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The Digital Reading Room at Athabasca University
No full textthabasca University Library has used a Digital Reading Room (DRR) to support courses for almost 10 years. While the old version of the DRR remained successful and functional, it was out of date and we embarked on a complete overhaul to launch a new version of the DRR. Taking into account feedback from across the university, our team developed a new DRR that not only updated the look of the site and preserved the functionality, but also improved the. The new DRR is much easier for staff to use, helps us deal with copyrighted materials, and can now be embedded anywhere. This session will provide an overview of our approach and a brief demo of how the Digital Reading Room works
Postmodern theory's retreat amidst postmodern art's return: neglect of IP law as a possible cause of postmodernism's "death"
Full text linkDespite the centrality of appropriation to postmodernist aesthetics, despite the embroilment of postmodernist artists in copyright actions, and despite the steady toughening of intellectual property (IP) law during the postmodern period, the majority of postmodern theory has largely neglected IP and copyright. The few critical considerations of IP in recent, "postmortem"-style retrospectives on the rise and fall of postmodern theory invite elaboration, in order to show postmodern theory’s continuing relevance and capacity for interpreting contemporary culture. A theory of the postmodern reoriented to IP law as a globalized regulatory infrastructure of contemporary cultural production, distribution, and consumption seems a useful analytic tool for interpreting both the DIY culture of everyday digital life and the more professional work of recent and current artists and intellectuals.
MLA citation:
McCutcheon, Mark A. “Postmodern theory's retreat amidst postmodern art's return: neglect of IP law as a possible cause of postmodernism's ‘death’.” Research Symposium, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Athabasca U, 23 Sept. 2015
Mobile Learning Innovation in Information Literacy Skills Training
Full text linkThe Mobile Information Literacy (MIL) tool is a user-friendly literacy app to help university students hone their information literacy skills through mobile technology
An Analysis of Client Realism, Virtue Ethics and Comprehensive Justice
No full textIn this paper I assert that at the foundations of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Comprehensive Justice Movement (Comprehensive Law Movement / Non-Adversarial Justice) lies in the interplay between client realism and the natural law virtue theory of justice. This paper seeks to examine that relationship in more detail by expanding our understanding of what is involved in client realism and examining how it harmonizes with Aristotelian virtue ethics and more contemporary conceptions of virtue ethics.
This analysis follows upon my previous argument that Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ) can be seen as a normative system on two of three important levels. At Level 1 – Legal Practice, TJ asserts normative standards of practice. At Level 2 - Legal Theory, TJ delineates systemic developments that are required to achieve higher order goals of the justice system. However, at Level 3 – Legal Order, TJ does not mandate higher order normative standards, dictate overall purposes of law or define the overarching norms of justice. This is due to TJ’s respect for client realism: i.e. the idea that justice must be determined from clients’ needs and values, based upon clients’ choices regarding which rights to pursue or waive and which vectors are best employed to achieve the desired ends.
Through a better understanding of client realism and contemporary analyses of natural law virtue theories of justice, it is hoped that the normative status of TJ at Level 3 will be clarified and TJ’s relationship amongst the various vectors of the Comprehensive Justice Movement will be more fully understood.
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This is the 4th in a series of presentations at the International Academy of Law and Mental Health congresses (2 of which have now been published) that shape the theoretical foundation for the therapeutic jurisprudence and comprehensive justice frameworks.In this paper I assert that at the foundations of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Comprehensive Justice Movement (Comprehensive Law Movement / Non-Adversarial Justice) lies in the interplay between client realism and the natural law virtue theory of justice. This paper seeks to examine that relationship in more detail by expanding our understanding of what is involved in client realism and examining how it harmonizes with Aristotelian virtue ethics and more contemporary conceptions of virtue ethics.
This analysis follows upon my previous argument that Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ) can be seen as a normative system on two of three important levels. At Level 1 – Legal Practice, TJ asserts normative standards of practice. At Level 2 - Legal Theory, TJ delineates systemic developments that are required to achieve higher order goals of the justice system. However, at Level 3 – Legal Order, TJ does not mandate higher order normative standards, dictate overall purposes of law or define the overarching norms of justice. This is due to TJ’s respect for client realism: i.e. the idea that justice must be determined from clients’ needs and values, based upon clients’ choices regarding which rights to pursue or waive and which vectors are best employed to achieve the desired ends.
