Programming is just another name for the lost art of thinking.

Why? Probably to some extent this is because computing is a popular field, so the odds are that some students will select it. However, I have also always suspected that it is in part also due to a strong correspondence between the skills of a philosopher and the skills of a programmer. Philosophy (at least in the empirical tradition) is, more than anything else, about logical analysis. You take a problem or an argument, and you logically break it until you can either propose a solution or display its weaknesses. This isn't a trival skill to be proficient at, and it takes a long time to get students (especially students like I was) to do this in a reasonable manner. Similarly, programing is also about analysis - you take a problem, and logically break it down into manageable chunks, each one of which you try and write code to solve.

So, accepting that the point made in the thread is true, how can we teach thinking? Are "high concept" courses designed to encourage thinking (aka philosophy) going to be wise, or do we instead continue on the current path of assuming that students will pick up problem-solving skills or that they will fail, and thus focus on syntax and functions. The only middle road I can see is the one being pursued in the design of the new first year programming course - that is to teach minimal programming in terms of functions and syntax, but to then try and spend a lot of time looking at how that code can be applied. It's still not the same thing as teaching thinking, though.

The problem with this is that I have never been fond of compromise decisions - I'd much rather sit at one extreme or the other. It's easy for a mailing list to say that we need programming is all about thinking, but it is rather a different story to try and work out how to teach it. :)

However, I have (traditionally) tended to create my own web sites for my courses. Not out of any particular desire, but simply because I found it easier, quicker and more productive to build the site than it would have been to have had to do battle with a content management system. The side effect of this is that my materials aren't always password protected, and thus, if someone finds out where they are, the materials can be accessed by non-students. I figured this wouldn't matter. After all, why should anyone bother to access my materials? There isn't anything good enough to be worth stealing, anyway.

Not long ago I was catching a train home, and found myself sitting across from someone who was reading a PHP textbook. Because I'm rather fond of the language I decided to break my usual self-imposed silence when travelling, and mentioned that I enjoyed programming in PHP and that it seemed worth learning. Having broken the cardinal rule of never talking to strangers while on an Adelaide train, I found myself caught up in a conversation of my own making. The astonishing coincidence was that, not only was he reading the PHP book, but that he was involved in settng up a PHP course in an adult-education center, he had heard of me (a surprise in and of itself) and that he had provided a link to my materials for students so that they could look at my course as well, and maybe gain something from it.

I can't see any reason for objecting to this. The students had materials, not based on my own, while my materials (which are, of course, paid for by the government, and therefore there is a case for saying that they should belong to everyone) were being used simply as an additional source. But from a marketing perspective this might be an excellent thing. If any of those students were thinking of going to uni, and were interested in studying PHP, they would now know at least one university which provides that sort of course. We would, I suspect, be a serious consideration.

Not that I imagine that any students will come here as a result of my little course. But what if this idea was extended? What if a number of courses provided a portion of their material online, and high schools were encouraged to use those university-branded materials as an adjunct to their own teaching? I can't see it doing any harm, but I can certainly see it doing some good.

As is clear, the design is cluttered and distracting - the banner seems to "glow", which I find to be almost difficult to look at, pulling my attention away from the content. Structurally, the navigation is grouped by type of content. Thus lecture materials are in "Modules" (numbered, meaninglessly, from 01 to NN), while associated tutorial and practical materials are kept in their own separate sections elsewhere on the site. To find out everything for a given week I have to first work out what module that I'm after, then find the appropriate files for the lecture, then go to the tutorials section, find the right tutorial and find the right material, and, finally, visit the practical section, find the right practical and then find (and download) the desire documents. The content, by the way, is well presented - but that was the concern of the individual lecturer, who clearly knows how to present the material. It is just unfortunate that the rest of the (enforced) layout pulls it down.

The second design is by someone else employing the same CMS. I wouldn't describe it as "pretty", and certainly it won't be to everyone's taste, but the focus here is on the content, which is being framed by the banner instead of having to compete with it for your attention. Plus materials are grouped according to "weeks", with the tutorial, practical and lecture material for each week being placed in the same folder. I'd still rather see more information than just "Week 1", but as a student I have a better idea as to where to look for materials, and I know that there is only one place to look for everything associated with that week's work.

