UC Berkeley School of Information announces first online Master of Information and Data Science degree (via PR Newswire)

Download image UC Berkeley School of Information launches first online Master of Information and Data Science degree. (PRNewsFoto/UC Berkeley School of Information) BERKELEY, Calif., July 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Responding to the national shortage…

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Comment on Lean Manufacturing and USA , previous post

This is the first time I have copied from Repost.us to this blog. see previous post I guess the .us is to do with the United States. but Jeff Jarvis seems to pronounce it such as we the reposters, or "Do they mean us?" as Derek Jameson used to ask. see Wikipedia if you don't know him. Most of the sources seem to be in the USA. I hope this idea spreads far and wide. This first story is about bringing manufacturing back to the USA. But I think the quality ideas could be global as they get better understood. I found it searching on "Edwards Deming". Interesting to see Taiichi Ohno and Toyota credited with theory that contibuted to how the "Japanese were crushing the U.S. auto industry in the 1970s and 80s". So my guess is that Deming learnt in Japan as well as teaching.

Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 4 January 2013 by Rob Honeycutt This post has also been published on Climate Progress, and the PR Newswire press release has been published by Yahoo Finance, The Sacramento Bee, and The Herald, along with articles in Core77 and VentureBeat…

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Revised slides and handout for Design Science meeting on Friday #mtw3 #mosocoop #oldsmooc

I have updated the slides. Following discussion the quote about design science is chosen for clarity and also I have got one with just the key words to explain how design science fits with other sciences. I have taken out most of the long quotes to a sheet of paper.

Also there is an alternative  diagram for soft systems as I'm not sure of the scale that will work from a distance.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vj82Bo_yvQgNqdmINhbehpbG9_3HN2z7HY-6ZOSsVgo/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nV0v7Hb_9FPCNITvgAmsOLN2pMHgDvRRejYN5B3fcRg/edit?usp=sharing

There is probably too much content now but maybe Quality Function Deployment could sort this out during the afternoon.

Quality theory as explanation, could a university be a case in system failure? #mosocoop #mtw3 #oldsmooc

(posted also in Posterous, but not sure how Posterous is working at the moment)

This is way off at a tangent but the news this week so far is raising the question - Could the finances of UK universities be such that some sort of problem will appear? Yesterday there was a report from the IPPR 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/mar/11/uk-universities-threat-online-courses

Today there is a Guardian report that Ucas numbers on applications are not being released because of "potential volatility in supply and demand" . The report mentions some named universities where there may be problems.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/mar/11/universities-falling-applications-ucas-protecting

There may be a chance here for a look at universities as organisations. So far theory about quality has been seen as largely outside the scope that academics are interested in to study. I may be out of date about this but I think books such as "Making Quality Critical" are still influential, especially with people working on management learning.

If UK universities need to move out of crisis it could open up a debate.

A few things strike me about both reports and the comments on the Guardian site. 

Sir Michael Barber is chief education adviser of  Pearson so may have his own interests. But I think Pearson has been engaged with digital over a long time period. Online is sometimes dismissed as commercial, but I think universities need to work on it in their own way.

Matt Robb, a consultant at Parthenon, predicts that some universities will sell off assets such as business schools to cover the shortfall in fees. This is obviously speculation. But how are business schools regarded? 

It seems to be the big cities that are mentioned as in trouble. Universities may have lost a local base as they relate to a global market.

An absence of numbers is not going to help much in the long run, but things could be more clear in a year or two. 

=============

Prof Paul O'Prey, vice-chancellor of Roehampton University, where home-student applications are up 27% this year after a dip in 2012, agrees that universities need to adapt to survive in the competitive new world of higher fees. "The ability to diversify and innovate is really important. We are widening our activities and developing new income streams. For example, we have gone into partnership with [private provider] Laureate to develop online courses, and partnered with a leading Swiss hospitality school to provide them with a London campus."

This is the only mention of "online" that I can find in the Guardian report.

