offer a new course on "Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship in Technology", in a program such as the Bachelor of Information Technology at the University of Canberra. The course would make use of e-learning and e-portfolios, to allow students to obtain course credit for undertaking the Innovation ACT competition. While "Innovation" is a skill sought after by students and prospective employers, it has been difficult to provide a satisfactory practical, hands-on, student experience within resource constraints. It is proposed to use a blend of hands-on group work through the extracurricular competition your institution already sponsors, with and an online component added to provide a course structure and an e-portfolio for assessment. In addition to providing useful learning for your students, the innovation e-learning course may be useful in introducing new teaching techniques to your faculty. Appended are: 1. Statement of the Problem, 2. Proposed Solution, 3. Plan for implementation, including activities and deadlines, 4. Resources required for implementation, plan for evaluation, 5. Adoption attributes of the technologies. My company can provide the course materials in an accessible, standard HTML format, with a responsive web design suitable for delivery to mobile devices, through your Moodle/Mahara system. All materials will be provided under a Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 4.0 International license, allowing you to use and modify the materials without further fees. You will also be able to use updates created for other institutions. Tutoring can be provided on contract for the first cohort of students, with your instructors assisting, so they can then take over.

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Statement of the Problem The University of Canberra sponsors the Innovation ACT competition, along with other universities, to allow students in teams to develop a business idea in a ten-week extra-curricular program. There have been attempts to use Innovation ACT to complement learning in the formal programs, but these have been hampered by the difficulties of aligning a cross-institutional program, with the requirements of specific degrees. Modifications to Innovation ACT to fit with each institution's differing requirements and timetables would be difficult to accomplish. Also, the project-based nature of Innovation ACT would make supervision and assessment difficult and timeconsuming. Proposed Solution A blended mode of instruction is proposed, where the student selfstudies the theory using an on-line system (using a responsive web design, mobile compatible interface), via their institution's Learning Management System, alongside the hands-on Innovation ACT program. To keep students working, small interactive self-marked tests and peer assessed group forums would be used. To assess the student's contribution to group work, an e-portfolio will be used. As part of preparing the student for the e-portfolio, regular exercises with peer feedback and assessment will be used. Plan for implementation, including activities and deadlines It is proposed to avoid complex, time-consuming committee processes, by conducting most consultations using the university's online forums. Drafts of materials will be circulated for comment and responses collated. Activity

Weeks

Initial consultation on course

1

Prepare draft course

2

Circulate draft for comment

2 232

Activity

Weeks

Prepare revised course

2

Obtain approval

9

Course delivery

12

Evaluation

1

Resources required for implementation, plan for evaluation Resources required for implementation It is proposed to design the course materials and deliver the initial course with up to 20 students for a fixed fee. Access will be required to the university's LMS and one academic to act as a second examiner and co-instructor. The co-instructor will then be expected to take charge of the unit after the first offering. Activity

Cost

Design, deliver course (including Goods and Services Tax)

$20,000.00

The consultant holds Workers Compensation insurance in accordance with legislation and Professional Indemnity ($10M) insurance. The fixed fee includes one one hour initial consultation with the client and one face-to-face meeting with the co-instructor. All other work is proposed to be conducted on-line. Any other meetings required will be at the consultant's standard rate of $300 per hour (including GST), minimum two hours. Plan for evaluation It is proposed that evaluation of the course be carried out by the university's Teaching and Learning (T&L) unit. An outline for evaluation is provided, but your unit may use their standard methodology.

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It is assumed the evaluation will be carried out by unit staff, independent of those implementing the course: This is an evaluation plan for the course "Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship in Technology." Included is a proposed evaluation model. The approach taken is based on Owen and Rogers (1999, pp. 72-73). The evaluation will be undertaken to assess the cost-effectiveness of the delivery method and student satisfaction. The primary audience is the Associate Dean (Education). The University's "Course and Teaching Evaluation and Improvement (CATEI) System" will be used. Key Questions will be: 1. Is the course affordable? Standard 1: The Course resource use is comparable to that of other STEM courses. Criterion 1: The staff cost/hours is no higher than that set as a guide for STEM courses. 2. Do students respond positively to the program? Standard 1: Students respond positively to the program. Criterion 1: Sentiment Analysis of student forum postings is positive, using the University's standard Unit Satisfaction Survey (USS). Innovation Course Description Title: Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship in Technology Short Title: Innovation Tech Level: 3rd-year undergraduate and postgraduate versions Course Description: Innovation is the ability to find opportunities provided by technology and exploit them, in for-profit and not-forprofit existing or new enterprises. Innovation requires investigation, analysis, and review. Weekly topics introduce the materials to students. Weekly interactive quizzes and forums build the skills needed for assignments. This course can be taken in parallel with Innovation ACT, or another entrepreneur program, and artifacts from that program submitted for assessment.

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Rationale: Course to provide recognition of the work of students undertaking entrepreneur programs such as Innovation ACT. Structure: Two parts, corresponding to the skills: A. Innovation 1. An Introduction to Innovation 2. Business Model Thinking 3. Stakeholder Engagement B. Business analysis 4. Concept Generation 5. Value Capture 6. Documenting Learning Outcomes: After completing this course, the student will be able to: 1. Innovate: Prepare a plan to exploit business opportunities provided by technology, for more efficient and effective performance of an existing or new businesses, 2. Analyze: Document an analysis of business regarding functions and processes, by identifying and quantifying improvements to reduce costs and enhance sustainability. The learning objectives are based on the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) skills definitions: "Innovation" and "Business analysis." Workload: To complete the subject you will need to spend eight hours each week reading, communicating with other students and instructors, and preparing assignments. Assumed Knowledge: Basic computing concepts, from an introductory university course, are assumed. The student will need to use a computer and the Internet to read materials, participate in text-based forums and submit assignments with references.

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Assessment: 1. Weekly (20%): Contributions to weekly discussion forums (10%) and completion of a weekly quiz (10%), 2. Assignments (80%): mid-course (40%) and at the end (40%). To pass the course at least 10/20 for Weekly Assessment and 40/80 for Assignments is required. Weekly Assessment does not contribute to a final grade above Credit (74%). Grades of Distinction and High Distinction are based only on Assignments. Assessment Rationale: The questions each week are on topics to be covered in the assignments, allowing students to build their skills. The contributions to weekly discussion forums are peer assessed using a simplified scale: Below Expectation (0), At Expectation (1), and Above Expectation (2), with no part marks. Each major assignment corresponds to a learning objective for the course: 1. Innovate: Prepare a plan to exploit business opportunities provided by technology, for more efficient and effective performance of an existing or new businesses, and, 2. Analyze: Document an analysis of business regarding functions and processes, by identifying and quantifying improvements to reduce costs and enhance sustainability. Assignments are submitted in the form of an e-portfolio, with students encouraged to undertake their project in conjunction with the Innovation ACT competition. Adoption Attributes of the Technologies In addition to providing useful learning for your students, the innovation e-learning course may be useful in introducing new teaching techniques to your faculty. Chatfield and Reddick (2016) apply Diffusion of Innovation theory (also known as Innovation Diffusion Theory), to the adoption of open data policy in Australia. This provides useful clues to the way other technology innovation practices may be adopted. They use the five categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Holt et al. (2016) surveyed Australian academic leaders on the potential ePortfolio implementation in business education. Just over half of respondents (54.7%), either don't know or do not use an 236

ePortfolio (Holt et al., 2016, p. 10). The primary reason found for not using an e-portfolio "... lack of an institutional strategy and culture conducive to the use of ePortfolios ..." (Holt et al., 2016, p. 10), does not apply to your university, with its assessment procedures explicitly supporting e-portfolios. However, e-portfolios are still not mainstream, and their implementation in a new course provides the opportunity to lead by example. Bowe (2011), which divided technology-using faculty at a US university into three groups: 1: Innovative Everyday IT-using Educators ; 2: Experienced but Skeptical IT-using Educators ; and 3: Purposeful IT-using Educators. It is proposed to use the new course on innovation to help move your educators to the third category, regarding the use of e-portfolios.

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References Bowe, R. (2011, March). Instructional Technology Adoption Strategies for College of Education Faculty. In Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (Vol. 2011, No. 1, pp. 1778-1785). Chatfield, A. T., & Reddick, C. G. (2016, June). Open Data Policy Innovation Diffusion: An Analysis of Australian Federal and State Governments. In Proceedings of the 17th International Digital Government Research Conference on Digital Government Research (pp. 155-163). ACM. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1145/2912160.2912173 Holt, D., McGuigan, N., Kavanagh, M., Leitch, S., Ngo, L., Salzman, S., ... & McKay, J. (2016). Academic leaders' perspectives on adopting ePortfolios for developing and assessing professional capabilities in Australian business education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 32(5). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicholas_Mcguigan/publication/305210524_Academic_leaders'_perspectives_on_adopting_ePortfolios_for_developing_and_assessing_professional_capabilities_in_Australian_business_education/links/5784e3da08aeca7daac57d21.pdf Owen, John M. & Rogers, Patricia J. (1999). Program evaluation: forms and approaches. St Leonards, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin

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International Issues in Distance Education 1. Benefits and Costs of E-learning: Summary and Critique of Rumble's Approach 2. Distance Education in China's Radio and TV Universities

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Benefits and Costs of E-learning: Summary and Critique of Rumble's Approach Rumble (2001) was originally delivered as a lecture at the UK Open University UK (UKOU), when the author took up a chair in Distance Education Management. It has been subsequently published in several places, including Rumble (pp. 119 - 138, 2004) and extensively cited. This was thirty years after UKOU started delivering courses and a year after the dot-com collapse. It was also a year after the launch of the UK eUniversity (UKeU), which closed four years later (Bacsich, p. 1, 2005). This lecture is at a point in history when Distance Education (DE) using paper, post and broadcast TV had reached maturity and the first experiments with e-learning were over. However, in many ways the period of experiment with e-leaning seems to have continued to the present. Summary Defining e-education Rumble (p.1, 2001) begins by stating that the Internet was still to change education and asks: "... who will benefit from the changes, and who will bear the costs?". The author defines an e-education system as one which will: •

"Make learning materials available to students in electronic form.

•

Teach and support students online

•

Provide on-line administrative services, e.g. enrolment, billing, information and advice." (Rumble, p.1, 2001) [Numbers added]

Rumble (p.1, 2001) comments that academics tend to forget the third point: administrative aspects of the system and that "large-scale distance education, is based on a division of labour between those academics and support staff who design and develop learning materials" and those who "focus on student support". 241

Reasons for using e-education Rumble (p. 3, 2001) see pressure for e-education coming first from within distance education institutions, to allow dialogue between teacher and learner, overcoming the perceived deficiency when compared with campus-based universities. A second pressure is from conventional campus based institutions, "wanting to break out of the limitations of face-to-face classes" (Rumble, p. 3, 2001). This is characterized as coming from educators responding to larger classes and students wanting on-demand education. Reducing the unit cost of education Rumble (p. 4, 2001) frames the role of DE in the context of a world with millions of children not attending school, plus adolescents and adults needing illiteracy and training, with traditional education a "labour intensive business". The author cites the success of 1960s educational television and open university as cost efficient, but points out this requires a restricted range of courses, using low cost media and run over a long time frame with "large numbers of students". Rumble (p. 4, 2001) also points to the different work practices required, with staff employed specifically to develop or deliver courses (not research), making use of existing textbooks, and the use of lower skill and casual staff for teaching. Costs of e-education Rumble (p. 6, 2001) divides the cost of e-education into: developing materials, teaching, administration, infrastructure and management. The author points to studies showing a wide variation in the cost of developing materials (UKOU was at the upper end), with most of the cost being for labour. While delivery costs are lower for DE using electronic means than paper (Rumble, p. 8, 2001), the author suggests that on-line courses double tutor's time and ways of lowering student expectations were needed. Rumble (p. 10, 2001) suggests that administration costs can be lowered with Web-based, self-service.

