Meet the editor of... Campus-Wide Information Systems

An interview with: Glenn Hardaker

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Glenn Hardaker is Professor of Innovation Management at the University of Huddersfield. He has taught for 15 years at all levels in learning and innovation. A major objective for all his research is to have impact through practitioner orientated research and his main passion is multicultural education and the role of technology.

Campus-Wide Information Systems (CWIS) publishes in the area of management, use and integration of information resources and educational technologies on campus. It welcomes research articles and case studies illustrating and critiquing the use of new technologies in education, and in-depth analyses of the latest theories, applications and services in the field.  Although traditionally drawing its readership from those responsible for computer support in higher education, in recent years it has caused great interest in those involved with e-learning, with 10,000 downloads per month.

In addition to CWIS, Glenn edits the Multicultural Education and Technology Journal, and has contributed numerous articles in journals such as Long Range Planning, European Journal of Innovation Management and the Journal of Global Information Management. Books he has written include Wired Marketing, Reformating the e-Learning Experience, Creative Destruction and, most recently, Black Day to Freedom (see Glenn's article about this project).

 A passion for technology and education

It’s quite hard to place CWIS – there is plenty on e-learning, but Emerald lists the journal under Information Management and Librarianship, and earlier issues contain articles aimed librarians and computer support people. What is the journal’s true focus?

Glenn Hardaker’s website is similarly eclectic. This is a man who quotes Martin Luther King about the world being a laboratory, and who cites as a research interest multicultural education and ICT. How could the man be harder to pinpoint than his journal? As the interview unfolds, it becomes clear that understanding the former is key to understanding the latter.

So who is Glenn Hardaker, Professor of Innovation Management, a man with a strong social change agenda, and how did he come to be editor of CWIS? A technological background – he had a lot of hands-on computer experience and a PhD in technology and innovation management. But alongside the technology there was always a passion for education and pedagogy, so when e-learning started to emerge in the mid-1990s, it was a natural area for him to move into.

Education is clearly Glenn’s chief current interest, in particular international education (with the emphasis on developing countries) and informal learning and community based education. At a local, national and international level he works with a wide range of racial equality organisations. His personal interests in multiculturalism and equality forms a natural link with his work on multicultural education and technology. He works with a wide range of people including graphic designers, technologists and activists. Collaborations include the Black Day project, which had people in 50 different places around the world exploring immigration, border controls, and perceptions towards migrants and refugees; the output was a book comprising 90 per cent graphics. Another current project is a six-page spread in a magazine from Hong Kong with a 40,000 circulation, on perceptions towards terrorism. This is not education in the formal sense, but Glenn is interested in the non-formal learning that emerges from informal situations.

Glenn’s biggest research interest, however, and here we stray dangerously into the territory of his other journal, Multicultural Education and Technology Journal, is multicultural education in the context of the pedagogical approach – pedagogy equity issues between the teacher and learner, pedagogical frameworks, bilingual and multilingual education provision, and the need to support pluralism in education and society. His teaching adopts this approach and he has also been involved with software development in the context of diagnostic tools to support diversity in teaching and learning styles. This research has mostly involved developing tools, but he is now focusing on converting this into research publications.

"I have a very broad-based interest in e-learning itself, linking it with more ideological views on education for social change, etc.", he comments as a summary to this explanation of his research, and his interest in e-learning is clearly based on the desire to follow a change agenda, rather than technological curiosity, despite his academic background.

The interdisciplinary nature of his work is reflected in his position at the university. "I’m very much on a cross- over where I could be in education or I could be in a business school or in a faculty of computing." His current role at the University of Huddersfield is group research leader in his field. This is relatively new position and most recently (1997-2005) he has been seconded to work with the Dean of the Business School, and subsequently with the Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University, on the context of embedding e-learning through structural change -  he wrote the current e-learning strategy document for the university. The term "innovation management" is very broad, and is perceived less as a niche for research (when it is, his particular interest is innovation of supply chains, including learning supply chains), and more as a broad umbrella to capture various strands to the job, e-learning as well as innovation management per se.

At the time he became Editor of CWIS, in September 2004, he was head of the learning and teaching innovation unit at the University of Huddersfield, with a broad-based e-learning role and a lot of international links. The decisive factor in taking on the journal was his belief in the need for more outlets in e-learning, and in particular ones that took an interdisciplinary perspective.

 (Re)positioning the journal

The journal seems to address three distinct communities – those in information management, librarianship and e-learning – so how does it manage to please so many people?

All journals evolve, and Glenn candidly admits that this mixture is historical, and that the journal carries some baggage, having been around for ten years (although it originated as an e-learning magazine) – "it had some e-learning, some libraries, some computing services type things, so it was a bit of a mish mash, but it was too diverse in some ways". Traditionally, "campus-wide information systems" are of interest to librarians and computer services professionals, but Glenn is keen to shift the focus towards e-learning, and look at the effect of computer applications upon learners. Pointing out the recent first call from a joint funding stream, ESRC/EPSRC (Economic and Social Research Council/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), for interdisciplinary work on technology enhanced learning, he declares his aim to position the journal as an interdisciplinary e-learning journal. He also points out a huge increase in downloads in recent months, mainly from those interested in e-learning; also that from the ‘demand’ side (as opposed to the "supply" of articles) it’s one of Emerald’s most popular journals.