Case for Design Science very clear in this article - Howard Davies Hong Kong #mtw3 #mosocoop #oldsmooc

(Also posted to Posterous - will789gb - but running slow still)

I am still trying to find more through Google and blogs. Still almost nothing around the British Journal of Management, see previous post.

But I have found this

Improving the Relevance of Management Research: Evidence-Based Management: Design Science or Both?

Howard Davies

Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

www.mbaworld.com/blr-archive/scholarly/9/index.pdf

It is available for download and is very clear. It shows the background of concerns about relevance and the case for design science.

The starting point for the Design Science approach, which builds on Herbert Simon’s 1969 classic The Sciences of the Artificial, is the recognition that there are three different types of science. First, there are the Formal Sciences, Logic and Mathematics, which have no empirical content in themselves. Then come the Explanatory Sciences, whose purpose is to explain existing phenomena. In the physical sciences that includes Physics, Chemistry and Biology, and in the social sciences Economics, Sociology and Psychology. Then there are the Design Sciences, whose purpose is to design solutions to real world problems. These include Architecture, Engineering, Medicine, and Design itself, all of which are centrally concerned to produce artifacts which are new to the world and preferred to those currently in existence.
The distinction between Explanatory Science and Design Science has not generally been made clear in respect of management research, which has been based almost entirely on the explanatory social sciences.

This is slightly different to the distinction made by Hodgkinson and Starkey. They refer to "Simon’s differentiation of explanatory-based and prescriptive-based social sciences" (page 359) 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00757.x/full

 I think this misses the scope of the danger for social science if design science is seen as defining the relevant from a practice point of view. There is a remark towards the end of the YouTube clip on Science 2 - the Design Science of Collaboration that implies social science is not always seen as contributing much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxBmKkLJCEc

I'm still looking for any blogs around the British Journal of Management articles. The publishing aspects are intriguing. If they do a freely available issue, why not do more publicity? If there is some comment, why wait three months to publish it? If the comments are behind a paywall, why not offer some clues or a shorter version somewhere else?

Now there is no university bookshop in Exeter I don't see any of the collections of readings that used to appear. On Design Science there could be a set of links for what can be found as open, and also what is only available through academic libraries. I suppose this could be on offer as a bundle with a specially costed day pass. Any suggestions welcome. 

draft aims, start of learning design, Sustainability, #designscience #mosocoop Mar 15th #mtw3 #oldsmooc

(this duplicates a post to will789gb.posterous.com which seems a bit slow just now)

This is a start on linking things together for the rest of this week and all of next. The OLDS MOOC continues with a showcase of work so far. The #mtw3 conference is still in the background. Towards the end of the year there will be another Futures Conference at LCC and Cross Media in Islington. My take is that this will fit with the phase of #mtw3 looking at academic publishing. But it is unclear how this could work as face to face. I mention this as relevant for March as online time and place can vary. IPEX 2014 is news already.

Aims relate to my own slides for March 15th, the whole of the day, and the following phase. There is both a face to face event and an online background. I already know a few people who are interested but can't be there.

Checking through the promotion for what is expected-

In Pursuit of Sustainability

What can we learn from Design Science* and Deming++?

On Friday 15^th March, 2013

This base is covered. The opening speakers will compare two approaches to sustainability. Through Skype from Canada Antony Upward will talk about the Strongly Sustainable Business Model and Design Science.

http://slab.ocad.ca/the-strongly-sustainable-business-model-group-ssbmg

Alan Clark will explain the Model of Sustainable Organisation for people in Canada. Probably most people at the CQI in London will know about the Deming basis for this. So the comparison for design science and Deming will come out of the afternoon discussion.

at The Chartered Quality Institute,
2^nd Floor North, Chancery Exchange, 10 Furnival Street, London EC4A 1AB

My own slides are intended to emphasise design science. I think Antony Upward will concentrate on Sustainability but I have borrowed two of his slides so should be consistent.

Two other claims from the publicity

Drawing on the work of Stafford Beer, Buckminster Fuller, S. A. Gregory, Herbert Simon, W. Edwards Deming - and the DemSIG MoSO ... and informed by the challenges and opportunities of economic and environmental change... how can we see and think differently, and become more effective?