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Structural changes Rumble (p, 14, 2001) points out that specialist organizations can provide parts of the educational process, such as tutoring and library services, on-line to lower costs. The author also points to "partnership models" where several universities develop an educational program and in some cases jointly deliver this to students. Rumble (p, 15. 2001) notes that "Partnerships are fragile entities ..." and says "My money is on big universities created by growth and mergers.". Who benefits? Rumble (p, 16, 2001) concludes with the question of who benefits from e-education. The conclusion is that teaching on-line adds to the academic workload, "accelerating a division between course developers and casual teachers". Critique Much of Rumble's analysis is still relevant fifteen years later. The debate over the cost and value of e-learning continues, as does con cern over the effect on traditional academic values. However, Rumble (p, 2. 2001), characterizes students wanting "round the clock" education, as if this a whim, rather than being a result of very real financial and family pressures. Electronic Delivery On-Campus Rumble (p. 8, 2001) assumes that campus based education can't use the same processes as DE. However, electronic delivery of learning materials is now routine for on-campus students (at least in Australia), using the same systems as DE. Similarly, support and administrative services are provided on-line. Institutions now make use of casual and part time staff to design and deliver courses on campus as well as on-line. Classes are "flipped", with on-line materials, plus classroom exercises. An un-glamorous but important area Rumble (p. 10, 2001) addresses is the way administration costs can be lowered with Web-based, selfservice. However, one area not addressed is the cost of acquiring stu243

dents. As well as conventional marketing, universities are using agents who take a large upfront fee to recruit international students. Structural Change Rumble's (p, 14. 2001) analysis of structural change did not foresee the outsourcing of IT itself. Package software running in "the cloud" and managed by a specialist companies, in turn allows more of the university functions to be contracted out. Rumble (p, 15. 2001) suggested that "big universities" would win out over partnerships. It is interesting to consider how MOOC consortia, such as Coursera, edX and "FutureLearn, fit with this analysis. These might be considered partnerships, or a takeover of smaller institutions by the larger consortium members. Rumble (p, 16, 2001) concludes that teaching on-line adds academic workload, reduces security of employment and accelerates the division between course developers, teachers and researchers. One effect Bryant and Richardson (2015) recently reported was university lecturers with formal teaching qualifications (presumably those specializing in teaching) have fewer failing students, whereas those with just a PHD (presumably researchers) have more high performing students. This suggests not only the division in university staffing Rumble foresaw but a division of students, between coursework and research. Conclusion Rumble (p, 17, 2001) was addressing staff and students of the UKOU and returns to this in the conclusion. The author points out that UKOU was formed to address equity of access to higher education and "... exported its system in the belief that this would help developing countries expand their education systems". The author concludes "... choices it is being forced to make are at the expense of the ideals that led to its birth ...". Unfortunately they do not elaborate as to what these choices are or how these conflict with UKOU's aims. Perhaps most useful is Rumble's challenging assumptions about the costs of e-learning. The cost of delivery of materials on-line is largely irrelevant for the developed world with broadband infrastruc244

ture prevalent, but remains an issue in developing nations. A question about developing nations Rumble hinted at, but did not answer, is if e-education can help with basic education and literacy, as a prerequisite to higher education.

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References Bacsich, P. (2005, November). Lessons to be learned from the failure of the UK e-University. In Breaking down boundaries: 17th Biennial Conference of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia. Retrieved from http://suewatling.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2012/12/Lessons-to-belearned-from-the-failure-of-the-UKe-university-by-Bacsich.pdf Bryant, D., & Richardson, A. (2015). To be, or not to be, trained. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 37 (6), 682688. DOI: 10.1080/1360080X.2015.1102818 Rumble, G. (2001). E-education: Whose benefits? Whose costs? Paper presented to Open University 28th February 2001. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20070325024117/http://www.iec.ac.uk/r esources/e_education_costs.pdf Rumble, G. (2004). Papers and Debates on the Economics and Costs of Distance and Online Learning. Retrieved from http://www.unioldenburg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/c3l/master/mde/download/asfvolume7_ebook.pdf

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Distance Education in China's Radio and TV Universities Introduction This is a critical review of one journal article on the topic of distance education. The paper I have selected is Wei (2010) on the topic of China's Radio and TV Universities. The definition, nature and forms of distance education are examined, to see how they may be applied to understanding the applicability of distance education for Chinese university students and its future use by Chinese universities and Western universities teaching Chinese students remotely. Article selection Many of the graduate computer science students I teach on-line in Australia undertook their undergraduate degrees in China. My Chinese students appear to have no experience with on-line courses, during their undergraduate studies in China. For the last two years, I have attended an annual conference with academics from China, to discuss teaching techniques for computer science and engineering students. However, I appear to be one of the few using on-line techniques (Worthington, 2012 and 2013). Therefore, I would like to investigate the history of distance education in China and why and how it may be used more. The paper I have selected is Wei (2010) on the topic of China's Radio and TV Universities, to begin an exploration of distance education and on-line courses in China. An alternative publication examined was Håklev (2010), a thesis on theChinese National Top Level Courses Project. However as Håklev points out, the project was intended to provide curriculum materials on-line to staff for classroom courses, not distance education direct to students. Is there a Chinese view of "distance education"? Would it be feasible to adapt Australian material course material for China? Athabasca University was able to adapt Australian course material for Canadian students ("Green ICT Strategies", 2010). Would it be feasible to adapt courses for China? 247

Critical Review Summary Wei (2010) provides an overview of distance education and pen learning in China from the perspective of the country's radio and TV universities (RTVUs). These universities were established in the early 1980 and by 2008 produced just under 20% of China's graduates. Wei points out that RTVUs shorter vocational programmes, as well as degree programs for adults (who had limited access to traditional university programs). Wei emphasizes western distance education and open learning being adapted for the Chinese context. In an overview of distance education theories, Wei begins in 1960s education practitioners and researchers, with Wedemeyer's non-traditional "Independent Study" (2009) and Peters (1994) "Industrialization of Teaching". Wei traces the related concept of "Open learning" back to Lengrand's (1975) lifelong learning. However, Lengrand does not appear to have used the terms "Open Learning" or "open university". Using Moore's theory of "Transactional Distance" (1993) Wei asked if synchronous information and communications technology (ICT), removed the "distance" from distance education. The suggestion is that as better communications become possible in the 1990s, many of the organization issues with distance education were solved, and the focus shifted to pedagogical issues.

China's radio and TV universities Wei (2010) traces China's RTVUs to 1979 for training personnel in the agricultural sector, industry and technology. A central unit developed programmes and content, with 28 provincial campuses undertook the teaching. Wei describes this as a "network of single-mode distance teaching universities", with in this case "network" referring to the organizational structure, not the use of telecommunications. Program and course development was carried out centrally, with regional campuses (initially 28) delivering courses to groups of about 40 students.

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Wei (2010) describes group tuition being used by the RTVUs, not just to save on equipment and telecommunications capacity, but to fit with Chinese traditional teaching methods. Group tuition aided by employers' willingness to release workers for study. Wei (2010) describes a later phase in the 1980s with the RTVUs developing their own campuses under local government sponsorship and issuing certificates under the provincial governments. At the same time, employers were less willing to release workers for study. Wei comments this was the "RTVUs first tasted the 'distance' in distance education", that is the students were part-time and more autonomous. Wei (2010) describes the RTVUs developing self-learning packages, with audio-cassettes and video-cassettes to be used at study centres, much like the early UK OU (Perry, 1977). As with the UK OU, group tuition evening classes initially developed organically and were later officially supported (as has happed with MOOCs). Also anticipating MOOCs, Wei (2010) describes a 1995 'Registered Free Viewers and Listeners' project in RTVUs made it simple for students to sign up for a course, but resulted in a completion rate of only about 5%. Wei (2010) describes how in 2001, the satellite broadcast system used for education, was combined with the national university computer network (China Education and Research Network, or CERNET) for delivery of distance education courses to the RTVUs. Interactive facilities using email, teleconferencing, Bulletin Board systems, chatrooms and instant messaging were later added. However, Wei (2010) emphasizes that group classes, not home access, remained the primary teaching method. Wei (2010) describes a structural change with RTVUs becoming dual-track institutions, supporting part-time adult learners through distance education and full-time post-secondary students. Wei describes how smaller RTVUs merged into local higher learning institutions "totally losing their identity as an independent distance higher education institution".

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Analysis Wei (2010) begins by asserting that "... distance education and open learning are western innovations ..." and then discusses how these were adapted for China. This may be overstating the case, given that printing on paper originated in China. It seems likely that some scholars will have thought of providing a correspondence course. Also, as Håklev (2010) notes, after World War II, the new Chinese state derived its higher education approach from the USSR. The USSR's approach to use of broadcast media for distance education is likely to have influenced China, at least as much as the West. Chinese Approach to Higher Education One difficulty with Wei's description of the radio and TV Universities is what is a "university" in the Chinese context. The description of a central unit preparing course content and programs to be delivered in regional centres would describe a multi-campus higher education institution in Australia. The campuses characterized by Wei as having "dozens of administrative staff and teachers" would not be considered universities in their own right, as they would not be preparing their own programs or materials. UK's Open University (UKOU) started with a single campus and acquired regional facilities later (Perry, 1977). In contrast, UKOU's regional facilities are clearly not separate universities. Wei (2010) describes how smaller RTVUs merged into local higher learning institutions "totally losing their identity as an independent distance higher education institution". It appears the author considers that benefits from a separate institution has been lost.

Theories of Distance Education Widely divergent views of distance education have been devised over the last thirty years. Wei (2010) begins with Wedemeyer's nontraditional "Independent Study" (2009) and Peters (1994) "Industrialization of Teaching". These would appear two extremes: emphasizing either the individual customization, or industrial standardization. However, while Peters (1994) dismisses the popularity of the term "Independent Study" as being due to "ideological bias", in the Chinese context it could be seen the students could have more indepen250

dence from the higher education system through distance education, even where the syllabus and assessment are centrally controlled. The student may be told what to learn and when they have to had learned it by, but not the details of how to get there. Wei uses Moore's theory of "Transactional Distance" (1993) to extend the definition of distance education beyond physical separation of the student from teacher. Moore looks at the effect of the communications media on the dialogue between student and teacher. Paper correspondence slows down communication, providing time for a more thoughtful response from the student than a face-to-face or real-time (synchronous) on-line class. Wei (2010) describes the RTVUs having groups of about 40 students, so as to maximize the use of the to the equipment and broadcast capacity. However, Wei also comments that this also reduced the isolation, which a distance education student studying alone at home, can experience. While Wei gives an overview of Western distance educational theory, there appears nothing specific to the development of the UK Open University (UKOU), nor Chinese theory influencing, or resulting from the RTVUs. Ideas of Distance Education In the conclusion, Wei (2010) describes open, and distance learning in China's RTVUs "developing, taking into consideration the Chinese characteristics", embracing "open learning to promote a learning society". However, these ideas were not discussed in the body of the paper. The assertion that distance education is underpinned by "educational democracy, equity and egalitarianism" appears to be at odds with the description of a system with central development of courses and programs to be delivered locally. The impetus for distance education in China, as in the UK OU, appears to have been the delivery of standardized mass produced education for vocational purposes, at low cost.

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Need for Self-Directed Learning Simonson (2009) briefly mentions China's radio and TV universities in worldwide examples of distance education. They refer to the centralized nature of the early TV broadcast system and a later move to e-learning. Anderson and Terry (2008) do not mention China's radio and TV universities, but do refer to Wang's (2005) description of moves to a more self-directed, learning in China. Wang suggests "improving learner's time management skills, self-regulation, and self-directed learning strategies", whereas Wei (2010) suggests that the course materials need to be redesigned for self study.

Cultural Issues with Distance Education Wei (2010) describes RTVUs increasingly under the responsibility of regional governments. However, there is no discussion of changes to curriculum or instruction to suit the local population, ethnic groups or languages. The central Open University of China website (http://en.crtvu.edu.cn/) is provided in only two languages: Chinese and English. While it is common for advanced university studies to be carried out in English, it should be noted that RTVUs also serve vocational needs with short courses for students where the local language is more appropriate. The issue of the language of instruction for remote indigenous communities, has recently been discussed, in a report on education, in the Australian Northern Territory. Wilson (2014) has proposed that education in the local indigenous languages be discontinued. While the use of distance education is suggested, it is assumed that this will be in the national language (although online tools facilities the use of multiple languages). Centralist Model of Education The approach to DE Wei (2010) describes is one with centrally set standards and materials. Howard and Rennie (2013) discuss the alternative adopter-diffusion (bottom-up) model, where teachers are supported in using computers for education.

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Conclusion China's Radio and TV Universities have more similarities than differences to western distance education university, such as the UK Open University. The "Chinese characteristics" Wei (2010) describes do not significantly change the model of centrally prepared broadcast TV and paper course-ware supplemented with regional campuses. This has evolved to on-line delivery and also seen merging of regional campuses into conventional universities. What differences there were with western universities may be disappearing with Chinese economic reforms and introduction of a market economy. Will this market economy will see non-state sponsored low cost on-line universities competing with the state sponsored ones? The role of on-line and distance education within the conventional universities is an area for research. Also, can western universities offer distance education in China?