I challenge the e-learning positioning by pointing out that it’s not listed in the Social Science Information Gateway as an e-learning journal. Glenn agrees that the positioning needs work: the title itself is not obvious, and Emerald lists it under Information Management. Where does he see CWIS in relation to the other e-learning journals, such as the British Journal of Education and Computing, the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, and ALT-J? Part of the answer lies in the relevance to all disciplines – many other journals have their roots in a particular discipline, such as education or computing.

Audience

Who, typically, are the readers? "The primary audience I would see as educators working on European or internally funded projects with technology people, in the classroom or via distance learning, then you’ve got learning technologists, but I would say they were a secondary audience, and your third audience is still your networking and infrastructure type of people. The first group is becoming more important although the third tier is still probably the main readership area." He feels that the journal should attract more papers from learning technologists, giving the reason for lack of support that many of the latter are working on JISC-funded (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK body that promotes use of ICT in education) projects, where the open source domain policy creates problems with copyright ownership. The journal’s readership is also international, with huge growth in Southeast Asia and Australia, itself a reflection of that area’s interest in e-learning.

The international readership and the move to become an interdisciplinary e-learning journal are both aspects of what I suspect really drives the journal’s mission, which is the personality and interest of the editor, and the worldwide network of research collaborators he has created. Take for example the Editorial Board: this heavily international, strongly practitioner group of people, whose main role is to review, and to widen the authorship base, include recent recruits who share Glenn’s social change perspective. In this context he mentions a friend from Australia who comes from a software engineering background, is an expert in international standards for learning design and has worked with Glenn on multicultural education and technology, and the Ulster-based Africa editor.

Two years ago, Glenn changed the journal’s subtitle to "International Journal of Information and Learning Technology", a title which he believes perfectly reflects the niche he is trying to create for the journal: e-learning for social change, in emerging and developing markets. "For me to keep up the motivation with the journal it would have to go in that direction." The other market is swamped, even on the interdisciplinary side.  Is this therefore the journal’s mission? "We are going in that direction, I don’t think it’s necessarily the mission. I think it just reflects the main people involved in the journal. Its no more than that for me, I’ve no mission for the journal as such. More natural evolution."

But such passion is bolstered by more pragmatic considerations of commercial viability – awareness of the 20 per cent growth in readership largely in the educational area. "There’s really high demand at the moment so I think it’s very much incremental steps in terms of change rather than trashing it over night which you could do quite easily, it would be nice to say I would like to publish this and that but what are the implications for the readership? If it halved, that’s not really good, is it?"

 Editorial coverage and the publishing process

I comment about the number of case studies in the journal, for example one on constructivist learning in Asia, using an online learning environment, and how it struck me that that sort of research was being done in the UK in the 1990s. Is there a tension between wanting to publish this sort of article and wanting to publish more leading edge material, such as for example a new evaluation system, or new research into mobile learning technology?  Glenn admits that "one side of me would like to see more on the leading areas of development", but feels that there is a demand for the case study type article for a practitioner market and as a consequence important to pursure.

So, what makes a publishable case study? "I wouldn’t want to publish a case study purely on Web CT, but if you are looking at a novel way of using technology in some way, even if in real academic terms the contribution might be minimal, then I would explore it further and send it out to review. The contribution to knowledge is in terms of context, but that has merit, especially at this very practitioner type level."

What qualities does he look for in a research paper? In a broad-based journal like CWIS, the methodologies employed are both quantitative as well as qualitative, but more of the latter, documenting what people have done and hopefully trying to evaluate where that fits with other research in that area. Such methodologies are more appropriate for a practitioner audience.

How does the journal achieve the "swift and fair reviewing process" promised in the author guidelines? Online article submission has really helped here, maintains Glenn: it makes the process transparent, giving workflow history, and enabling you to track what is happening with papers. But the good will of reviewers is also critical.

 Finally...

What are Glenn’s predictions for e-learning? We are not, he maintains, in a buoyant market, and cites a keynote speaker at Online Education two years ago saying that "the party’s over". The market in the UK also appears bigger than it is because of so much public funding. There is a new wave coming through, but it’s a specialist wave of second generation technologies – Web 2.0 and e learning 2.0, with their emphasis on social software and social networks. That’s the inevitable shape of innovation – a move on to something more specialist and where the learner has more control over the software and information being received. This will also affect many of the main software products in the market – such as Blackboard and WebCT – "they are very broad based products, to survive they need to go more specialist. It’s same for the market overall". 

E-learning has also moved East, where many of the more innovative developments are to be seen. As an example, Glenn cites the number of potential computing students in China as opposed to the West or Australia – in China students are clammering to do computing courses. "That gives you a reflection of the market to a certain extent, and the university sector reflects the market."

This leads him back to the importance of following the market for the journal as well. CWIS is essentially a practitioner journal – Glenn describes it as "teacher-led", again repeating his mantra that it needs to "narrow its focus without trashing the demand that’s already there".

Knowing as I do the need for good general sources of information on e-learning, where practitioners can share experiences, I wish Glenn, and CWIS, good luck.

Publisher's note

Professor Glenn Hardaker was interviewed in August 2006.

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