6-9 Dec 2009. Proceedings at http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/
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Editorial 26(1)
Thomas Cochrane and Roger Bateman from Unitec, New Zealand, were the authors of Smartphones give you wings: Pedagogical affordances of mobile Web 2.0. Reviewers commented that "it's a really interesting paper ... sums up a lot of research projects that will help to further and inspire work in this area", and it "provides an excellent table of smartphone affordances mapped to constructivist activities".
Effective practice with e-portfolios: How can the UK experience of e-portfolio implementation inform practice? was written by a diversely affiliated team, Gordon Joyes from Nottingham University, UK, Lisa Gray, Joint Information Services Committee, UK, and Elizabeth Hartnell-Young from the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Australia. "Excellent paper that will be of great interest to the ascilite community"; "A very thorough and timely examination of the place and purpose of e-portfolios for learning ... a crystallisation of a range of JISC projects, focussing on the threshold concepts, rather than on the tools themselves."
Personalised and self regulated learning in the Web 2.0 era: International exemplars of innovative pedagogy using social software by Catherine McLoughlin (Australian Catholic University) and Mark Lee (Charles Sturt University) was praised by the reviewers for its suitability for ascilite, being "insightful ... It is very clear that the students in the current era need to be educated differently", a "well-written concise paper", and the "concepts covered in the paper have logical progression".
Gayani Samarawickrema (Deakin University), Robyn Benson and Charlotte Brack (both from Monash University) submitted Different spaces: Staff development for Web 2.0. Reviewers saw this paper as "an account of a highly relevant and widely applicable professional development program which will appeal both to academics seeking to use technology innovatively and those seeking learning-centred approaches", and commented also upon "a good attempt to get academic staff using Web 2 technology", given that "Getting academic staff to try new technologies is notoriously difficult".
A dialogic approach to online facilitation, by Jennie Swann from the Auckland University of Technology, was praised by reviewers for presenting "interesting insights on online facilitation" and for documenting "a very valuable research project that should have wide appeal". One reviewer added "This paper addresses the theme perfectly by looking at an old chestnut: how to facilitate online conversations between our students with new ideas. The new ideas have been well researched and justified with an extensive literature review and the commendable aim of coming up with a usable process of online tutors."
The Awards included two full and three concise papers, and coincidentally, encompassed diverse topics, with authors from nine institutions in three countries. In common with many other papers presented at ascilite Conferences, several of the Awards papers illustrate the benefits of teamwork between authors who can bring complementary insights to the research, for example the combining of faculty based subject experts and central unit based methods experts. In some cases the AJET version is significantly revised and expanded compared with the Proceedings version. We encouraged authors to progress their work, for example by incorporating new evidence obtained after the Proceedings version closing date, which was 23 October 2009, and by using the longer format available in AJET compared with the Proceedings, to include more detailed discussions or points arising from Conference feedback.
There is uncertainty over the intriguing question of whether Four Tiers will offer journals a mechanism, perhaps a Tier review process (what else, we exclaim!), for earning promotion from Tier A to the heights of Tier A*, or from B to A, or from C to B. Like the English Football League [5], each promotion will have to be accompanied by a relegation in order to preserve the percentages for each Tier (A*, top 5%; A, next 15%; B, next 30%; and C, bottom 50% [6]). Quintessentially normative! [6]This month it became evident that a Tier review process has kicked in rather sooner than we had expected. The outcomes are in the file 'ERA2010_journal_title_list.xls' [7, 8], the replacement for an earlier version [9] of the ranked journal list which we have discussed in various Editorials, most recently in Editorial 24(4) [6]. Of 2008's "top ten" (Table 1 and [6]), none were promoted and only three (ALT-J, JCAL and ETR&D; all non-OA) were not demoted. The demotions were for AJET, ETS, JTATE and TPE (all from A to B), and AEC (from A to C).
| Journal and URL | Tier 2008 | Tier 2010 | OA # | SNIP 2009 | SJR 2009 |
| British J. of Educational Technology (BJET) http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117984068/home | A* | A | No 6 | 0.795 | 0.064 |
| Computers & Education (C&E) http://www.elsevier.com/locate/issn/03601315 | A* | A | No 8 | 1.301 | 0.055 |
| Australasian J. of Educational Technology (AJET) http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ [online only] | A | B | Yes 6 | 0.563 | 0.041 |
| ALT-J: Research in Learning Technology http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/09687769.asp | A | A | No 3 | Not listed | Not listed |
| J. of Computer Assisted Learning http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118532949/home | A | A | No 6 | 0.941 | 0.051 |
| Australian Educational Computing (AEC) http://www.acce.edu.au/item.asp?pid=1120 | A | C | Yes 2 | 0.351 | 0.034 |
| Educational Technology & Society (ETS) http://www.ifets.info/others/ [online only] | A | B | Yes 4 | 0.579 | 0.040 |
| J. of Technology & Teacher Education. (JTATE) http://www.aace.org/pubs/jtate/ | A | B | No 4 | Not listed | Not listed |
| Technology, Pedagogy & Education (TPE) http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/1475939X.asp | A | B | No 3 | 0.163 | 0.035 |
| Educational Technology, Research & Development (ETRD) http://www.springer.com/east/home/education/learning+%26+instruc tion?SGWID=5-40666-70-50612191-detailsPage=journal|description | A | A | No 6 | 1.079 | 0.049 |
Notes:
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Whilst immediate attention from educational researchers may become very focused upon "rankings", we would like to put forward some "meta-rankings" perspectives, hoping thereby to make a better contribution to the longer term, more sustainable development of an Australian and Australasian presence in the globalised industries of scholarly journals, and the database products ("meta-publishing", perhaps?) that have inserted themselves quite astutely into the scholarly journal publishing scene.