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References Anderson, Terry, 1950- (2008). The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed). (p. 428) AU Press, Edmonton Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/99Z_Anderson_2008Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf#page=428 Green ICT Strategies COMP 635. (2010) Retrieved from http://scis.athabascau.ca/graduate/syllabus.php?courseId=635 Håklev, S. (2010). The Chinese National Top Level Courses Project: using open educational resources to promote quality in undergraduate teaching. Retrieved from http://reganmian.net/blog/the-chinesenational-top-level-courses-project/ Howard, S., & Rennie, E. (2013). Free for All: A Case Study Examining Implementation Factors of One-to-One Device Programs. Computers In The Schools, 30(4), 359-377. doi:10.1080/07380569.2013.847316 Lengrand, P. (1975). An Introduction to Lifelong Education. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED118876.pdf Moore, M. G. (1993). 2 Theory of transactional distance. Theoretical principles of distance education, 22. Retrieved from http://www.c3l.uni-oldenburg.de/cde/support/readings/moore93.pdf Perry, Walter Sir (1977). The Open University (1st ed). Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco Peters, O. (1994). Otto Peters on distance education: The industrialization of teaching and learning. D. Keegan (Ed.). Psychology Press. Simonson, Michael R (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance : foundations of distance education (4th ed). (p. 14) Allyn & Bacon/Pearson, Boston Retrieved from http://learning.fon.edu.mk/knigi/teachinganlearningatadistance4.pdf#page=15 Wang, T. (2005). Tensions in Learner Support and Tutor Support in Tertiary Web-based English Language Education in China. International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 6(3). 254

Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/266/425 Wei, R.F. (2010). China's radio and TV universities: reflections on theory and practice of open and distance learning. Open Learning, 25(1), 45-56. doi:10.1080/02680510903482199 Wedemeyer, C. A. (2009). Learning at the back door: Reflections on non-traditional learning in the lifespan. IAP. Wilson, B. (2014). Overview. Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory (Draft ed., pp. 7-18). Retrieved from http://www.education.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/36205/In digenous-Education-Review_DRAFT.pdf#page=8 Worthington, T. (2012). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. 2012 7Th International Conference On Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), (Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Science and Education, ICCSE 2012) 263. doi:10.1109/ICCSE.2012.6295070 Worthington, T. (2013). Synchronizing asynchronous learning-Combining synchronous and asynchronous techniques. Proceedings Of The 8Th International Conference On Computer Science And Education, ICCSE 2013, (Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Science and Education, ICCSE 2013), 618-621. doi:10.1109/ICCSE.2013.6553983

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Use of Open Education Resources 1. Defining openness: a personal reflection 2. Curated or crowd-sourced learning resource development 3. Developing learning modules from open resources

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Defining openness: a personal reflection Introduction Openness in education can apply broadly to the nature of eduction, the institution, and the course materials. Here the concept of an "Open University" is first discussed, then Open Educational Resources, before a personal reflection on appropriate open licenses for the educational materials I produce. Definitions and Trends of Openness in Education The Concept of an Open University Open University (OU) UK's official short history is not as compelling as the personal account by Perry (1976), the first Vice Chancellor. He describes the politics of the process, dealing with the government of the day (the government changed during the establishment of the university), the opposition from the UK's existing universities and even the BBC (which was an important part of providing broadcast education). "Open" in OU terms is about providing a university education to those who do not have access to traditional university, due to a lack of formal education, money, location, gender or minority group. The OU's clients included, and still include, prisoners and members of the military (for whom the transition from paper based to on-line courses presents difficulties). The formation of OU has parallels in the current discussion of on-line courses and MOOCs: with issues of access for the disadvantaged. What is disappointing is that little to of the current discussion of openness in education is informed by the experting of the past. Young (2011) provides an oral history perspective of the formation of OU UK, pointing out that while considered a national distance university, its campus was at Milton Keynes, anchoring it in England (although outside London, Oxford and Cambridge powerhouses of English education). Young raises the issue of Welsh, Irish and Scottish national identities on what was supposed to be a "UK" university. OU's students included political prisoners in Northern Ireland

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and Young credits this education as helping further Ireland's peace process. OU UK has been emulated in developed countries, but more particularly in the developing world, fitting with an agenda of nation building. Halttunen (2006) describes the Finnish Open University as a "complex network-like organisation". They trace development from university extension and summer studies from 1912. Halttunen describes these as the "women's academy", being summer vacation courses for female elementary school teachers. Perry (1976) also noted that many of the new OU UK were school teachers. Unfortunately, the current structure of Finnish open university is not clear from Halttunen (2006) paper. While referring to this being based on the OU UK model, they then refer to "the gateway from open university to degree studies". In a footnote the author explains that "the Finnish open university is not a separate university of its own" instead the student can receive credit at "regular university". This suggests a role and structure different to the UK, where OU is an separate university offering its own degrees. The Finnish approach appears to be more of a university preparation program, but it is not clear who runs these programs. Ambe-Uva (2007) traces the genesis of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), from OU UK in 1971, through Open University Thailand (Sukkothai Thammathirat) 1978 and the Indira Ghandi National Open University 1985. Ambe-Uva characterizes access to education as a human rights issue, with access, quality and cost to be considered. They describe "about 15 stormy years were wasted in Nigeria's quest for Open University", from 1990 to 2005. Ambe-Uva's paper is published in the Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education (TOJDE), which I have found a good source of research on approaches to education outside that of western universities. MOREIRA, Safanelli, CARDOSO and Battisti (2010) trace the origins of open education in Brazil to the Radio Society of Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s, which was founded by the members of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences to broadcast education and cultural programs (and still operates today as). The authors relate how the Brazilian Navy started correspondence courses in the 1930s. The modern Sistema Universidade Aberta do Brasil (UAB) (Open Uni260

versity of Brazil) was founded in 2006, not as a separate university but as a national system, similar to Finland. Open Educational Resources CETIS (2008) uses a definition of Open Educational Resources (OER) from the OECD (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, 2007): "digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research". The term OER appears to be derived from the open source software community and is unrelated to the term "open university". CETIS (2008) refers to the OU UK's use of OER materials, but does not make any connection between the two definitions of "open". Wiley Caswell, Henson, Jensen (2008) start with the right to education in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and then quickly jump to MIT's OpenCourseWare announced in 2001. The authors them make a link between MIT's OpenCourseWare and Richard Stallman's 1983 GNU project at MIT. This is a little tenuous as while Stallman has been influential outside MIT on the software development process, he appears to have had little impact on education, inside or outside MIT. Wiley Caswell, Henson, Jensen (2008) are on firmer ground showing the logical development from the GNU software license to Creative Commons (CC). In Stallman's terms CC's licenses range from Free to Open. That is some CC licenses allow for use of material with no charge, whereas others allow for the material to be modified. MIT's OpenCourseWare is open in a fuller sense than later MOOCs: the former can be modified for reuse, whereas the latter can just be used as is. It would be interesting to see OpenCourseWare's use has stalled with the popularity of MOOCs. Personal Reflection on Openness in Education Openness in education is of interest to me as a philosophical concept, part of being a professional and a practical way to provide courses and get paid for it.

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As someone with a background in computing, open source software is a familiar concept. On a person note, during a visit to Canberra, I had Mr Stallman as a house guest. He had (and still has) an extreme dislike of the use of the term "open" and corrected me every time I used it in conversation. Stallman (2009) sees "open" to be less open than "free". Stallman, asserts that citizens should have access to the computer source code, so that they can see what programs they are using are actually doing. He suggests that there can be "free" code which you have to pay for: that is you are allowed to look at the source code, but you may still have to pay to use it (Williams, 2002). My own views of openness in eduction are less fixed than Stallman (2009). OAK Law The use of Open Content Licencing (OCL) for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Australia has been heavily influenced by the Open Access to Knowledge Law Project (OAK Law) at the Queensland Universality of Technology. This project ran from only 2005 to 2009, but in that time the project members made many presentations at academic and government conferences promoting the use of the Creative Commons licenses and producing a detailed Guide for Authors (Pappalardo, Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald, Kiel-Chisholm, Georgiades, & Austin, 2008). The team lead by example, with their guide, and most of their other published work, using the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License. Creative Commons Licenses: What is Non-Commercial? In creating "open" materials, the issue of which licensing to use arises. There are six commonly cited versions of the Creative Commons license, in order of increasing restriction: •

Attribution (BY)

•

Attribution & Noncommercial (BY-NC)

•

Attribution & ShareAlike (BY-SA)

•

Attribution & NoDerivatives (BY-ND)

•

Attribution, Noncommercial & ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) 262

•

Attribution, Noncommercial & NoDerivatives (BY-NC-ND)

In an analysis of online materials with a Creative Commons license, Cheliotis (2007) found that 70% allow only non-commercial use (NC), while 50% include Share-Alike (SA), while only 25% are No Derivatives (ND). This is an important factor in choosing a license for open educational material which makes use of existing materials, as the two licences need to be compatable. It should be noted that even the first, least restrictive, of the CCe licenses (BY), requires attribution, which would fit with the academics' practice of acknowledging the work of others. Attribution and NoDerivatives (BY-ND) would suit a research paper, where the author wants their work freely distributed, but not altered in any way. ShareAlike suits open course-ware, where the original author wants others to make contributions to the common pool of work. This would fit well with my approach to creating educational content. The difficulty comes with the meaning and use of the "Noncommercial" licenses. Australia has a tradition of not-for-profit publicly owned higher education institutions providing extension, distance, adult and other forms of non-conventional education. Whitelock, (1974) points out that Sydney University set up an extension program as early as 1886. A much later example is the Canberra Learning Exchange, using paper based bulletin board and a telephone information service (Learning Exchange, 1973). However, Australia now has a mixed private and public higher education system, with for-profit companies, as well as not-for-profit institutions. Australia's publicly owned universities are still notionally not-for-profit, but have taken on business practices of the private sector. There may not be any good reason to give them exclusive use of open access materials. So it would appear the most suited for my development of materials is the CC Attribution & ShareAlike (BYSA). Conclusion Openness can apply broadly to the nature of eduction, the institution, and the course materials. Here the concept of then "Open University" has been discussed, with the UK precedent being applied 263

particularly in developing nations. In a personal reflection the various open licenses for the educational materials are considered, before concluding Creative Commons Attribution & ShareAlike most suits my intended work. References Ambe-Uva, T. N. (2007). National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN): A Historical Perspective and Challenges. Online Submission, 8(1), 73-84. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED494830.pdf Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved from: http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38654317.pdf CETIS, J. (2008). Open educational resources-Opportunities and challenges for higher education. Retrieved from http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/0/0b/OER_Briefing_Paper.pdf Cheliotis, G. (2007). Creative Commons Statistics from the CCMonitor Project. Dubrovnik. Retrieved from https://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/7/71/Statistics-from-the-CC-Monitor-project_eng.pdf Halttunen, N. (2006). Changing Missions. The Role of Open University Education in the Field of Higher Education in Finland. Scandinavian Journal Of Educational Research, 50(5), 503-517. doi:10.1080/00313830600953584 Learning Exchange. (1973, August 2). Woroni (Canberra, ACT : 1950 - 2007), p. 7. Retrieved May 12, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article140092040 MOREIRA, B. C. D. M., Safanelli, A. D. S., CARDOSO, J., & Battisti, P. (2010). Gestão acadêmica na educação a distãncia: desafios e prãticas. Retrieved from https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/96910/GEST %c3%83O%20ACAD%c3%8aMICA%20NA%20EDUCA %c3%87%c3%83O%20A%20DIST%c3%82NCIA%20DESAFIOS %20E%20PR%c3%81TICAS.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 264

Pappalardo, K. M., Fitzgerald, B. F., Fitzgerald, A. M., KielChisholm, S. D., Georgiades, J., & Austin, A. C. (2008). Understanding open access in the academic environment: A guide for authors. Perry, Walter Sir (1976). Open University. Open Univ. Press, Milton Keynes Young, H. (2011). Whose story counts? Constructing an oral history of the Open University at 40. Oral History, (2). 95. Stallman, R. (2009). Viewpoint Why open source misses the point of free software. Communications of the ACM, 52(6), 31-33. Retrieved from https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-thepoint.html Whitelock, Derek (1974). The great tradition : a history of adult education in Australia. University of Queensland Press ; Hemel Hempstead : distributed by Prentice-Hall International, St. Lucia, Qld Wiley, D., Caswell, T., Henson, S., & Jensen, M. (2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/469/1001 Williams, Sam (2002). Free as in freedom : Richard Stallman's crusade for free software (1st ed). O'Reilly, Sebastopol, Calif. ; Farnham

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Curated or crowd-sourced learning resource development Introduction Open Educational Resources (OER) are "digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research" (Center for Educational Research and Innovation, p. 30, 2007). But how free and open is the development process for these materials? Are curated materials (that is selected by an "expert"), preferable to crowd-sourced (that is selected by the students, who, in the case of open courses are the general public)? This work sets out to briefly answer those questions and see how OER could be used in teaching a course in innovation. One question left unanswered is how OER can help the business of education. Different formats for content development The OECD categorizes policy actions, and responsibilities for OER, into four levels: International, National, Intermediate and Institutional; and also identifies four issues: Legal, Access, Funding and Curation of Materials (Center for Educational Research and Innovation, p. 140, 2007). This analysis does not allow for crowd sourced development of OER, nor development by organizations which are not "institutions". This perhaps reflects the OECD's top-down outlook, being an organization formed by governments and so assuming that work on education resources must come from government, or an organization endorsed by Government. An alternative approach is to have OER developed under processes endorsed by government, but where independently developed materials, including crowd sourced ones, are permitted. Curated or crowd sourced? Holotescu (p. 31, 2015) questions the division of OER into curated and crowd sourced, by referring to "socially curated" web content. Holotescu points out that curation can happen in an organic way via social media, where there can be content, as well as commentary, 267

provided (p. 62, 2015). This approach could be used to, at least in part, break down the distinction between curated and crowd sourced materials. An example of where the traditions of academia come into conflict with crowd sourcing is the Wikipedia. Azer (2015) carried out an analysis of a sample of medical articles in the Wikipedia and concluded that they were not a reliable learning resource for medical students. However, while recommending medical students should instead read articles written and edited by scholarly authors, Azer (2015) did not check to see if these officially curated sources were more reliable the Wikipedia and appears to have simply assumed they are. Curation by an authoritative source implies acceptance of the authority and for OER a particular view of "openness". The Open University UK is based on a centralized model which has changed little despite the adoption of on-line technology (Perry, 1976). Halttunen, (2006) describes a more community based approach to open education in Finland which would fit better with social curation of materials. There can be degrees of curation. Two of the models for open course-ware examined by Wiley (p.7, 2007) are the MIT model and the Rice model. (named for the respective universities). The MIT model uses a central staff (29 in 2007) and follows an approach would be familiar to OUUK. In contrast the Rice model has content contributed by external collaborators (Wiley, p.9, 2007). There is less central vetting of material in the Rice model, with the contributors responsible for preparation and categorizing of their work, arranging intellectual property release and design. A Small Test of Crowd Sourcing for an OER Project OpenStax CNX: The Rice model is currently implemented using a system called OpenStax CNX (cnx.org). A search of the OpenStax CNX system on the topic of "Entrepreneurship and innovation" returned 47 results and showed problems with the quality of such crowd sourced material. The first English document found ("Growth strategies for start-ups") consisted on just one paragraph of text

