The ALEC Moodle site had originally been put in place by Madeline, the manager, and Ken, a tutor who worked in both Workplace and Community teams and had felt quite confident in working with some technologies. In June 2009 the ALEC Moodle site had become the responsibility of the developer, who then completed the initial design and development. The developer needed to be certain that the ALEC community was able to administer and maintain the online environment itself, before she withdrew from the field of study, and her involvement with this online environment in July 2012.
The design based research literature reveals little about the potentially complex process of withdrawing from the research context after an extended period of involvement. Consideration of the ALEC staff was uppermost as the researcher followed the advice to “consider the after effects of leaving and take care to ensure that nobody comes to harm or is worse off from the research” (Cohen, et al., 2007, p.185). The participants had come to include the online environment as a normal part of their practice. It was important that the online environment be sustained and that the participants did not feel abandoned at the close of the research. Ensuring the continued existence of Tutors Only and the online classroom spaces was an essential part of the researcher’s exit strategy. As McKenney, Raval and Pieters (2012) suggest, from their design-based research perspective, the “learning gained from participating stays with the institution even after the research project concludes” (p.11). Through the adoption of a design-based research methodology the professional development and the intervention through which it was enabled were retained in this present context. This was supported by the collaborative nature of the research and the careful process through which the researcher withdrew from the field of study.
The ALEC online environment needed to be sustained by the community members for it to remain an asset to the ALEC community. This ownership of the Moodle site by ALEC staff began with Agnes, the office administrator and Annie, the At-Base lead tutor, who had both participated actively within the online environment and grown in confidence throughout the two years of the study. Annie had sole responsibility for the national assessment standards within Tutors Only, Resources, as well as her own online classroom, and had spent far more time actively participating in the online practice than any other community member. Agnes, as well as adding resources and forum posts, had become familiar with some of the site administration as she added new staff members. Madeline and Ken had retained administration rights in the site, but had taken no active part in the site administration. The developer had automated the process of creating regular backups of courses through the hosting provider and, with the exception of the occasional issue caused by the hosting server being too busy, the site functioned almost unaided. Developing the Moodle site to this point made it much easier for the developer to withdraw from the field of research. However, an exit strategy still needed to be put in place to ease the transition from partial to full ownership of the online environment by ALEC community members. Implementation of the developer’s planned exit strategy began in March 2012.
The first step was to add support documentation into Tutors Only, How To whenever a problem arose. The developer would then refer staff to the support documentation rather than providing an answer by email, to encourage staff to look to How To for their first line of support rather than emailing the developer.
The second step was to encourage staff to try to solve problems either by themselves or with help from other ALEC community members. When members did email the developer, they were asked for specific details on the issue to be solved, to encourage them to clearly describe what they needed.
Annie emailed today to ask for a password for a student. Instead of assuming it is a new user to be enrolled, I have asked her to confirm that it is a new user to be enrolled in her
classroom. If I can get them to clearly request what they want then it will be easier for someone else to answer their requests. (Design narrative, 19/3/12)
Rather than giving instructions or immediately solving a problem, the developer replied to emails suggesting to the community member what steps the developer would have taken if she had been trying to solve the issue. The developer also reassured the community member that support would be provided by her if those steps did not work. This was to encourage the staff to undertake finding a solution themselves, and in the process learn how to do it. Another strategy the developer used was to refer people wanting advice, particularly new members who needed some initial support, to the community members with the most expertise in the online practice. Ideally new members would have been supported in their use of the online environment by their lead tutor, however this wasn’t possible because Community and Workplace lead tutors were not experienced or confident in the online practice.
The third step was to formalise the handing over of access to the hosting server and passing on of responsibility. At a meeting of the developer and the manager late in May 2012, the decision was made to divide the developer’s responsibilities and allocate them to four ALEC community members, who would ideally also understand each other’s roles. The actions resulting from this decision were implemented during June and July 2012:
The ALEC Moodle site was migrated to a new Moodle web address hosted by the same provider and Ken became the contact person for this. Technical ‘troubleshooting’ also became Ken’s responsibility with support from the developer available for the transition. Access to 24/7 technical support was also available through the hosting provider.
General Moodle administration was completed by Agnes. She continued the administration tasks she had already undertaken, such as adding new tutors to the Moodle site and adding documents, sending out notices, adding calendar events in Tutors Only. Most of the support for her was provided through her preferred method, step-by-step documentation in How To. Further support from the developer was also available for the transition.
General site oversight and upkeep of the Moodle site became Annie’s responsibility. Her role included keeping track of what was happening in the forums to make sure that questions didn’t go unanswered, and monitoring any changes to Tutors Only to ensure that they were
helpful and in line with the online environment’s intended use. Annie would also be the person to provide an introduction to the online environment for any new tutors.
A recently employed Workplace tutor, Bert, was provided with an introduction to the online tools, by the developer, to equip him quickly to support the Workplace and Community tutors if Annie was not available.
These decisions made by the developer and manager were in line with suggestions provided by ALEC community members during the final interviews. These suggestions included; the provision of help documentation, making sure someone would be available to shoulder responsibility for all areas of the online environment, and support provided by the developer for all staff who took on those responsibilities.
During July 2012 the ALEC Moodle site was transferred to a new hosting with the same provider and monitored by the developer until it was performing correctly. The developer then changed all the permissions to enable staff to undertake their new responsibilities. The limited ‘ALEC administrator role’ was removed and Ken, Madeline, Annie and Agnes were added as full administrators. All the contact details and references to the developer as a support person in both Tutors Only and the demonstration classrooms were deleted. All content which referred to the research, including the Research Space, was removed from the site.
The final step was for the researcher to post a “Thank you” in the News and Notices forum (see Figure 68).
Figure 68: Final post by developer in the News and Notices forum, July 2012
This chapter of the thesis concludes the description of the case at the centre of this research. The researcher’s focus of activity moved from the ongoing cycles of design and development, to distilling the design principles and theoretical findings of the research, which are detailed in the following chapter.