Search

Central Queensland University (CQU) is a highly complex institution, combining campuses in Central Queensland and distance education programs for Australian domestic students with Australian metropolitan sites for international students and a number of overseas centres, also for international students. In common with many other universities, CQU has recently reviewed its course management systems (CMSs). In doing so, CQU has signalled its desired strategic position in managing its online learning provision for the foreseeable future. This paper analyzes that strategic position from the perspective of the effectiveness of CQU’s engagement with current drivers of change. Drawing on online survey results, the authors deploy Introna’s (1996) distinction between teleological and ateleological systems to interrogate CQU’s current position on CMSs – one of its most significant enterprises – for what it reveals about whether and how CQU’s CMSs should be considered an accelerator of, or a brake on, its effective engagement with those drivers of change. The authors contend that a more thorough adoption of an ateological systems approach is likely to enhance the CMS’s status as an accelerator in engaging with such drivers. Keywords: Australia, course management systems, enterprise systems, open and distance learning, teleological and ateleological systems

Like all fields and forms of education, open and distance learning is complex, contextualized, and contingent (Harreveld and Danaher, in press; Nouwens, Erdinc and Danaher, 2004) – and is attended by a particular and peculiar ambivalence (see also Stronach and MacLure, 1997). On the one hand, open and distance learning is often accompanied by commentaries about access, equity, and social justice, whereby the empowering and liberatory potential of learning in one’s own place/ space and at one’s own pace/ timescale is highlighted and lauded. On the other hand, open and distance learning is as subject as any other form of educational provision to the influence of forces associated with late capitalism and globalization, at least some of which are linked with the potential destruction of family, workplace, and community relationships and social capital (Rowan, Bartlett and Evans, 1997).