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which appears to have been submitted for the purposes of self promotion of the author. The latest work found at the OpenStax CNX system on "Entrepreneurship and innovation" was "A Vibrant Capitalist Republic" (2015). This consisted of the equivalent of 7 pages of HTML. The content was well laid out with illustrations headings, a summary, review questions and links to reading materials. However, the multiple choice review questions had no prefixes displayed (so I had to work out the first possible answer was "A", the second "B" and so on). Also there were not formal references for the reading materials linked to. The PDF, ePUB and HTML downloads were not available. As is this material looks usable for a course, but not the innovation course I had in mind. More relevant is "Responsible Choice for Appropriate Technology" however, the description says that is incomplete and the content is not so relevant for me to take the trouble to complete it. Again, the PDF, pub and HTML versions were not available, making reuse more difficult. The first OpenStax CNX document, which looked both relevant and usable, was "An Introduction to Regional Participation in a Global Network to Accelerate the Development of a Sustainable Technology Cluster". This is a study of Wales (England) and has an extensive bibliography and a research question, suitable for a student assignment. A second article "Results for a Study on How a Region Can Lever Participation in a Global Network to Accelerate the Development of a Sustainable Technology Cluster" by the same author also looked usable. MIT OpenCourseWare: A search of the MIT OpenCourseWare system on the topic of "Entrepreneurship and innovation" returned 1,850 results. The first document found ("15.351 Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Sloan School of Management") consisted of a 6.4 Mbyte download with the syllabus, calendar, readings, lecture notes and assignments for a course. However, the lecture notes consist of slides without extensive explanatory text and the readings include non-open content in published books. Some of the materials may be of use in preparing a course but cannot be used as is.

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What is the Business Model for OER? Both OpenStax CNX and MIT OpenCourseWare proved a disappointing source of OER. OpenStax CNX contained incomplete materials and MIT OpenCourseWare materials which depended on use of non-OER ones. The question might be asked what motivations and rewards need to be in place for quality OER to be produced. In commercial terms what is the business mode for OER, or in academic terms, what is a sustainable strategy? Stacey (2015) called for work on sustainability strategies for OER, but unfortunately did not present any solutions. Ives and Pringle (2013) describe how Athabasca University (AU) could use OER to reduce the cost of course materials and initiatives to encourage staff to seek out OER opportunities. However what is lacking from this is how to build OER into the business of the organization. AU is reported to be having financial difficulties and the solutions proposed would see it turn into a more conventional institution (Gerein, 2015). OER needs to be something which helps the university prosper financially, as well as an academic pursuit, so that it will be part of the normal daily business of the institution (a topic I am investigating in MDDE 605). Conclusion OER offers the prospect of educational materials which are freely available for teaching, and learning. The OpenStax CNX system uses a crowd-sourced approach to curation which may lower cost and, in theory, allow more materials from more sources. However a search for materials on the topic of innovation was disappointing, with very limited content of questionable quality. In contrast the MIT OpenCourseWare system with its centrally curated approach had higher quality material, but which was not usable without accompanying non-open content. The real question may not be curated v crowd sourced, but what are suitable motivations and rewards, including funding models, for creating quality OER. References Azer, S. A. (2015). Is Wikipedia a reliable learning resource for medical students? Evaluating respiratory topics. Advances in physiology 270

education, 39(1), 5-14. Retrieved from http://advan.physiology.org/content/39/1/5 Center for Educational Research and Innovation. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved from: http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38654317.pdf Gerein, K. (2015, June 11). Province may need to step in to save Athabasca University, minister hints. Edmonton Journal, Retrieved from http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Province+need+step+save+Athab asca+University+minister+hints/11129290/story.html. Halttunen, N. (2006). Changing Missions. The Role of Open University Education in the Field of Higher Education in Finland. Scandinavian Journal Of Educational Research, 50(5), 503-517. doi:10.1080/00313830600953584 Holotescu, C. (2015). Emerging Technologies in Education. Conceiving and Building a Microblogging Platform for Formal and Informal Learning (Doctoral dissertation, PhD Thesis, UPT Romania). Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carmen_Holotescu/publication/ 260436339_Emerging_Technologies_in_Education._Conceiving_an d_Building_a_Microblogging_Platform_for_Formal_and_Informal_ Learning/links/54c67c8e0cf256ed5a9e8349.pdf Ives, C., & Pringle, M. M. (2013). Moving to open educational resources at Athabasca University: A case study. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(2), 1-13. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1534/2486 Perry, Walter Sir (1976). Open University. Open Univ. Press, Milton Keynes Stacey, P. (2015). Sustainability Strategies For Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from http://auspace.athabascau.ca:8080/bitstream/2149/3462/1/SustainabilityStrategiesStacey.pptx Wiley, D. (2007). On the sustainability of open educational resource initiatives in higher education. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.p271

su.edu/viewdoc/download? doi=10.1.1.215.1000&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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Developing learning modules from open resources Introduction Here the process to develop a learning module "An Introduction to Entrepreneurship in Technology" using Open Educational Resources (OER) is described. This is intended to be the second part of a new course, provisionally titled "Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship in Technology" to be offered on-line, initially for students in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra. The first steps in instructional design (ID): needs assessment and proposal, were carried out as an assignment for MDDE604 along with development of the first instructional unit ("An Introduction to Innovation") in the previous term. This assignment builds on the previous work with more OER to text, student activities and video added to the Moodle Leaning Management System. It is expected to take one to two hours to complete. OER Sources In the previous work ("Curated or crowd-sourced learning resource development"), two sources of open access content were investigated: OpenStax CNX (cnx.org), established by Rice University and MIT OpenCourseWare system from MIT. A search of these was made for course-ware on the topic of "Entrepreneurship and innovation" with disappointing results. Materials found were unfinished, unsuitable, or lacking in-sufficient open content (instead just being summaries or pointers to commercial for-fee material). As a result the search was then widened to other repositories. Repository Jorum

Search

Returned Items

"Entrepreneur- 2 ship and innovation"

Usefulness

One document limited supplementary use: "Little Book of Enterprise" from Leeds Metropolitan University 273

Repository Jorum

Search

Returned Items

Usefulness

Entrepreneurship AND innovation

11 "Invention and innovation: an introduction" and "Entrepreneurial behavior" (2010) from Open University UK

Open Ta- "Entrepreneurpestry ship and innovation"

21 None: Unreadable thumbnails displayed with cryptic headings. Hypertext links for first four resources returned no documents.

OER "EntrepreneurCommons ship innovation" & Language: English

18 "Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship" is a video and "Sustainability, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship"564 page PDF textbook of limited use.

Flickr "EntrepreneurCreative ship innovation" Commons Search

5,155 Hub Global Network, Practice Gathering l, Milan (CC BY-SA 2.0) 2011

WkikHow "Entrepreneurship innovation"

4 None: step by step approach not suited to university studies.

Wikipedia "Entrepreneurship"

1 Excellent summary, with images and references

Wikipedia "Innovation"

1 Excellent summary, with images and references

OER Repository Search for "Enterprise and innovation" Share Alike Licenses The first repository searched was Jorum, a UK based service using a Creative Commons CC BY-SA license. The "SA" ("Share Alike") 274

for this and the other resources searched is significant, as it requires any upgrades to materials to be made freely available. This may limit use in some circumstances where commercial, or quasi-commercial, education providers want to use and adapt open materials but then not want to share their upgrades. However, Share Alike has the advantage that it requires that those who use and adapt open access material to give back to the educational community by making their improvements available. Jourm Despite being created by the very prominent JISC, Jourm does not appear to be well known, even in the UK. Reed (2012) surveyed staff at Manchester Metropolitan University UK and found that only 32% had hears of Jorum. The same proportion (32%) were familiar with the term "Open Content Movement" and even fewer with "Creative Commons" (24%). For this reason perhaps resources should be put into promoting existing open repositories and directories, not creating new ones or additional content. A search of Jorum for "Entrepreneurship and innovation" returned only two results: "How to promote Employability in Geography and Cognate Degrees" and "Little Book of Enterprise". The first was a 26 page list of resources from Plymouth University for promoting employability of geography graduates. This mentioned "innovation" only twice. It was not clear which, if any, of the resources listed were open access. This is another example of the problem encountered with the MIT OpenCourseWare system: the open materials contains just a brief summary of something which is not, itself, open. The second document is an 88 page "Little Book of Enterprise" from Leeds Metropolitan University. This resembles a self help book with tips on work skills. While this might be a useful supplement to some workshop exercises it is not core course material. Examining the help file for the Jorum search showed that by using double quotes around the search terms the search had been limited to the exact phrase ("Entrepreneurship and innovation"). Removing the quotes and changing "and" to upper case (Entrepreneurship AND innovation) resulted in a further nine documents, making eleven in total.

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One document found with the Jorum search was "Social Enterprise and Changemaker Campus", a video by Tim Curtis and Wray Irwin (2014) . Curiously the video on YouTube is categorized as "adults only", requiring the Safety Mode to be disabled, which is likely to make the video inaccessible to schools (even though it does not contain any content unsuitable for children). The video does not have closed captions provided (as required by accessibility education policy in the UK, Canada and Australia) and the automated YouTube captions and not accurate . The video is a two people talking (a lot), without any interesting visuals, making it of very limited value. A second document found was "Embedding Business Start-Up in the University Curriculum" from Plymouth University (2011). At first this appeared to be a useful guide, but on closer examination it provides just a simple overview of the issues with no directly implementable content. The next document "Exploring the Motivation and Skills of Entrepreneurs", also from Plymouth University, appears to be similar. The Open University's "Invention and innovation: an introduction" appears to be an IMS Content Package. This shows a problem with the Jorum repository directory. Each file of the IMS Content Package is displayed separately, rather than indicating this is one coherent unit. On their own the package components make little sense, but the repository did also allow the download of the full 72Mbyte package. There does appear to be any way to preview the contents, as can be done, for example with the Australian Flexible Learning Toolboxes. So the IMS content package must be downloaded and installed in the LMS to view the contents. The OU innovation package contains a table of contents, text, images and video. The text content has a standard IMS table of contents with items in a strict hierarchy, typical of a self-paced learning module: "Part 1: 4 Key concepts 4.2 Inventors and inventions An inventor is an individual or group able to generate an idea for a new or improved device, product or process. ..." 276

From: "Invention and innovation: an introduction", Open University (2010). Most usefully there are learning outcomes provided: "On completion of this unit, you should be able to: 1. explain invention, design, innovation and diffusion as ongoing processes with a range of factors affecting success at each stage; 2. explain how particular products you use have a history of invention and improvement, and appreciate the role that you and your family, as consumers, have played in this history; 3. define key concepts such as invention, design, innovation, diffusion, product champion, entrepreneur, sustaining and disruptive innovation; 4. explain the role of intellectual property in invention and innovation and list the various ways that inventors can protect their ideas; 5. identify the range of reasons that motivate individuals and organizations to invent; 6. explain the creative process by which individuals come up with ideas for new designs and inventions; 7. explain the technology push, market pull, and coupling models of the innovation process and decide how well they offer a satisfactory explanation of the innovation process; 8. identify and discuss the technical, financial and organizational obstacles that have to be overcome to bring an invention to the market; 9. discuss the importance of choosing an appropriate design, materials and manufacturing process for a particular new product; 10.explain the factors that influence how well an innovation will sell and how rapidly it is likely to diffuse into the market; 11.give examples of disruptive innovations that can introduce a new way of operating in a particular 277

industry, that can challenge existing companies and that can open up new markets for innovative products." From: "Invention and innovation: an introduction", Open University (2010). An eight minute video "Total beauty of sustainable products" is also provided. This comes with a full transcript and still images for those who can't access the video: "[still of electrical products in shop] Narrator There are millions of different products on the world market. But few, if any, have been designed to be truly sustainable. ..." Excerpt from OU video transcript "Total beauty of sustainable products" (2008). The video is well produced with captions and quality graphics, but is provided at only 320 x 240 pixel resolution, which may not be considered acceptable by today's students. This is only one quarter the resolution of standard definition TV and much lower than the resolution of current smart phones. Also included in the OU modules are self assessment questions: "Part 1: 6 Self-assessment questions SAQ 1 Given the definitions you have learnt in Part 1, would you classify the following as an invention or an innovation? (a) BIC ballpoint pen (b) Flettner's rotor ship 278

(c) Edison's tinfoil phonograph (d) Edison's bamboo-filament light bulb. ..." From: "Invention and innovation: an introduction", Open University (2010). Also by OU "Entrepreneurial behavior" (2010) appears to be a similar IMS package, which may also be useful: "Learning Outcomes After studying this unit you should: • •

• • • •

understand the nature of entrepreneurship; understand the function of the entrepreneur in the successful, commercial application of innovations; confirm your entrepreneurial business idea; identify personal attributes that enable best use of entrepreneurial opportunities; explore entrepreneurial leadership and management style; identify the requirements for building an appropriate entrepreneurial team."

