Please note: these pages are no longer regularly maintained. Please visit http://jondron.athabascau.ca for a more recently maintained site
CoFIND is a play system designed to explore the possibilities of self-organisation in a network based learning environment. This site contains papers, presentations, source code and examples of the system in action. Along with Dwellings (see below) it will be developed using my National Teaching Fellowship as an exemplar of micro-habitats to support groups of learners in various larger learning ecologies.
Dwellings is a continuation of the theme of self-organisation started with the CoFIND system, attempting to apply the principles for effective cities discussed by Jane Jacobs in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." If you are interested, check out the Dwellings prototype system.
As part of this research I'm also exploring ways of enabling peripheral awareness of context. Check this simple use of translucency to get an idea of where this is heading.
The Site Market is another system based on self-organising principles, this time loosely grounded in a market economy, attempting to use self-interest to drive the growth of the system. It hasn't been used in anger yet and is in a primitive state of development, but may be of interest.
My thesis: Achieving self-organisation in network-based learning environments. From 2002 (well, technically 2001, but it was defended at the beginning of January 2002). Getting a bit dated and I have a much better theoretical foundation for these ideas nowadays...
Transactional control theoryI have written a book about the dynamics of e-learning called "Control and constraint in E-Learning: Choosing when to Choose " published by Idea Group International. This articulates my theory of transactional control, both a simplification and an extension of Michael G. Moore's theory of transactional distance.
Transactional control relates to the amount of control a learner has over choices intended to bring about learning. The need for control varies enormously from learner to learner and from context to context - the goal is autonomy, but the path to autonomy may be governed by constraint - sometimes we must delegate control to others.
Providing the appropriate level of control for any given transaction is perhaps the essence of effective teaching. The interplay of choice and constraint helps to determine an individual learner's learning trajectory, a trajectory that is usually at least partly determined by others, partly by external constraints, partly by internal constraints. Transactional control theory helps to explain and to make predictions about the nature of different forms of educational transaction by analysing their essential dynamics.
Happily it helps to show why social software, and particularly systems such as CoFIND, Dwellings and the Site Market are an essentially sound idea, as they have the potential to allow the learner to select the level of choice or constraint required for any learning need.
Designing the Undesignable: Social Software and Control, article in Educational Technology and Society, 2007 that covers the main arguments of the book
Social Software and the Emergence of Control, winner of best paper award at ICALT 2006 
I was recently part of a team on the Community Network Analysis and ICTs: Bridging and Building Community Ties project. This project was funded through the ESRC as part of the ESRC-DTI-EPSRC People at the Centre of Communication and Information Technologies ( PACCIT ) LINK Research Programme. It was a joint venture between the University of Brighton and SCIP (Sussex Community Internet Project). Full details at http://www.cna.org.uk
I have received a grant from the British Council Researcher Exchange Programme to work with Madhumita Bhattacharya at Massey University on the design of learning environments for multi-cultural audiences
Most of my papers have been about learning technologies and especially work on using networked learning environments to allow groups to collaborate or work together more easily. You can find a lot of CoFIND-related stuff on my CoFIND pages
List of papers (never up-to-date, but not too far off)
CMIS presentation on a little bit of research into how people are influenced by list position, font size etc: Where should I click now? October 2005
HE Academy ICS 5th One-Day Conference on the Teaching of Programming, 05/05/05, A talk in the Key of C (why teaching programming is a bit like teaching music)
CMIS presentation on transactional control theory, Trajectories in Learning Space April 2005 (warning- big PPT file)
Presentation to CMIS on breaking Moore's law of transactional distance, May 2004
Workshop presentation on the application of Moore's law of transactional distance to my eSystems course, February 2004
Presentation on online learning for Cacak Technical University, September 2003
Presentation on online courseboards for LTSN-ICS 4 (August 2003) Galway
PowerPoint presentation given at Indira Gandhi Nationa Open University, March 2001 (6MB)
May 99 presentation about my research interests
Short paper on distance learning for the 35th Conference of Polish Physicists, September 99
From Answer Garden to Answer Jungle from Education & Training, 1998
EU-India Cross Cultural Innovation Network working with people in India and elsewhere on issues related to human centered systems. Here are some pictures.
ADF project pages a project to do clever stuff with learning technologies at the University of Brighton
W3Lessonware an old project which I played a bit of a role in
SLOT- Support for Learning Object Technology- http://itsuite.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/jnd/slot
Curt Bonk's visit to Brighton, 22/5/06
STOT - symposium on teaching object technology, 1998