Through a better understanding of client realism and contemporary analyses of natural law virtue theories of justice, it is hoped that the normative status of TJ at Level 3 will be clarified and TJ’s relationship amongst the various vectors of the Comprehensive Justice Movement will be more fully understood
Be Like Winifred: Transferring Images of Colonial Africa to the South Pacific
No full textEuropean colonial history is filled with examples of attempts to transfer cultural values, attitudes and beliefs from the metropolis to the colonies. European publishers at first sent textbooks to the colonies without altering image or text, as if the colony was an intrasystemic cultural extension of the metropolitan. Such cultural transfer practices might present Wordsworth’s canonic poem about daffodils to African children who had never seen that flower, or begin African history lessons with the words, “Nos ancêtres, les gaulois….” Gradually colonial practices began to recognize intersystemic differences by accommodating the colonial situation. Language might be “translated” through adoption of a simpler form; images might be altered to reflect the geographic locale of the reader; and content translated to represent what was meaningful to subject peoples.
Although these decolonization practices are reasonably well documented in the flow of information from metropolis to colony, there are few studies that examine how such print culture practices operated between colonies. This paper contends that, between the wars and for a variety of reasons, including the success of demonstration schools in West Africa and Lord Lugard’s transfer of indirect rule to Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa became a model for other colonies of innovative British colonial philosophy and practice. What this meant for the colonies of Papua and New Guinea was that Africa not only provided colonial administrators with models of development practice, but that Melanesians were urged to be like Africans. Images of successful Africans began to appear in administration journals, school textbooks and magazines. At first photographs of Winifred, an African nurse, are identified as African; but intrasystemic assumptions gradually masked her identity to that of a “black” nurse in the obvious hope that Melanesian women might imitate her example. Other photos of African children and African villages and agricultural practices were used to illustrate similarities between PNG and Africa, but also to demonstrate the more progressive attitudes of Africans. This process of transferring, rather than translating one colonial situation to another continued throughout decolonization in Papua and New Guinea and into the early years of independence. It is part of a decolonizing strategy of model, mask, and shadow that was widely used not only for development purposes, but for the devolution of power. Inevitably, resistance developed to these intrasystemic incursions, as proponents of “The Melanesian Way” replaced images of Africa with those of Papua New Guinea
Connecting Learners in Self-Paced Undergraduate Study: Practitioner Cases
No full textMy session at the 29th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning was well attended (about 60 people). I presented the preliminary results of a multiple-case study of how academics and learning/teaching specialists at three universities are incorporating learner-learner interaction into self-paced undergraduate study at a distance. In the Q&A period following my presentation I responded to the following questions:
- Have my ideas about the relative importance of independence and interaction changed during the course of conducting my research study?
- How did I determine the issues for each of the three cases I investigated? What factors might account for the emergence of different issues from each case?
- How might an individual faculty member integrate a social software/networking element in their online classroom? What are the pedagogical, logistical, privacy, and other issues that need to be addressed?
Informal feedback was positive and I shared contact information with several participants who would like to know when my research results are published.
Participants at this major distance teaching and learning conference found the topic of practitioner cases of learner-learner interaction in self-paced study relevant and timely. While social software and networking offer opportunities for learner-learner interaction, practitioners in self-paced as well as imposed-pace settings are interested in learning about knowledge and practical suggestions from the field.Enabling students to take responsibility for and make choices about aspects of their learning is an important affordance of distance education. Distance learners determine the time and place for their studies—those engaged in self-paced study may also choose the rate at which they proceed through their courses. Self-paced study at a distance provides learners with opportunities for increased independence and self-direction, while offering educators the potential to reach large audiences and reduce per student costs. However, in the absence of cohorts working through courses together, it is difficult to incorporate purposeful learner-learner interaction into self-paced study. This challenge exemplifies the tension inherent in the theoretical divide between independence and interaction. This session, of interest to distance education professionals and faculty, presented preliminary results of a multiple-case study of learner-learner interaction in three universities that offer self-paced undergraduate study at a distance. Session participants learned about case-specific issues and strategies of how and why course developers (learning/teaching specialists and faculty) deal with the challenges of incorporating such interaction into self-paced study at a distance, including the ways in which social software is providing opportunities for self-paced learners to interact. Participants also reflected on the ways their own practice acknowledges and addresses the importance of both learner interaction and independence
Memorandum of Understanding for BALTA Partners
Full text linkThe BALTA research partnership has functioned since 2006. A new partnership research project, Social Economy Intermediaries and the Transition to Sustainability: Scaling Innovation, represents a new research scope and program, with some ld partners and some new. The new partnership will function from 2014 to 2021 (subject to funding support), with the new research program beginning in mid-2015.