From: "Entrepreneurial behavior", OU, (2010). The OU modules in the Jorum repository appear to be copies of old materials which are not being updated. It is not clear how much use this material would be or where the latest version is available. While the "Share Alike" Creative Commons license obliges those modifying the materials to make their changes available, they are not required to deposit them in the same archive, or to make them easily findable. Also the OU materials contain citations, but not the corresponding list of references. These citations are of older, non-OER paper based materials which, even if the student was able to find the reference for, would not be able to access easily. JISC, announced in June 2015 that the Jorum service will close in September 2016. The announcement says JISC is looking at "bringing together existing resources and enabling educators to discuss, 279

rate and use items". This might allow scholarship to influence openness: rather than just dumping some OER in a repository after you had finished it, there might be a dialogue between developers and users. Open Tapestry Unfortunately it is not clear what "Open Tapestry" is. The about us page says: "Imagine if you could... 1. Find educational content that you can use and adapt however you please. 2. Insert a relevant video and a quiz on triangles right into a web page that explains how to use the Pythagorean Theorem. 3. Find online safety training materials and insert them into a page, along with a certification test. 4. Arrange content you find online into a sequence and present it to a group as a slide-show. 5. Build a page using a template and insert a great physiology learning tool you find online, along with an article on the skeletal system. 6. Have a shared collection where you and others can contribute online content for a group project. 7. Automatically save posts with specific keywords from your favorite blog. " From: "About Open Tapestry" http://www.opentapestry.com/tapestries/about-us This implies that Open Tapestry is index and repository of open content, with some tools for sharing. A search for "Entrepreneurship and innovation" returned 21 thumbnails of web pages. The content on the thumbnails is unreadable and this format just makes it harder to read the headings. The hypertext links for the first four resources listed returned no documents. At this point testing of Open Tapestry was abandoned.

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OER Commons OER Commons offers material with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. This is more restrictive than some other repositories as it does not permit commercial use of the material. The website does not clearly state what the entity providing the service is: is it a for-profit company, a university consortium? Who or what is providing this service? A footnote says "a project created by ISKME", but not what that is. A search for "Entrepreneurship and innovation", returned no resources. An advanced search for the keywords "Entrepreneurship innovation" found 35 resources. Like Open Tapestry, OER Commons displayed an unreadable thumbnail for each resources, but unlike Open Tapestry it accompanied this with readable text and working hypertext links (the thumbnails can be turned off). The first four resources looked useful (the next six were not in English): 1. Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship This video lesson introduces students to the worlds of engineering innovation and ... More Subject: Business, Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology Material Type: Video Lectures Provider: MIT Learning International Networks Consortium Provider Set: MIT Blossoms Author: Diane Amanti 2. Sustainability, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship This book is suited for the Entrepreneurship or Innovation course with an ... More Subject: Business Material Type: Textbooks Provider: University of Minnesota Provider Set: University of Minnesota - Open Academics Textbooks Author: Andrea Larson 3. Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Spring 2008 281

This course discusses the basics every manager needs to organize successful technologydriven ... More Subject: Business Material Type: Full Course, Homework and Assignments, Lecture Notes, Syllabi Provider: M.I.T. Provider Set: MIT OpenCourseWare Author: Murray, Fiona 4. Green Design Challenge Activity The Green Design Challenge is to brainstorm, prototype and present a design ... More Subject: Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences Material Type: Activities and Labs Provider: ISKME Provider Set: ISKME Setting the language for search to English returned 18 resources. The first "Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship" is a video by an MIT student and would be of limited use. The next "Sustainability, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship" is a free 564 page PDF textbook (13 Mbytes). There may be something of use in the book, but as is the text seems to range over too many topics and extracting anything useful from the large PDF file would be difficult. The next resource was " Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship" an MIT OpenCourseware course. This course was found with a previous search of another tool and was found to lack OER content: it is a brief summary which then points to non OER readings. This perhaps indicates a problem with these OER indexes: there are many indexes pointing to the same limited amount of content. Flickr Creative Commons Search A search of Flickr for images with a Creative Commons license and the keywords "Entrepreneurship innovation" returned 5,155 images. Some of these were diagrams, which are of limited use on without an accompanying text, or metadata, for context. An example is Gaurav Mishra's diagram "Entrepreneurship in India" which looked interesting but the website it is from appears lost: 282

Also it should be noted that while this diagram is tagged with a Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0) in Flickr, this image itself contains a copyright notice and no mention of Creative Commons, making use of the image problematic. Most photos found in Flickr were of individuals apparently giving presentations or groups at innovation events, in a typical post-it note rich environment. These might be useful for illustrating a course presentation. WikiHow While most of the OER sources examined so far are not-for-profit consortia of universities and Flickr is a for-profit company, WkikHow.com a "hybrid organization" being a for-profit company supported by advertising but aiming to provide public benefit. A search of WikiHow for "Entrepreneurship innovation" returned five resources, the first four of which were on topic: 1. How to Develop Entrepreneurial Leadership: 6 Steps Entrepreneurs typically have innovative ideas, create new products and continually ... Look at change as a necessary component of innovation and creativity. www.wikihow.com/Develop-EntrepreneurialLeadership 2. How to Become a Successful Internet Entrepreneur: 6 Steps How to Become a Successful Internet Entrepreneur. These days, the Internet is a major part of both small and big business. With extensive traffic on the web, ... www.wikihow.com/Become-a-SuccessfulInternet-Entrepreneur 3. 3 Ways to Be a Successful Entrepreneur wikiHow However, entrepreneurs incur huge risks since there's a high likelihood of failure. To be ... A small innovation on an existing product is a great way to differentiate ... www.wikihow.com/Be-a-SuccessfulEntrepreneur 4. How to Come Up With a Business Idea: 14 Steps 283

- wikiHow Successful entrepreneurs are innovators. They don't stick with old methods or technologies, but rather look ahead and see what will be successful in the future. www.wikihow.com/Come-Up-With-a-BusinessIdea 5. How to Get Into Stanford (with Pictures) wikiHow The committee has seen it all, can easily call BS, and won't be impressed by anything other than innovation, genuineness, and honesty. It is possible to write an ... www.wikihow.com/Get-Into-Stanford However, while these items were mostly on topic, the step by step approach does not suit a topic as complex as innovation and entrepreneurship. This approach may be suitable for some forms of vocational education, or skills for higher educated. The incorporation of advertisements was not too distracting. However, this may be a problem for an institution, or consortia which offers for-fee education. WikiHow offered degrees in Entrepreneurship innovation from Australian universities. Those contributing to the repository would have to take care their content was not show alongside advertisements for rival institutions. Also there is a risk of "we will write your assignment for you" advertisements being shown, which would detract from the reputation of the suppliers of the content. Wikipedia Searching for OER on "Entrepreneurship" identified a 96 page ebook "Entrepreneurship: A group of ideas around entrepreneurship". This has an excellent summary, with images and references. Further examination showed this to be a "Wikipedia Book", that is is collection of Wikipedia entries, which have been rendered to book format. A modified book was produced, with further Wikipedia entries, resulting in the 192 page "Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship: Technology, Business and People", which was then added as a reading in the course notes. The re-purposing of Wikipedia content in this format may go some way to reducing con284

cerns from teachers over its use. The selection of the Wikipedia content for the e-book can be curated by the course designer and once rendered to a PDF book the content is fixed and not subject to change. Also, rather than tell students not to use the Wikipedia, this shows an acceptable academic use. Adapting Content Text Adapted from OU The most suitable source of OER found was Open University UK. However, the copy of "Entrepreneurial behavior" in the Jorum repository is dated 2010. A later copy is available from the OU website (2013). What is provided are the HTML (web based) notes, rather than an IMS Content Package. As a result while the Flash based quiz questions function, it is not possible to download the question for reuse (It was necessary to transcribe the questions to reuse them). Adapting Work The web content from OU UK was copied and pasted into the Moodle book editor. The creative commons license at the bottom of the document was then modified to indicate this is a derived work. One difficulty was that the OUUK document also contained so copyright material which had to be deleted. To this had to be added some new video (as the OU video was of too low resolution), activities and adapted questions. Sizing Work The OU UK course notes are 6,925 words (equivalent to 15 pages). This is far in excess of the amount of material needed for a one to two hour learning module. McEwan (2012, p. 80) notes: "Typically, a student with an overall 6.5 IELTS score will have a reading speed for comprehension of approximately 80 words per minute as compared to 400 words per minute for native speakers."

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Just reading the text, without allowing for videos or activities, would take the student between 17 minutes to one and a half hours. The approach adopted to adapting the material was therefore to delete unsuitable (for example because it is not open access) and verbose text, to make way for other OER content. This reduced the notes to about half the size (3,200 words, six pages). The images in the OU module were also too low resolution to be usable and have been omitted and new images added from OER sources. The OU notes used images to show tables, contrary to web accessibility guidelines, so some of these had to be transcribed (others omitted). The notes also contained more student exercises than could be undertaken in 90 minutes and two thirds of these have been omitted. The original text is somewhat verbose. As an example the module starts: "There are literally dozens and dozens of different definitions of 'the entrepreneur' and the concept of 'entrepreneurship'. Researchers and writers often seem to pick the definition that best fits the area they are discussing." Saying there are " dozens and dozens of different definitions"will frustrate the reader if at least one definition is not then provided. Therefore this has been omitted and the introduction instead just gives the student one definition of entrepreneurship. Adding student Interaction The OU course materials included interactive quizzes for the student. However, these where simply free-form text questions. Without anyone to provide feedback to the student, there are of little value. As a result the quiz questions have been adapted to forum topics for students to answer and then discuss in a Moodle forum with other students. Students can then rate the responses from each other. Where the OU quizzes were, a new multiple choice quiz, using some of the course content has been added.

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Conclusion Searching for OER proved a time consuming and frustrating process. The repositories do not appear to be well maintained, with out of date materials and material which is more for marketing proprietary closed content than for genuine open use. The most useful strategy was to use the repositories to find organizations likely to have content, but then search that organization's list of material to find content. None of the content found was usable unmodified, due both to the format used (which did not meet accessibility standard) nor content (which was too detailed). While OER content might be "free" (usable without a charge) the cost of effort required to find and adapt this material is a considerable use of resources. However, traditional closed proprietary content, such as textbooks, also require selection and modification. It would be rare for a course designer to find one textbook which was sufficient for a course without supplementation. In the end the content of one OU course was used, along with an MIT video. However, the OU materials had to be shortened, the "quiz" modified into a forum exercise and new quiz added. This took considerable work to find, select and adapt the OER and was not the "plug and play" experience which might be assumed. References Curtis, T., & Irwin, W. (2014). Social Enterprise and Changemaker Campus. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPsUXkB7Keo McEwan, M. (2012). Evaluating and enhancing the feedback process: an international college case study. Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 7(1), 79-95. Retrieved from http://community.dur.ac.uk/pestlhe.learning/index.php/pestlhe/article/viewFile/131/244 Reed, P. (2012). Awareness, attitudes and participation of teaching staff towards the open content movement in one university. Research In Learning Technology, 20. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.18520

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Mobile Learning 1. The benefits and challenges of m-learning 2. Mobile Learning and Distance Education

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The benefits and challenges of m-learning Introduction This paper first investigates what mobile learning (m-leaning) is, the benefits and challenges of adopting it and provides some Australian examples for remote indigenous communities. M-learning suffers from a lack of a clear definition as to what it is: from any use of mo bile device to any non-place specific learning. Also there are the inflated hopes expected of any technology newly applied to education. There is research into what m-learning is and results of its use for millions of students over the last five years. This paper concludes by suggesting m-learning is particularlyapplicable for students in developing counties with limited infrastructure and in remote parts of developing nations. In particular m-learning techniques might help solve a current problem for outback students using the Australian NBN Interim Satellite system. What is m-Learning? Clearly the experience of interacting with a mobile device on a bus is different to using a desktop computer at home. Does this change the nature of the learning: should the content and activities be different? A student may read notes and reply to a forum question (which requires a short answer) from a mobile device. But will the student try to prepare a 4,000 word essay on the bus? Should the assessment tasks be broken into smaller components to suit this environment? Should we tell the student how many hours of "desktop" time they will need to complete the course (as opposed to palmtop time)? At its most literal, Palalas (2010), points out that mobile technologies are portable: hardware which can be carried and with wireless networking. Earlier definitions tend to focus more on the hardware and latter ones about the educational process (being personal and customized). The general principles of Palalas (2010) remain current, but specific technology mentioned, particularly PDAs and "mini-computers" is obsolete.