Perhaps I'm being precious, (and this isn't exactly unusual - I may describe myself as a pedestrian graphic designer, but that doesn't stop me feeling uncomfortable when I have to employ a design that I really don't like) but there is a more significant argument here. (Mind you, if one can't be precious and opinionated in one's blog, then what is the point of having one?) Small universities (at least on the world stage) can't often compete with the likes of MIT in terms of prestige. They can compete in terms of quality - good course designers can pop up anywhere, when you least expect it - but on the whole this isn't something that the universities can control (they can encourage it, though, by providing training and sufficent resources). However, there is nothing stopping small universities from competing on the grounds of the "Student Experience". For a university like this one, one option is to try and provide an exciting and enjoyable online experience for the students - to really strive for the best possible delivery. Ugly designs (exactly the sort of thing which has always traditionally emerged from engineering/computing schools, at least in my experence) don't help in this competition.

Professionalism isn't just about using a consistent look-and-feel - it should be an attractive and functional look-and-feel as well. :)

(It seems I am just being precious after all. My wife just came home, and commented on how she liked the first design better. This is why I dislike talking about design - it is very much a matter of taste. But I still don't have to like it).

In the spirit of this, I would like to propose that the true purpose of a Wiki is not to provide a powerful, community generated online encyclopedia. It is to keep track of important information about the Eurovision Song Contest. Information like "whatever happened to the group of Slovenian transvestites who competed in 2002", or "what was the voting scheme employed in the 1962 Luxembourg competition?". Important stuff, that matters to people like me (I, of course, am absolutely convinced that there are people like me. Somewhere).

So, now I have a new goal in life.

However, it clearly is a painful process, as has been suggested. A lot of the pain comes from the difference in focus. Within the current business setting, we have always seen (or at least, I believe that we have always seen) IS as primarily a "soft" discipline, focused on how to make technology work for people. In many ways we have been offering the traditional Management Information Systems (MIS) degree, with a lot of business/management subjects mixed in with a slightly higher number of IS ones (mostly focusing around database design). However, the common view in computing seems to be that IS is predominantly about the technological artifact, and thus the focus there is majority technology/coding first, with some business-type subjects to offer a "more rounded" discipline. This is can be referred to as a "hard" view of IS, and can form the basis of a Computing Information Systems (CIS) degree.

As a result, there is always the possibility of the suggestion that our current MIS degree does not represent a true IS course, and does not produce IS professionals, as it is too business-orientated. And yet it seems to me that if you wish to produce an Information System of any sort then an understanding of the environment is a key concern – as our graduates are, unsurprisingly, hired by businesses, it is our responsibility to make sure that they understand the business processes well enough to design systems (and hire programmers) which will meet the business' needs. This is not a trivial problem to balance. If we remove some of the business skills then the students will still need to learn them when they finish, just as we currently expect students to improve their technological skills once they have left our environment and entered the Real World. If only we could make it a 5 year degree! (Of course, then any remaining students would really suffer, but is this such a bad thing?) So although I wouldn't argue that one is a better model than the other, I would argue that each has a place, and that both are IS degrees capable of producing IS professionals. It is just that the professionals have different skill sets.

Perhaps the best example of this battle comes from a simple question that I have been asking myself while trying to redesign the IS programming courses – if an IS graduate can barely write a line of code, are they still of any value as an IS professional? I would tend to argue yes, but I think I would have a hard time convincing someone on the hard side of the equation that this is the case.

None of this is new, of course, and these questions are asked constantly within IS schools everywhere. But it is interesting to be on the pointy end of the debate. I tend to be pulled in two directions – as displayed in the last post, I see people as playing an essential role both as users and as members of an Information (or Knowledge Management) System, and therefore I'm theoretically leaning more towards the soft end than the hard. But I'm also the resident Geek, and proud of the fact, and thus I do love the "technological artifact". (I used to describe myself as the Token Hacker, but everyone seemed to assume that I meant the incorrect use of the term – someone who breaks into computers – as opposed to what I have actually meant, so I avoid the term now in order to skip the standard accusations).

So, to the debate - on the one hand we have Denham, who states in the discussion:

My test for your assertion is this - If you are alone on a desert island and are learning, reflecting and building competencies - will you have knowledge?

IMO opinion NO.

Knowledge is a social construct, you have to test those beliefs / learnings / competencies with others AND gain their approval to claim knowledge.

This is very much the social view of knowledge. The initial reply from Tom:

Taking up your test, if I'm alone on the island and I figure out how to adapt local materials and some copper wire I find washed up on the shore to build a wind-driven electric generator, it seems to me I've combined existing information with creativity to solve a problem.