So I need to find more about Stafford Beer and S.A. Gregory or else someone else may step forward as a backup on this. I have chosen a systems slide on Soft Systems as it links more with learning. I'm pretty sure other systems ideas will be covered.

Are you concerned with innovation, new products and services,
 change implementation, quality, business, systems, projects?

You are invited to bring a burning question and a bright idea and join us in

A Workshop, approached from a Cooperative, Win-Win perspective:

Not sure  how we plan to meet this claim. It depends who is there on the day. Both design science and Deming can relate to any business issue though the interest will stay on sustainability.

------------------------------------

Other aims of mine, 

1. connect with  #oldsmooc

I started looking at design science with the publication of the book "Teaching as a Design Science" by Diana Laurillard. 

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415803878/

Later I joined the OLDS MOOC so have an outline of how design science is used with learning.

http://www.olds.ac.uk/

the approach could be used with the aims from this blog post. I will add a link into a Cloud or two and the Cloudscape for the dreambazaar.

http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2450

2. connect with #mtw3

The keynote from John Burgoyne for Management Theory at Work 3 has a headline about the end of Leadership but I think he is open to forms of "scientific leadership" that relate more to evidence and organisation. We may have got to a point where a face to face event is needed as there is a lot of ambiguity and complexity around design science and management. See a previous post for comments on the recent articles in the British Journal of Management.

http://will789gb.posterous.com/free-issue-of-british-journal-of-management-r

It will take a while to get to a version of this that is reasonably easy to understand and access, but design science could be a basis for shared action in management and learning. By the way, the MOOC may be disruptive enough for academics to share an interest in quality management and change in organisations.

These topics about #mtw3 and #oldsmooc may not get much time on March 15th . The main topic is sustainability and exchange of information between MoSO and the  Strongly Sustainable Business Model may be enough to take in. However long it takes it could be a basis for further exploration of design science. 

Learning design could also contribute to any talk around further work on promoting both sets of content on sustainability.

Maximum 22 places; book now – first come, first served... Apply to:demsig@thecqi.org
Meeting Fees: CQI members £10+VAT – Non-CQI members £20+VAT; “Pay on the Day”

What is Design Science? as in teaching, management ? #oldsmooc_ conv #mtw3

(May also turn up on Posterous, seems to be slow at the moment - will789gb )

I would like to know more about Design Science. The words are used more often but I'm not sure if they mean the same thing each time.

So far on this course we have looked at 

http://edr.sagepub.com/content/41/1/16

Design-Based Research

A Decade of Progress in Education Research?

but this is not described as Design Science. The only comment on science I can find

The practical nature of DBR obviously places it (like action

research) in the camp of applied research. However, following

Stokes (1997) and Stappers (2007), we reject the linear model

that places basic and applied research at polar opposites. Rather,

good science often leads to very practical outcomes while contributing

to theoretical and basic understandings.

So maybe the science is just assumed in the background

===========

I think that Design Science could be a link with management, possibly ways to cope with disruption in educational organisations. I know that John Burgoyne has looked at Design Science and studied Van Aken . I have put links to both in the Cloud on Cloudworks

http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/6588/references

Some of this discussion continues as part of #mtw3 , an online version of Management Theory at Work 3 and in the MoSO group at the CQI, a take on quality based on Deming. A couple of other quotes from the article-

Moreover, the choice of methods

and the focus on authentic and meaningful issues resonate with

the pragmatic philosophy and outlook associated with American

pragmatism, associated with, notably, Charles Sanders Peirce,

John Dewey, and William James and later Abraham Kaplan and

Richard Rorty.

This is also the case for much of Deming, especially the System of Profound Knowledge in The New Economics

It is interesting to speculate if the

methodology could and will be used by researchers to investigate

today’s disruptive innovations such as massive open online courses,

tuition-free universities (e.g., People’s University), open educational

resources, and other networked learning innovations.

This suggests that disruptive innovation could still be part of Design Science.