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M-learning in Developing Nations Ally and Tsinakos (p. 1, 2014) argues that "... it is important that standards for mobile learning be set so that high-quality mobile learning materials are developed and learning materials can be shared among educational organizations". However, developing nations have fewer resources for education and training, as a result timely low cost materials may be preferred to high quality. It may be tempting to require sharing among organizations, but this may lessen the incentive for development of material: why produce any materials if you can get them from someone else? A search of Google Scholar for papers with the words:' "personal digital assistant" pda education training' shows a significant number of papers up to ten years ago: To Year Papers 1995

65

2000

238

2005

3030

2010

8340

2015

13800

Search of Google Scholar for papers, with the words:' "personal digital assistant" pda education training'. The definitions of m-learning Crompton (2014) offer do acknowledge that devices such as the Palm were being discussed for leaning in 2000. Some of the definitions refer to wireless communication, but most just refer to hand-held devices. Curiously, this "mobile" definition could be applied to an ordinary paper textbook. Crompton (p. 8, 2014) proposes m-Learning "be defined as: learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions, using personal electronic devices". However, this would exclude learning which does not involve social interaction and, by implication standalone devices. In particular this would exclude providing education modules for developing nations where there is limited broadband ac292

cess. This would exclude the entries in the Global Learning XPRIZE, including OATSEA Foundation's Teachervirus (discussed later). Crompton's (2014) broad-brush approach to m-learning contrasts with Brown, Hruska, Johnson and Poltrack (2014), who focus on the specifics of standards for m-Learning. However, the authors refer to HTML as a "de facto Web standard", when HTML is a series of well defined and supported de jure standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and ratified by national and international standards bodies. The use of standards is particularly important for mobile devices, which cannot be as easily updated as desktop computers. Yeonjeong (p.28, 2014) uses the definition "Mobile learning refers to the use of mobile or wireless devices for the purpose of learning while on the move.". This circular definition, defining a mobile learning as learning with a mobile device, is not particularity useful. Like many definitions, " wireless" (presumably wireless telecommunications) is seen to be key to mobile learning. Yeonjeong (p. 38,2014) identifies four types of m-learning: 1. high transactional distance socialised mLearning; 2. high transactional distance individualised mLearning; 3. low transactional distance socialised mLearning; and 4. low transactional distance individualised All of these include the word "distance", although there is no reason given as to why m-learning need be limited to distance education. Mobile devices could be used in, or near, the classroom (such as on the bus on the way to class). Removing the repeated words from Yeonjeong's for types, and reversing the order, to the more logical low to high, produces a two dimensional matrix: Transactional Level

Social Learning Level Individualized (with in- Socialized 293

(group

structor, or receive tightly structured con- learning) tent) Low (less psychological and communication 4 MOOCs? space with the instructor)

3 MOOCs group work?

with

High (more 2 Individual Projects and 1 Traditional small psychological and Research with a e-learning course communication space Mentor/supervisor?? (as in the MEd) with instructor) Transaction and Social level of e-learning (after Yeonjeong, 2014) This two dimensional space could be used to position types of mlearning. McGreal (p. 49, 2014) makes the point that 'Wireless technologies through the use of the Internet on new and more powerful networks are providing expanded access to learning opportunities in remote regions and in poorer barrios that were never linked to the "wired" world. ("barrios is used in the USA to denote a poorer area of a city). McGreal (p. 54, 2014) goes on to argue that "... for mLearning applications, OER are essential". However, there is now a large market for "Apps", including educational Apps. Private for-profit education companies, some offshoots of academic publishers, have long sold computer based educational materials. Many of the MOOC consortia are also variations on a "Fremium" business model: with the student given a free taster, to get them hooked on the full for-a-fee course. It is likely that there will be a mix of open and closed resources used for m-learning. Specht (p. 62, 2014) discusses contextualized m-learning, using Ambient Information ChannEls (AICHE) model: 1. Mobile interface design: optimal use of a small screen.

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2. Mobile legacy access: Adapting existing content and LMS to a small screen. 3. Contextualised learning support: Changing the content and functions based on where the phone is and therefore what the user is likely to be doing and so want information about. 4. Seamless and cross-context support: Allowing the user to go from device to device, while using the same content and functions. As an example the user might do some work on a desktop computer and then continue on a mobile device on the bus. Specht (p. 64, 2014) describes AICHE as using a "simple metaphor of information channels that are ambient all around us". The device tunes into what is most relevant to the user, depending on where they are and what they are trying to do. AICHE is described as having four layers: Sensor, Aggregation, Control, and Indicator, with the components: Sensors, Channels, Artefacts, and Control structures. Sensor information, such as relation, Location, time, environment and ID can be aggregated. For example, a smartphone might aggregate the GPS coordinates and time into "The user is a student in chem101, at the lecture theater and the lecture is about to start, so I will show them the topic page". Specht (p. 68, 2014) describes this as "Synchronisation of different entities and their contextual information". It could also be seen as "Framing" information to a larger context. Some of Specht (p. 69, 2014)'s suggestions do not appear new or radical, as an example, "Time-Based Notification for Reflection Support" has students sent a daily message and asked to reflect on their learning. This does not seem so different to the messages students are regularly sent via an LMS. In this case the author points out that only the time of day is used. But pushing such a message to a mobile device might be less useful than waiting for the student to collect it. Unless the device can tell when the student will be receptive to reflection (for example, by detecting they are not driving a car) then the student is likely to ignore the message or respond with a cursory reply. In contrast if the student needs to consciously decide to log into the LMS to collect messages, they presumably will be at a time and place when they are able to undertake learning. 295

Stead (p. 100, 2014) suggests m-learning can be used for "stolen moments" and "just in time" training. The author mentions the Mobile Learning Environment project (MoLE) project, which Ferrer, Hodges and Bonnardel (2013) describe as "an international experiment about mobile learning environment which provided learning resources and tools for personnel in disaster or emergency situations." This looks like it was a worthwhile initiative but one which was not sustained, which tends to happen more for mobile projects than other e-learning, perhaps due to the rapidly changing technology rendering work obsolete quickly. Stead (2014) goes on to discuss other "dilemmas for mobile developers", with decisions having top be made over web versus app use, which app platform to support and if apps should function off-line. Ferran-Ferrer, Domingo, Prieto-Blazquez, Corcoles, Sancho-Vinuesa and Santanach (2014) discuss the use of m-learning as a complement to e-leaning at the "Open University of Catalonia (UoC) in the "mUOC" project. This was to facilitate the use of mobile devices, but their a survey showed that 94% of students owned a laptop, 76% a tablet and 45% an e-reader (with no mention of smaller mobile devices). Given that almost all university students have a laptop, it might be useful to have a strategy for the use of a smartphone or tablet to complement the laptop, rather than have strategies which make exclusive use of the more mobile device That students just use their phones for everything is just one myth of mlearning. Mobile Learning Myths. Parsons (2014) lists their top five mobile learning myths: 1. Mobile Learning Is "Anytime, Anyplace" Learning: The author makes the point m-learning can be context specific. This might be better called "Here and Now" learning. 2. Mobile Learning Is "Just In Time" Learning. 3. Mobile Learning Is Learning While Mobile: The author makes the point that it is ubiquity, not mobility, that is important.

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4. Mobile Learning Is an Extension of eLearning: Parsons (2014) argues that m-learning can be more than just e-learning ported to a mobile device. However, many of the uses promoted for m-learning appear to be contrived or to suggest that somehow just giving the student a mobile device some how empowers them (discussed later with reference to the OLPC). 5. Mobile Learning Is an Extension of Distance Learning: Parsons (2014) makes the point that m-learning is not just a form of distance learning. Perhaps time educators stopped worrying about the campus/distance divide. Any university course developed today, even for use on a campus, is likely to make use of some on-line resources which will be available off-campus. Peters (p. 116, 2009) in work for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (a consortium of government vocational learning providers) proposes a "just enough, just in time, just for me" model of flexible learning. Wishart (2009) follows a similar vocational approach, reporting on a study of the use of mobile devices by trainee teachers on school placements. Thirteen science teachers and six trainee teachers were given PDAs. These appear to have been relatively advanced models for the time, with cameras and Internet access. But their GPRS modems would be limited to about 35 kbps, well below today's wireless "broadband" and participants only had a monthly allocation of 6MB of data (less than one hundredth of today's cheapest plans). Interestingly, even with these primitive devices the teachers were accessing a Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). After five months only half of Wishart's participants were still using the PDAs. Two used desktop computers instead, using USB memory sticks for portability. Two had not tried the PDAs. One could not read the small screen and one found the stylus unusable (this was before sensitive touch-screens were available). Those teachers who were using the PDAs, used them for making notes in meetings and lesson observations, Calendar Scheduling, photos and videos, researching on the Internet. In contrast the PDAs were not used at all for communication with the trainees. 297

Of the six trainee teachers in Wishart (2009), only two were still using them after six months. The author concludes "... reflections on their teaching experience with their tutors via a blog was not successful in that trainees in this study preferred not to use it" (Wishart, p. 273, 2009). The researchers point out that this was more because the trainee could not see why they should share their reflections online, rather than problems with the hardware. Many of the problems with hardware have been addressed by today's smartphones and tablet computers. Developing nations have fewer resources for education and training. Learning may offer a way to deliver low cost materials ins a timely way. Learning can include social interactions, but the option of a relatively modest upgrade of paper-based distance education should not be ignored, especially where there is limited broadband access for more advanced techniques. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides well defined and supported standards which can be used for mobile devices. Learning may be in part be provided using OER. However, "Fremium" and full for-fee business models may be more viable. Today's smartphones and tablet computers solve many of the problems which limited previous attempts at m-learning, but courses still need to be designed with the learner in mind. Is Mobility Needed for Mobile Learning? One obvious application of m-learning is where the student does not have fixed computer and telecommunications infrastructure. An example is Philip Townsend's suggestion for connecting trainee teachers together in remote indigenous communities (Townsend, 2014). The students do not necessarily have one fixed home and may be moving between multiple campsites. Some m-learning applications are really "mobile" or location based. Cochrane and Bateman (p. 145, 2010s discuss Geo-tagging, which would be more difficult without a GPS enabled smartphone. Many instances of m-learning appear to not be about advantages of mobile learning, but just that the student only has a mobile device, so that is pressed into use for learning. Brown and Mbati (2015)'s text quizzes on basic phones is an example of this. Given a choice and educational designer would not use a tiny text-only screen and numeric keyboard for quizzes. But given a choice between using the phone 298

the student has, or having nothing at all, the phone is pressed into service. Mobile Devices as Low Cost Education Devices The mobility of a device may be incidental to its value for learning. The $15M Global Learning XPRIZE has as its aim to provide basic literacy and numeracy using technology (XPRIZE Foundation, 2015): "The Global Learning XPRIZE challenges teams from around the world to develop open source and scalable software that will enable children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic within 18 months. Once the 18-month fieldtesting phase concludes, the prize purse will be objectively awarded to the team that generates the best international standardized test scores within the group of participating children. Our goal is an empowered generation that will positively impact their communities, countries and the world." Of the 198 Xprize teams, thirteen are from Canada and six from Australia. One team, Hotspot School is the "OATSEA Foundation is from the Canberra region. For their "Hotspot School they propose a small, solar powered Rasberry PI based server which will distribute educational content to smartphones. The use of smartphones is envisaged as these are low cost rugged devices which students can be expected to be able to afford (or their families will already have). The smartphone has a battery and so is independent of main power supply (and can be charged periodically from a solar panel or shared village supply). Are Laptops Mobile Devices? The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project XO computer was intended to promote learning through small computers in developing countries. These devices, while described as "laptops" (Figure 1) would fit the m-leaning definition, as they were designed to be small enough for primary school children to hold and included educational 299

software. The units had a screen which folded over the keyboard to make an ebook. McGreal (2014) claims that the MIT one laptop per child (OLPC) initiative opened up the market for low cost mobile devices. However, full-scale production of the "OLPC only started in late 2007, at around the same time as the commercial "ASUS Eee PC 700 Series. As a readily available low cost device which was widley discussed at the time, the Eee PC probably had more influence on the real world than the OLPC (which was hailed in academia but was not widely adopted). This illustrates the need to balance the potential educational benefits of bespoke education hardware or software against the low cost and wide viably of widely used products. M-learning Barriers Shonola and Joy (p. 3330, 2014) in a study of barriers to M-learning in Nigeria, suggest the curriculum be suitable for on-line delivery and take into account the "cognitive and social skills of the students rather than being a mere communication medium". The authors also suggest training the teaching staff in use of the technology, not only to provide the needed skill, but also bring about a chnage in attitude. Perhaps most importantly, Shonola and Joy (p. 3330, 2014) caution against an over-reliance on mobile devices in the students, suggesting m-learning should supplement, not replace, classroom attendance. Rikala, Hiltunen and Vesisenaho (2014), interviewed primary and secondary school teachers in Central Finland about their readiness to adopt m-learning. The researchers found barriers to m-learning to be the same as for other computer use: a lack of confidence, competence and access to resources, with resources, professional development and support being suggested to overcome these. Rikala, Hiltunen and Vesisenaho (2014), point out that teachers may need help with a different pedagogy applied with the new technology. I have attended many training courses which explained the details of how to work some educational software, but not why to use it. Du (2015), surveyed users of the Blackboard App. Disadvantages found included the limited Functionality. as compared with the desk300