The testing is against nature, rather than the opinions of other humans, and the proof is that it works!

and was, once again, interesting. It appears to suggest that Tom is following the formation-based definitions of knowledge, where the information has to be tested for it to consitute knowledge (eg Roy, Parent & Desmarasis, 2003 and Mort, 2001). Perhaps the key distinction between the two approaches is the nature of the testing - Tom accepts external, "objective" tests, while Denham is after external, socially-constructed, subjective tests. The debate is further carried by discussion on Jeremey's blog, where he states:

… "a self-administered validation" can be knowledge if it is a true, justified belief about the world.

This, clearly, is the Standard definition of knowledge, which differs from Tom's accounts in that the tests, if, indeed, justification requires such things, are able to be internal.

My interest in this debate is not on their conclusions, but on the impossibility of reaching consensus. As Denham said, "I'm not sure we have sufficient common ground here to take this much further." Because these are very different definitions – the social constructivist approach is radically different from the "justified true belief" definition - there is no possibility of an agreement being reached. Let me add that after analysing 346 knowledge management publications (for my thesis - I'm not really a masochist), I have found 53 distinct definitions of knowledge – so this problem is somewhat widespread. Which leads, of course, to the two key issues in the debate: what is knowledge, and how can Knowledge Management manage it?

In terms of what knowledge is, I see three options:

1. One definition is right, the others are wrong, and we need to figure out which one it is.


2. All of the definitions are wrong, and we need to find the one, true definition (one definition to rule them all, one definition to find them, one definition to …)


3. All (or at least some) of the definitions are right concurrently (in the literature this would fit in with both the paradox and multiple perspectives approaches).


4. There is no feasible definition of knowledge.

So my current stance is the direct opposite to where I started from. All current definitions of knowledge I take to be wrong (philosophically speaking, this is a very sound approach). This nihilist perspective is liberating – if they are all wrong, then they must all be equal. And thus, in answer to the second issue, (how can KM manage knowledge), the answer is by selecting a definition of knowledge that allows you to achieve something useful in a given KM application. This is feasable when you consider that a KM system need not, in the technological side of things anyway, "contain" knowledge, as it is sufficient for it to contain something that generates, or becomes, or creates knowledge. Similarly, in AI research, it doesn't matter if the product is or is not truly intelligent, based at least on some ideal perception of the word - AI researchers are more interested in producing useful systems than they are in philosophical debates. Well, some are, anyway. :)

Somewhere along the line I have become horribly pragmatic. I look forward, when I publish this one day, to some heated attacks.

This pleasant discovery led to the additional news that my second supervisor would be attending the uni a couple of weeks later. Which in turn led to a small amount of concern - it would, I thought, have been wise to have something to present to him. So I finished writing my new research database (MySQL & PHP, in this case, as opposed to the erlier version in MS Access), and desperately started collecting data. I just made it - the day before he arrived I finally had enough to pretend that I had done something, and I had even managed to draw some initial conclusions. Cool. :) Apparantly, he was pleased with my progress, which is never a bad thing. Personally, I think it was all due to the big A3-sized diagrams I brought along.

The side effect of this was that, in order to pretend to have been working, I had to do a lot of work. So in truth there was no pretence - I can now hope to submit my thesis some time next year, at which point everyone will be forced to call me "Dr". How much value there is in such a title is open to debate, but it certainly won't hurt.

The design is clean with lots of white space – it feels professional, serious and open. Upon visiting the site, the first thing that you see is the motto "The Lie Detectors", which has prominence even over their own logo and party name. The designers have wisely stayed away from using the Democrats' yellow, instead employing a couple of subtle shades of green. I like this, as I'm still not convinced that you can make large expanses of green and gold look good (eg the uniforms of Australian athletes). There are two gimmicks – a "message bar" which constantly changes to show different government lies, and a pop-up Flash advertisement. I can forgive the bar, but I'm not about to forgive the pop-up window. There is no printer-friendly version, but important documents (like policy announcements) are provided as PDFs. Better than nothing, but I would have preferred to see a HTML version as well. One more small complaint – there is no clearly visible information about who to contact. I can only guess that you are expected to contact candidates directly or, alternatively, to venture off to the "normal" Democrats site.

Overall, it is a good, clean design, but marks need to be taken off for the lack of a printer-friendly version, the extensive use of PDFs, the opo-up, and the lack of contact information on each page. I'm giving it a bare Credit with 65%, because it is still better than the ALP site, albeit not by much. And it does look very pretty. :)

The ALP

The ALP have what would appear to be a traditional political site – garish and loud, intended to grab your attention. It uses the ALP colours of blue and red extensively, which I suppose constitutes a theme no matter what you may think of the colour combination. Layout is standard – major links across the top and down the left side, with various specialized secondary links running down the right. The links columns are fixed-width, but the main content resizes to suit the window size. Surprisingly, there is no labeled "Home" button, but, as is traditional, their logo will take you back to the front page.

