This issue of JETS, the Journal of Educational Technology & Society, focuses mainly, but not exclusively, on Learning Design.

I wish I could recommend it.    Learning Design is an important and interesting topic.    But I can’t.    All I see is a vast (the issue runs to over 350 pages) self-indulgent wallow in over-elaborate theorising; an academic exegesis of the niceties of deckchair stereotypographies: all learning objects and ontologies, backup up by some pretty fancy diagrams.    Maybe I’m missing the point, but I thought it was a waste of time.

The remaining papers were little better, and I have to confess I didn’t attempt to read them all.    But one was worth the effort: “Advising Online Dissertation Students”, by Brent Muirhead and Kimberly Blum.

Writing PhD dissertations is, you might argue, so far up the educational spectrum as to be out of sight for most (though not all, I hasten to add).    But though the relationship between student and mentor/supervisor may be unusual, it embodies, at best, all that makes the relationship between learners at any level and their tutors or supervisors successful.    The paper may be a little overdone, but it’s still at lot more nourishing than most of the accompanying offerings.

Source:    JETS 9/1