top version (no class calendar or grade book), Usability problems with the small screen, Reliability of the app on a range of mobile devices, Security on a device carried around. However, real barrier may be that the mobile application is seen to be an inferior version of an existing desktop application and so suffer in the comparison (only half the students in the study had tried the Blackboard App). Perhaps the greatest barrier to m-learning are over-hyped and underdelivering products. Lopez, Cerezo, Menendez, and Ballesteros (2015) describe using a mobile device for helping tourism guides pass an examination. I had imagined this would involve a location based application, which would tell candidates about a tourist attraction and then quiz them on it. However, as described, the application has no mobile features: it does allow collaboration, where students make up question for others to be tested on, but this is just e-learning on a mobile device. Benefits and Challenges The OLPC Project provides the largest and most well researched deployment of mobile learning undertaken. Several million OLPC computers were distributed in several nations. Little educational benefit was apparent in the studies into their use. Beuermann, Cristia, Cueto, Malamud and Cruz-Aguayo (2015) carried out a randomized trial of the OLPC in Peru and found no improvement in academic achievement or cognitive skills for students with the computers. James (2015) found that the cost of implementing the OLPC in Peru and Rwanda would cause an acute imbalance in their national education budgets. They suggested it would be preferable to invest in teachers, not hardware. Townsend's (2014) approach of providing training for teachers via mobile devices might be a reasonable first step, before providing M-leaning direct to the student. One often cited reason for the use of m-learning is to overcome a lack of conventional resources for education or for locations where conventional education cannot access. Wuyungaowa (2015) describes the use of the popular Chinese social media platform WeChat for undergraduate university students to practice their English. Students used text chat to practice written communication and audio messages for spoken English. A survey of students showed that most 301

students were worried that the audio messages would use up too much of their mobile phone data use. This placed students who did not have access to free WiFi at a disadvantage. It should be noted that the disadvantaged group to be helped with mlearning need not be in a developed nation. In Australia 50% of the young people in detention are aboriginal, even though they make up only 5% of the youth population (Spiranovic, Clare, Bartels, Clare & Clare, 2015). It should be noted that for many of these students English is a second language. Basic literacy and vocationally related education might be provided through m-learning. M-learning can be used to make up for a lack of conventional resources and locations where conventional education cannot be provided. However, mobile devices on their own do not necessarily improve learning, pedagogy needs to also be considered. M-learning and Pedagogy Brown and Mbati (2015) suggest m-Learning has supports Social Constructivism and other emerging pedagogy: 1. Administrative Support and Motivational Messages Through SMS 2. Quizzes on Very Basic Phones 3. Audio-Visual Affordances 4. Location Awareness and GPS 5. Contextual and Situated Learning 6. Augmented Reality and Immersive Presence 7. Integrating Formal and Informal Learning 8. Personal Publishing and Sharing Cochrane and Bateman (p. 145, 2010) present much the same information in a table, mapping affordances to pedagogy, with an emphasis on situated and collaborative Learning. Hoven and Palalas (2011), take a similar approach, situating mobile language learning within an existing Ecological Constructivist approach. With the constructivist the students create content using mobile devices, rather than just act as passive consumers.

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M-Learning Examples Implementing the Australian Technologies Curriculum for Schools The "Foundation to Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Technologies" was "endorsed on Friday 18 September 2015 by all Australian State and Territory Ministers for Education for use in schools (Education Council, 2015). A new technology curriculum is an obvious area for the use of technology for learning and Intel, with the help of Macquarie University have developed a "Teacher's guide for the use of small Arduino battery powered computers (Boyd, Burfoot, Green, & Howe, 2015). The Arduino uses similar technology to a mobile phone, but allows the student direct physical access to the hardware and a sense of control by being able to program it (rather than the technology controlling them). Coding exercises. Australian company "Grok Learning has developed one hour coding exercises for supporting the Australian curriculum. These are designed for an iPad, although also available on a desktop web browser. The exercises use "turtle graphics" for drawing. The two versions of the exercises used: one with a "visual programming language (Blockly) and one using the programming language Python. The programming environment used is similar to "Snap!" used for UC Berkeley's "Beauty and Joy of Computing" ("Harvey, 2012). The use of turtle graphics for teaching extends much further back, at least to the mid 1970s ("Solomon & Papert, 1976). It is interesting to see that it has taken more than 40 years for the hardware to catch up with teaching ideas. Grok's implementation is only a few weeks old and they were still making some improvements. Overall the exercises worked well for teaching programming fundamentals. However, these exercises would only be useful where the student was able to obtain help from a human tutor, such as in a classroom. On its own, for the distance education student, the exercises would be very frustrating. The exercises do not exploit any of the mobility features of the iPad, just using it as a web interface. It would be possible to exploit the iPad's sensors to make it a more active part of the exercise.

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M-learning for Remote Indigenous Communities. As discussed previously, Townsend (2014) proposes the use of mobile devices for teacher education in remote Australian indigenous communities. These communities lack a fixed telecommunications and education infrastructure. The Australian government's "National Broadband Network" (NBN) involved more than $30B on fiber optic and hybrid cable to households in the city, fixed terrestrial wireless in regional areas and satellite broadband in remote areas. As well as providing direct consumer home and school satellite links, the NBN satellite will be used to provide mobile phone coverage, including Internet access in remote indigenous communities. Just as such mobile access has allowed developing nations to skip the step of terrestrial commutations, the same should be possible for remote Australian communities. This aspect of the NBN has not been noted by other educational researchers. Radoll (2015) discussed the possible role of the NBN in the classroom for indigenous students, but does not mention mobile learning, or its role outside the formal classroom. Use of Audio for M-Learning Venkataraman and Prabhakar (2014) describe the use of audio via mobile phones for Indian farmers and "Townsend (2014) for trainee teachers in remote Australian indigenous communities. In addition to providing a mode of communication suited to the user, audio has lower bandwidth requirements than video and so is more suited to remote and less affluent students. Live-to-air, recorded or synthesized speech could also be used by urban students when they are walking or in a vehicle (although two way speech may be hazardous while driving). Audio podcasts of educational content can be provided as an alternative to text, both for those with a disability and for use more generally. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL), makes papers available in MP3 as well as HTML, EPUB and formats. The MP3 file is generated using a text to speech system, keeping production cost low and also the file size. As an example, the paper by Young and Hung, (2014) on mobile education in China is a 39 minute 9.3 Mbyte audio file. While this is larger than the text versions (2.2 Mbytes HTML, 941 Kbytes of PDF and 736 Kbytes of

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EPUB), is several hundred times smaller than even at low resolution video encoding rate of 1 Mbps. Reflow Text for M-learning The EPUB papers in IRRODL should be suitable for display on a mobile device (using an EPUB reader). However, a check with the Google Mobile Page Speed Insights Test https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ indicates that the could be modified to improve the display of the web version of the documents. Academic papers were not designed for display on mobile devices, but can be adapted. A responsive web page design which removed the large image and sidebar from IRRODL would allow the paper's metadata (title, authors and abstract) to be displayed. Combating the Scroll of Death. The limited space available on a mobile device might provide a useful discipline for e-learning design. Courses implemented with the Moodle Learning Management system suffer from what is referred to as the "Scroll of Death", where the content consists of one very long web page. If the course designer is has to fit everything on a small mobile screen, they will be forced to only include what is necessary and select a logical ordering and grouping to present the material in. This should aid all students, even those using larger desktop displays, as they will not be presented with unnecessary and poorly arranged material. Australian Rural Data Drought An issue in the national press in Australia this week is the availability of bandwidth for education. The first of two satellites (the first named "Sky Muster"), costing the government $500M each, has been launched to supply broadband to remote communities. But already there is worry the system will become quickly overloaded. The government had considered adding third satellite, but a 2014 review determined it would not be used to capacity. Two satellites will provide 135 Gbps down and 40 Gbps up, shared by about 200,000 ground-stations (Gregory, 2015). The current interim satellite system has become overloaded, with each customer reduced from 100 gigabytes (GB) a month to 45 GB 305

and them to 20 GB. As a news item points out (Courtney, 2015) this has to be shared by all students at one location. So five students on a remote cattle station only get 9 GB each. This has now become a national political issue, with a "Better Internet for Rural, Regional and Remote Australia" (BIRRR) Facebook campaign. The Australian Government estimates that "... a typical distance education student will download 15 to 20 gigabytes (GB) of data in a month" (Fletcher, 2015). However, the research this estimate is based on does not appear to have been published. The bandwidth issue for satellite users also applies to mobile devices using mobile networks. Some satellite users will be using a mobile device for access, with the signal relayed from the satellite ground station to a mobile device, using WiFi or a mobile phone base station. It is suggested that providing efficiently encoded educational materials and services might suit both mobile and satellite users. Rather than have three versions of the interface and content: for desktop, satellite and mobile users, it should be possible to use the one for all. An additional benefit of this may be that satellite users may be more forgiving of compromises brought about by limited bandwidth, if they believe this was done to provide mobile access. Where bandwidth is limited or access intermittent, technical means, such as caching, can be used to reduce dependence on the network. Also the educational material can be designed to reduce dependence on the network. As an example, a classic distance education design can be used. With this the student receives a package of materials at the start of a course (traditionally a "reading brick" but now an ebook, or SCORM package). This provides all the materials the student needs for an entire semester. The course materials also include a study plan for the student to work through. The student completes exercises and sends in their work for assessment. This Distance Education approach did not have a high completion rate in the days of paper mail. But with e-learning the student can be sent short nudges to help them work. These short postings from a human tutor (or from automated reminders programmed into the course) need only be a few hundred characters of text. Along with text based forums, this makes the student feel involved with the 306

course at minimal bandwidth cost. A layered approach could be applied to course design, where, if more bandwidth is available, students can have live to air audio or video discussions. Conclusion This paper investigated what mobile learning is the, benefits and challenges of adopting it and provided some Australian examples. Broad definitions of m-learning being any form of non-place specific learning are of little practical value. A better definition is that mlearning is the application of educational techniques through wearable, hand held and portable electronic devices, usually with wireless telecommunications. Special provision of mobile devices to students are unlikely to be a cost effective use of education resources. Mleaning may be of benefit for marginalized groups in remote parts of developed nations and in developing nations. However, just providing mobile devices to students does not help with learning, this has to be part of an educational program. M-learning is an adaption of elearning and can be successfully applied using techniques adopted from distance education. M-learning is best applied in addition to other forms of education. It is suggested that responsive and accessible web design can allow the student to choose the device they use for learning to suit the time and place. It is suggested that conventional e-learning applied to mobile formats could be used to cope with the limited bandwidth available on the Australian NBN Interim Satellite system. References Ally, M., & Tsinakos, A. (2014). Increasing access through mobile learning. Beuermann, D. W., Cristia, J., Cueto, S., Malamud, O., & CruzAguayo, Y. (2015). One Laptop per Child at Home: Short-Term Impacts from a Randomized Experiment in Peru. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7(2), 53-80. Retrieved from http://udep.edu.pe/cceeee/files/2014/07/1B_1_BEUERMANNCristiaCuetoMalamudCruz-Aguayo.pdf Boyd, S., Burfoot, J., Green, D., & Howe, C. (2015). A Teacher's Guide To The Intel Galileo, Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre. Re307

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vices to Small and Marginal Farmers in India: A Case Study, in Ally, M., & Tsinakos, A. (2014).Increasing access through mobile learning. Retrieved from http://en.copian.ca/library/research/commonwealth_of_learning/perspectives/perspectives.pdf Wishart, J. (2009). Use of mobile technology for teacher training. Mobile learning: Transforming the delivery of education and training, 265-278. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jocelyn_Wishart/publication/253114477_Use_of_Mobile_Technology _for_Teacher_Training/links/0f31753b4308f1fca1000000.pdf Wuyungaowa. (2015). Engaging EFL Learners through WeChat: A Mobile Phone-Based EFL Learning Project in China. International HETL Review, Volume 5, Article 5. Retrieved from https://www.hetl.org/engaging-efl-learners-through-wechat-a-mobile-phone-basedefl-learning-project-in-china XPRIZE Foundation. (2015). Global Learning XPRIZE. Retrieved from http://learning.xprize.org/ Yeonjeong, P. (2014) A Pedagogical Framework for Mobile Learning: Categorising Educational Applications of Mobile Technologies into Four Types, in Ally, M., & Tsinakos, A. (2014). Increasing access through mobile learning. Retrieved from http://en.copian.ca/library/research/commonwealth_of_learning/perspectives/perspectives.pdf Young, S. S. C., & Hung, H. C. (2014). Coping with the challenges of open online education in Chinese societies in the mobile era: NTHU OCW as a case study. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 15(3). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1742 Zervas, P. & Sampson, G. (2014). Supporting Mobile Access to Online Courses: The ASK Mobile SCOR Player and the ASK Mobile LD Player, inin Ally, M., & Tsinakos, A. (2014).Increasing access through mobile learning. Retrieved from http://dspace.col.org/bitstream/123456789/514/1/pub_Mobile Learning_web.pdf

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Mobile Learning and Distance Education Introduction This paper investigates the use of mobile learning (m-learning) for programs and workplace learning. My area of work concerns teaching ICT students in Australian postgraduate programs leading to professional certification. Such courses are increasingly delivered via blended and e-learning, using tools such as Moodle. However, one aspect of such programs which has limited support from on-line tools and remains an educational and administrative problem is the workplace experience component required for professional certification of graduates. This paper considers the question as to if m-learning can help with workplace learning. M-learning in the Literature: The Latest Technological Determinism? Before considering m-learning, a brief overview of previous technology applied to education may be of use. There is a level of technological determinism built into the naming of forms of distance education, and confusion between the use of technology for distance and classroom use, in the literature. Proposals for what eventually became the UK Open University were described as a "televarsity" and "University of the Air" in the planning phase (Briggs, pp. 494-568, 1995). The Open University of China (Chinese: 国家开放大学 and the English website for OUC is http://en.ouchn.edu.cn/) was formed from the "China Central Radio and TV University" or "CCRTVU" (Guri-Rosenblit, p. 115, 2014). The Internet has replaced radio and TV for the delivery of many courses. Guri-Rosenblit (p. 109, 2014) point to the confusion today, with "... a common misleading tenancy to refer to online education as a synonym for distance education". These examples place the technology used (broadcast television and radio) prominently in the description of the form of education. Is mlearning just the latest example of this?