The design doesn't really say anything – it isn't particularly "professional" in appearance, it isn't trying to be warm, or trusting, or clean – it simply is. The collage running across the top shows Mark Latham meeting various (presumably typical) people, but it is poorly done. Someone grabbed Photoshop, ran a number of photos together, and then used a feathered eraser to "merge" them together. Simple, but not horribly effective.

There are some plusses, though. There is a "Printer-friendly" version provided, the top links are repeated across the bottom, there are no annoying gimmicks (aka unnecessary Flash or Java), and the key information which you always need, such as contact details and help, is readily accessible from every page.

Overall, there is nothing attractive about the site, but it is functional and serves its purpose, and it doesn't have any serious problems (except, perhaps, the lack of a "Home" button). Final score: 63% (P1).

Marking Guide

Results

Evaluation

The Australian Labor Party

The ALP website worked, to varying degrees, in all browsers. The only noticeable problem was that rendering was less than ideal in iCab – however this is forgivable, as it was still possible to use the site in that browser. At this stage it would seem that a Credit (68%) is in order.

The Democrats

The Democrats' website, like the ALP one, worked well in everything but iCab, and only suffered minor rendering problems in that browser. But these rendering problems were very minor indeed, even more so than with the ALP site, so a high Credit (74%) makes sense.

The Greens

The website for the Greens was compatible across most browsers, with only two notable problems emerging. There was a slight (but entirely forgivable) problem with the rendering of the tabs when viewed under Internet Explorer on Mac OS 9, and significant rendering problems when viewed under iCab on the same OS. No problems emerged under Windows, as expected. The problems under iCab were almost sufficient to warrant claiming that it lacked basic functionality, but not quite – so a bare Credit (65%) seems about right.

The Liberal Party

This was easily the most disappointing of the sites. For some reason, the designers have chosen to use "pop-up" menus on the site. This is not unusual, although to be honest I've never liked them. However, the code they have employed is only compatible with Internet Explorer 6 and Opera, and thus doesn't work on any other browser. As a result, Mac OS 9 users can't navigate through the site at all, and Mozilla/Firefox users under Windows need to change browsers. Firefox/Mozilla users might be inclined to forgive the designers, although it is comparatively rare nowadays to find a site which doesn't work, but the designers have also chosen to offer no warnings about this limitation. Thus users would be forgiven for mistakenly believing that the site is missing a lot of the expected content – "minor" things, like policies and current sitting members. Given this, the site can not be considered to be compatible across platforms, and thus fails with 40%. (btw, the National Party of Victoria, discovered during the Domain Names test, also uses the same menus - but theirs work on Mozilla/Firefox)

The National Party

To my surprise, the National Party website rendered well on everything – even iCab. The only problem encountered was that their small "Loan Calculator" (a clever little gimmick) didn't work in iCab, but did in everything else. This constitutes a problem with a secondary function, and thus I can't give a HD. But I can give them a Distinction with 76%.

Overall Score

So, when combined with the scores from the domain name tests, the results are:

Australian Labor Party: 72% (Credit)
The Democrats: 73.5% (Credit)
The Greens: 66.5% (Credit)
The Liberal Party: 45% (Fail)
The National Party: 69.5% (Credit)

Thus the Democrats move into the lead. I was, I must admit, disappointed by the Liberals, as I had expected that a major party would at least make sure that their website worked on the major browsers under Windows, but I was pleased to see that the majority of the sites continued to work even under an obsolete OS such as Mac OS 9. I'm looking forward to throwing OSX and Linux into the mix.

Next, Look-and-Feel.

AMCIS 2004 had no shortage of papers – over 500 papers were presented over two and a half days. I didn’t attend them all. Indeed, in order to manage the number of papers they ran 20 simultaneous tracks, so without Herimone's magic time thingy I wasn't going to be able to make an attempt. Traditionally my major interest is with the Philosophical Foundations mini-track, but I also tend to branch out and try some of the other offerings.