This MOU reflects the lived experience of community-university, practitioner-academic research partnership that has evolved in BALTA since 2006 and the lessons that have been drawn from that experience about how to ensure effective partnership and co-construction and mobilization of research. The MOU summarizes important principles and understandings that will govern the research partnership.BC Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance (BALTA
Preparing Learners for Online Doctoral Study: Readiness App
No full textIn October 2013, I attended the 25th World Conference in Tianjin, China of the International Council for Open and Distance Education. I presented a paper entitled “Preparing Learners for Online Doctoral Study: Readiness App”. The paper described a mobile application that I have been designing for purposes of aiding potential doctoral students in preparing for or determining their readiness for online doctoral studies. I received feedback that I will incorporate and consider in the ongoing development of this application. I am planning on some re-programming using different technologies. In addition, I will be applying for some funding to further develop and enhance the application. My intent is to offer the application to potential students for free and to invite users to participate in research on doctoral student readiness.The origins of the doctoral degree can be traced back to guilds in the Middle Ages in Europe. There are now a variety of doctoral degrees such as professional, applied, practitioner, and clinical. Completion routes may be research-based, module-based, publication-based, portfolio-based, and exhibition-based. Students can enroll in doctoral programs conducted fully or partially at a distance. Regardless of modality, statistics show that current completion rates (within a 10-year period) in doctoral programs across universities range anywhere from 30 to 70 percent. Low completion rates are not only harmful to learners at a personal level, but may also bring into question the societal value of supporting doctoral-level research. So, how can learners prepare for doctoral study, particularly online programs? One solution is to help potential doctoral students reflect upon their readiness—prior to applying. To this end, I have begun development of an app based upon the results of recent research.
The objective of my research was to explore the variety of social discourses that shaped doctoral students’ views of themselves and how these discourses affected their positioning within their social, personal, professional, and academic contexts. Understanding the learners’ sources of support and social positioning could help to identify stressors that may affect dropout and/or persistence. Ultimately, the main goal is to help learners to better succeed in their doctoral programs through the development of tools designed to increase awareness of the demands of doctoral study and their personal readiness for doctoral study.
The main theoretical lens used in this study was Harré’s (2010) social positioning theory in which social interaction is viewed as the foundation of behavior and learning. Within this view, identity formation is viewed as a cyclical learning process within social contexts. Nineteen doctoral students were interviewed. The resulting transcripts were subjected to discourse analysis and open coding for thematic categories. The results guided the design of a doctoral readiness app.
Six main areas of social positioning emerged: general-societal, friends-family, professional, cohort, academic-department, and the academy. Each of these “social locations” presented opportunities for support as well as potentially troublesome challenges to their persistence. Participants described alienation, indifference, hostility, encouragement, and a variety of other reactions.
The ability to identify sources of troublesomeness, ultimately, may aid in increasing completion. Although the participants described their experiences of positioning in varied ways, it was clear that at various positions in time their commitment to their doctoral studies was challenged in some way. This app is being developed to assist potential doctoral students to reflect upon and assess their personal situations prior to application. The questions are based upon the areas of social positioning identified in my research. In this presentation, I plan to demonstrate the app and how I will use it for further research on doctoral student readiness
Monstrous Times Call For Monstrous Methods: Review of Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires, and Global Capitalism, by David McNally
Full text linkA book review of Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires, and Global Capitalism (2012) by David McNally, published in the science fiction studies journal Extrapolation