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M-learning at Australian Universities A search for "mobile learning" at Australian university web sites (with domain names ending in "edu.au"), returned 7,000 results. A similar number of documents were returned with a search for "mLearning" at Australian universities. However, the abbreviation appears to be used by education academics when discussing theory, whereas the term "mobile learning" is used when addressing students. An example of the former is the "mLearning: New Technologies, New Pedagogiesproject" at University of Wollongong (Herrington, Mantei, Herrington, Olney & Ferry, 2008). The project initially set out to investigate mobile phones, PDAs, and iPods (mp3 players), but within the lifetime of the project, mobile phones and PDAs merged to become smartphones. Since 2008 the mp3 player has also been subsumed by the smartphone. It may be that discussion of "m-learning" will be rendered irrelevant if this trend continues, with laptop computers replaced by tablet computers with optional keyboards and desktop PCs by flat screens which can be synced to a mobile device. Herrington, Mantei, Herrington, Olney & Ferry (2008) set out to answer four questions concerning m-learning: •

•

•

•

What are the technology affordances of smartphones and iPods for teaching and learning in higher education? What are appropriate strategies for the professional development of higher education teachers in the pedagogical use of m-learning devices? What pedagogical strategies facilitate the use of m-learning devices in authentic learning environments in higher education? What pedagogical principles facilitate the use of m-learning devices in authentic learning environments in higher education?

These questions are as relevant in today as they were in 2008. However, the affordances of mobile devices should be expanded to include the wireless networks, which make the devices so useful. Previous strategies for e-learning assumed that the student had access at 314

home to a computer connected to the Internet, many m-learning strategies assume not only the mobile device but ubiquitous wireless access. Ubiquitous access is important for situated learning, that is learning in the environment the learning is about, this is perhaps the most obvious pedagogical principle facilitated by mobile devices for authentic learning. Herrington, Mantei, Herrington, Olney & Ferry (2008) cite Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula and Sharples (2004) summation theories applied to m-learning: 1. Behaviourist: At its most basic a mobile device can be used to provide the student with a stimulus and reward them for the appropriate response. Gamificaiton of learning, especially with the popularity of relatively simple computer games as Apps for mobile devices, is where this might be best applied. The "ndive project" by a consortium of Australian and New Zealand university aims to use immersive virtual environments for skill acquisition, assessment, and feedback (Wood, Teräs & Reiners, 2013). Smartphone technology can now be used to provide the display for an immersive environment at a lower cost than using dedicated hardware. 2. Constructivist: Habel and Stubbs (2014) used mobile phone voting in a law course at University of Adelaide. This was to encourage attendance and engagement in face-to-face lectures. The social constructivist pedagogy was invoked by explicit instructions on how to prepare for the lectures, so the students were ready to participate. Habel and Stubbs (2014) used the VotaPedia system developed by the Australian CSIRO research organization (Maier, p. 44, 2009). 3. Situated: Townsend (2014) investigated the use of mobile devices by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pre-service teachers living in remote communities. The teachers can use the devices while in the community, and incorporate that in their learning. 4. Collaborative: Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula and Sharples (p 15, 2004) reference Vygotsky's socio-cultural psychology (Vygotskii & Cole, 1978) however, more immediately rele315

vant to m-learning they go on to mention conversation theory (Pask 1976) and Laurillard (2013) explicitly linking this computer-mediated communication. However, Laurillard does not explore Pask's "concept triples" in detail, which are similar to the "triples" used by the semantic web (BernersLee, Handler, & Lassila, p. 5, 2006). This holds out that the prospect that the "conversation" could go beyond natural language and use the semantic web to define formal information structures which could be automatically analyzed for consistency and completeness. 5. Informal and lifelong: Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula and Sharples (p 3, 2004) define Informal and lifelong learning as "... activities that support learning outside a dedicated learning environment and formal curriculum ...". This form of learning is particularly relevant for working professionals, who are involved in systematic problem-solving day to day. Acknowledge the History of Distance Education with Mobile Learning Mobile learning is many things to many people. However, it is suggested that it should be first recognized as a development of e-learning, which in turn is a development of paper-based distance education. Those who fail to recognize this history of DE may be condemned to repeat past mistakes, where post, radio, TV, computers (and perhaps even MOOCs) failed to live up to their early promise to revolutionize education. Technology needs to fit with an approach to learning and an educational context, and it is suggested that one place m-learning could be used is to bridge the gap between the university and the workplace. Masters Level Coursework Degrees Kneale (p.1, 2015) points out that there has been limited research in the pedagogy of taught Master's degrees. This is despite these making up 18% of the university students in the UK, 21% in Australia and a very significant 27% of all transnational students in the UK (Kneale, p. 26, 2015). These degrees are referred to as a "Masters Degree (Coursework)" in the Australian nationally regulated system (Australian Qualifications Framework Council, p.2, 2014). 316

The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) specification for the Masters Degree (Coursework) says it "... qualifies individuals who apply an advanced body of knowledge in a range of contexts for professional practice or scholarship and as a pathway for further learning", whereas the Masters Degree (Research) "... qualifies individuals who apply an advanced body of knowledge in a range of contexts for research and scholarship and as a pathway for further learning" (Australian Qualifications Framework Council, p. 6, 2014, emphasis added). The "volume of learning" is stated to be "typically 1 - 2 years" and "... a program of structured learning with some independent research and project work or practice-related learning ..." (Australian Qualifications Framework Council, p. 7, 2014, emphasis added). There is no minimum amount of research or project work specified. However, this may be specified by an external certification body. A difficulty for courses which cover professional practice is how to provide a suitable learning environment. Ideally, graduate students will already be experienced and employed in the field they are studying. As an example the Australian Computer Society (ACS) Computer Professional Education Program (CPEP) is a postgraduate ICT program requiring the student to be in a "workplace"; Nagarajan and Edwards (2015) characterize this as "... filling the gap between university education and work experience...". However, one of the functions of postgraduate higher education programs is this form of professional education: one method to bridge the education to workplace gap may be mobile learning. There is no requirement in the AQF specification for students to attend class in person, allowing for the use of on-line learning. However, visa restrictions on transnational students in Australia limit online learning to 25 percent of their program and "... in each compulsory study period each student must be studying at least one unit that is not by distance or online." (Department of Education and Training, 2000). However, programs leading to a professional qualification require the student to undertake their professional practice in a workplace, which will most likely not be on-campus. One innovative use for m-learning could be to meet the on-campus and professional practice requirements simultaneously.

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M-learning for the Workplace McAllister and Nagarajan (p 17, 2015) discuss the use of mobile technologies for clinical training of Allied Health professionals. Occupational Therapists are required to undertake 1,000 hours of clinical practice (McAllister & Nagarajan, p. 6, 2015), supervised and assessed by a qualified practitioner. McAllister and Nagarajan (p 17, 2015) focus on "tele-supervision," that is using the technology to provide a remote supervisor. However, the approach taken with the Student Practice Evaluation Form-Revised system (SPEF-R) developed at the University of Queensland, is to support the on-site supervisor, remotely (Rodger, Turpin, Copley, Coleman, Chien, Caine, & Brown, 2014). SPEF-R was originally a paper-based system, then converted to a web-based on-line service. What has not yet been reported in the literature is that the SPEF-R system was further developed in 2013, with a mobile compatible web interface, for use with tablet computers in a clinical setting (the author was a member of the steering committee for this project). SPEF-R provides a example of the progression from paper-based distance education, through desktop computer on-line learning through to mobile learning. This approach, of the evolution of tools, along with the approach of providing the supervisor in the workplace with mobile support, is one which it is suggested could be applied more widely and specifically to taught masters requiring workplace experience. M-leaning using Existing E-Learning Tools 1. The SPEF-R, developed at the University of Queensland (Rodger, Turpin, Copley, Coleman, Chien, Caine, & Brown, 2014), used bespoke computer programming and custom mobile compatible user interface. The cost of this development was affordable, as the cost could be spread over the twelve Australian universities which used the system for supervision of off-campus students. The cost of such a bespoke development would be hard to justify for the typical university masters program, with only a few hundred students. However, Learning Management Systems, such as Moodle, now provide a "responsive" web interface and App, which could be used to communicate with students and supervisors off cam318

pus using mobile devices, without the need for custom software development, thus lowering the cost. Responsive web design and Apps 1. Responsive web design provides an alternative to "Apps", as well as complementing their development. Responsive design uses the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) formatting functions of the web to detect the size of the device the user has and adjust the display accordingly. The automatic adjustment of the display is enhanced by the use of accessible design for users with a disability, particularly the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) (World Wide Web Consortium, 2008). 2. "App" (an abbreviation for "application" program), is a term which predates the smartphone (Holwerda, 2011). Today's Apps are associated with mobile device environments, particularly as Apple iOS, Google Android and were originally for smartphones. However, the App developer cannot assume that the program is running on a small smartphone screen, as smartphones are increasing in size and tablet computers are becoming hybrid notebook computers. The App developer will therefore need to apply similar responsive design as the web developer (and Apps can use the same web formats). 3. Both responsive web pages and Apps can function without an Internet connection. Blackburn (2015) recently demonstrated a web-based "Electronic Exam" which can be built using standard web coding and implementing "client-side (not requiring connectivity to a server)". 4. There have been rapid advances in the design of responsive web interfaces in the last few years. Young and Hung (2014) state that "In the Moodle-based system, when users can access the content via a mobile device, the information is the same as on the desktop but with small unreadable text". However, Bollens, Pollack, Rocchio, Tirpak, Eleanor & Matthew (2014) suggest a responsive design works well enough, so course designers should use it by default in a mobile friendly web strategy. 319

5. A strategy of using mobile interfaces to existing learning tools will also ease the transition from desktop systems. Hu, Lei, Li, Iseli-Chan, Siu and Chu (p. 5, 2015) report that students with two or more years experience with Moodle were less likely to try the mobile version, than those with less experience. Also, students who considered themselves as having limited IT competency used the mobile version more. Both these groups of students need to be catered for. Fernandes, Rodrigues, Duarte, Hijón-Neira, and Carriço (p.5, 2014) found that a responsive design provided for a more accessible mobile interface. However, the desktop-mobile transition, even with responsive design is not without problems, as Marenkov, Robal, and Kalja (2015) note, if the desktop and mobile interfaces look too different the user becomes confused. M-learning for a Formal Lifelong Learning Campus Experience, Off-campus It is important to keep in mind that it is pedagogy which is intended to be implemented with mobile devices, rather than technical details of a computer system. The most important aspect is situated learning: it must be kept in mind by the educators where the students are and what they are doing in the workplace, as Townsend (2014) discusses for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pre-service teachers using mobile devices in remote communities. Students in a workplace will have numerous calls on their time and the m-learning should seek to be part of their work, rather than be a distraction from it. M-learning can use a collaborative approach and conversation theory (Pask 1976). The mobile device provides a way to link students together in their separate workplaces for mutual support. M-leaning could also be used to provide formal lifelong learning, in contrast to the to the informal and lifelong learning described by Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula and Sharples (p 3, 2004). The student would be provided with a formal learning environment and a formal curriculum. However, this could be accessed from the workplace. Rather than the approach of having students undertake short intensive programs, the learning could be ongoing.

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Pye, Holt, Salzman, Bellucci and Lombardi (p. 8, 2015) found that Australian university students study for four to six hours a week, not the expected eight to ten hours, per course. Rather than attempting to have the students study more, an alternative would be to adjust courses to suit. A workable goal might be to have students study an hour a day, for most of the year. This would allow a student to complete half a full time course load, while only undertaking one course at a time. Evolve e-learning tools and techniques for workplace mlearning The question this paper set out to answer is how m-learning could be used for taught masters programs which include workplace learning. The proposed approach is to enhance the existing Learning Management Systems used, particularly, Moodle, with a responsive interface for mobile devices. This system can be used to deliver relatively conventional Distance Education courses to the student's desktop/laptop computer for coursework and their mobile device for situated workplace learning. The same interfaces can be used to provide the student's workplace supervisor with advice and assistance in carrying out educational tasks and assessment in the workplace. As the student will have an on-site educational supervisor, the student's workplace can be also considered a place of learning and so not subject to regulatory restrictions on the use of "online" learning. Conclusion This paper investigated the use of mobile learning (m-learning) for taught masters programs. M-leaning is a development of e-learning, which was built on the foundation of paper-based distance education. This evolutionary approach could be applied to the supervision of ICT students in Australian postgraduate programs leading to professional certification. Students could undertake part, or all, of their education in the workplace, supervised face-to-face by professionals, with remote support from the university. This could overcome the visa restrictions on transnational students, which would otherwise limit their use of e-learning. By using a combination of work-place supervisors and m-learning, to make the learning experience personal, immediate and intimate, students could have an off-campus, 321

campus experience. As well as improving the quality of education by situating it in the workplace, this will provide access to education which would be otherwise denied due to regulations concerning the use of online learning.

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