My other major focus was on the various IS teaching tracks, of which there were a lot. However, I wasn’t so taken by the standard of the papers. They were good, but in previous years I left the conference thinking that I had gained some great new ideas for teaching, while this year I left with some good ideas (which I hope to implement), but nothing really exciting. Nevertheless, the panel on web-based education suggested that it would be worth setting up a discussion forum where students could read the messages in a given thread/topic only after they have posted something on the topic, and this has inspired me to try and set up something similar, as I can see it being useful for external students. Alan Carswell gave an interesting talk about how he (or they?) had organised to video a number of roundtables with CIOs , and to then distribute the results to students online. The concept is a good one – it is difficult to organise guest lecturers/speakers each year (for those that bother to try, of course) so videoing them would be useful for everyone. And there was a fascinating tool described in the paper entitled "Measuring Student Participation in a Web-based Environment: A Framework for Developing New Tools", which almost automatically grades students based on their participation in online forums. Students beware - should I get access to something like this I’ll talk everyone into trying it, and there will be no more lurking. :)

The social calendar of the conference was ok – the meals were good, the company pleasant, and the dinner was fun. The dinner was held on three very large boats, each with some 500 delegates and their spouses, during a sunset cruise along the Hudson River. I was impressed by the security – each boat was surrounded be three small US Coast Guard vessels, each with twin mounted machine guns, and onboard every boat was a least one well-armed Coast Guard. It was almost enough to make me feel important.

My own papers went well, although not in the manner I had expected. My "Teaching and Learning" paper, on the use of reflective journals to provide ongoing qualitative feedback for courses, was ok but didn’t go that well. But I guess it didn’t help that I was on at 9am the morning after the cruise. My other paper, which I hadn’t expected as much from, proved to be very different. It was on why definitions of knowledge matter to Knowledge Management, and is the justification (as well as chapter three) for my thesis. I have never had such a good response for a paper – the result was that I am very eager to work on my thesis, as I now realise that there might be some genuine interest in what I’m trying to say. And that is cool – worth the trip on its own.

• Domain names
• Compatibility
• Look-and-Feel
• Navigation/Structure
• Accessibility

Naturally, the first thing I need to do is find the sites – thus this first instalment will be domain names. Can I, as an educated web user, find the sites without using Google?

First we have the ALP. My initial guess as to what the URL would be was, naturally enough www.alp.com.au. A partial success – it took me to the site for the New South Wales branch, which provides a front-page link to the national site. Feeling creative, I gave www.labor.com.au a shot. This pointed automatically to www.alp.org.au, the official national site. Impressed, I also gave www.alp.com a go, and it too worked. All up, I’d say a “D” with 76% - I’d give more, but www.labor.com.au really should have pointed to the national site.

Next it is time to look at the Liberals. My first attempt, www.liberals.com.au, failed dismally. My second attempt was no better – www.liberals.org.au. www.australianliberalparty.com.au failed too, as did the "org.au" version. Getting frustrated, I tried www.liberalparty.com.au and www.liberalparty.org.au, both to no avail. I was almost ready to give up, but tried www.liberal.com.au – which didn’t work. Finally, I figured that www.liberal.org.au was worth an attempt. Success at last! Given that I did find their site, I can’t really fail them – someone else may have guessed right on the first try - but P2 50% seems about the best I can give. Surely a major political party can register a couple of extra domains?

The other half of the coalition – the National Party – seemed a good choice as to what to try next. My first attempt, www.nationals.com.au took me to a business site that had nothing to do with the party. My second, www.nationalparty.com.au, failed completely. But www.nationalparty.org.au dropped me into the Victorian branch’s site, and finally www.nationals.org.au took me to where I wanted to go. The Victorian site did provide a link to the national one, but it was on a separate "Links" page and was listed as the final option. Overall, I felt they passed – it only took four attempts, and I could have done it in two if I had stuck with my initial approach - but it was clearly not as impressive as the ALP’s system, so I gave them a comfortable pass: P1, 63%. Not quite a credit though, as once again they should probably reclaim www.nationalparty.org.au for the national site.

My first attempt with The Greens was one I should have guessed wouldn’t work: www.greens.com.au took me to the business website for Greens food. Given how much I like their cake mixes, you would have thought that I would have realised this in advance. Sticking to com.au domains, www.thegreens.com.au was another failure, but www.greens.org.au was successful. They’d get a better mark if they registered www.thegreens.org.au, but overall a low Credit with 68%.

The Democrats were the last one to try – and, much to my surprise, www.democrats.com.au took me to a redirect page, which then dropped me onto www.democrats.org.au - the national site. I was inclined to give them a Distinction, but didn’t for two reasons: 1) they didn’t register any alternatives other than democrats.com.au (eg. australiandemocrats.com.au), and 2) the redirect didn’t work automatically – the ALP system of just pointing both domains to the same IP address was much cleaner. So in the end, a very strong Credit with 73%.

Next time my personal favourite issue – cross-platform compatibility.