Following up on a broader research idea the following paragraph summarises a nascent, more specific idea a colleague and I are stumbling toward. It fits within the broader agenda.
Suggestions, volunteers, pointers and criticisms welcome.
For now it’s just a single paragraph.
Open source education is seen by Davidson and Golberg (2009) as one of the principles key to the rethinking of learning institutions. Perhaps the most prevalent incursion of open source into Universities has been the adoption of open source Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Moodle. Currently, at least 15 of the 38 Australian universities have adopted Moodle. The typical implementation of such systems appears to be informed more by best practice in enterprise systems implementation with its focus on scalability, consistency and cost savings (Jones, 2008). The governance and management of these open source LMSs seems likely to be an early focal point of the struggles between traditional organisational practices and policies and the requirements of the digital age. The aim of the research will be to investigate what is happening, what is changing and what might the future hold within the context of this struggle.