The first of our "meta-rankings" perspectives is the quite stark contrast between the processes underlying the "Tier 2008" rankings and the "Tier 2010" rankings. "Tier 2008" was projected as a broadly based consultative process [11], but for "Tier 2010", there is a marked narrowing of consultation and an apparent absence of publicly accessible explanations and justifications for the revised rankings [12].
The second "meta-rankings" perspective is also a stark contrast. Only a few years ago, the major players in database products for academic libraries were emphasising their judicious selection of only the very best journals, but now their emphasis is turning towards having the most comprehensive coverages.
The third perspective we wish to highlight is the emergence of "new metrics" that have challenged the long reign of Thomson Reuters' Impact Factor [13]. These include Elsevier's SNIP [14] and SJR [15]. Where available, these two metrics are quoted in Table 1 (2009 data only). However, the very small sample examined in Table 1, and a much larger sample in preparation, do not give any indication of the relationship, if any, between SNIP, or SJR, and the "Tier 2010" rankings assigned by the ARC.
The fourth of our perspectives to explore is not a "stark contrast", or a denial of the "new metrics", it is more like a somewhat bewildered question, akin perhaps to the genre epitomised by the line "But he hasn't got anything on," in The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen [16, 17]. To paraphrase, "Will the current fascination with new tools for measuring excellence facilitate or constrain academic and research endeavour?" As with the other perspectives identified above, this perspective is more like a hypothesis for a research project than an evidence based finding. The four editorial research projects foreshadowed here will take some time and effort, during a period when the primary allocation of editorial resources must be to attaining our review process benchmark of three months maximum, and to consolidating AJET's expansion to six issues per year. Nevertheless, we will try!
After the publication of "Tier 2008", AJET progressed two major responses. Firstly, AJET commissioned an international editorial board [18], viewing the Tiers document [19] as "... the most recent and blunt stimulus to proceed". Secondly, supported by large increases in the number of submissions (a 46% increase from 2008 to 2009), and being aware of increased growth rates for some competitors [20], we felt that expansion was important for AJET's sustainability and Tiers ranking. Perhaps "Tiers 2010" signals to AJET and other journals that we should adopt a slower, more deliberative process, based upon sustained research into the "next moving of the ERA goalposts", before deciding upon the actions to take.
We could add that interest in ALT-J from Australian researchers in educational technology is likely to increase. Now that AJET has been relegated, ALT-J is one of only five "Tier A" journals (Table 1) that are centred upon educational technology (there are no "Tier A*" journals in our area).
Roger Atkinson and Catherine McLoughlin
AJET Production Editor and AJET Editor
| Conferences advertised in AJET 26(1) |
 Melbourne, 6-9 April 2010 http://acec2010.info/ | |
 | Quality Connections - Boundless Possibilities: Through Open, Flexible and Distance Learning 25-28 April 2010, Wellington http://www.deanz.org.nz/ Distance Education Association of New Zealand | |
 | Global Learn Asia Pacific 2010 17-20 May 2010, Penang, Malaysia http://aace.org/conf/glearn/ Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education | |
 |
Reshaping Higher Education Melbourne, 6-9 July http://conference.herdsa.org.au/2010/ | |
 MoodleMoot AU 2010, Melbourne, 11-14 July. http://moodlemoot.org.au/ | ||
 | WCC2010 Brisbane 20-23 Sept 2010 http://www.wcc2010.com/ International Federation for Information Processing | |
 | Sixth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning 24-28 November 2010, Kochi, India http://www.pcf6.net/ Commonwealth of Learning and Indira Ghandi National Open University | |
The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) is a refereed research journal published 6 times per year by the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite). AJET retired its printed version (ISSN 1449-3098) at the end of Volume 23, 2007, and from Volume 24, 2008, the journal is open access, online only (ISSN 1449-5554), and does not have paid subscriptions.
© 2008 Authors retain copyright in their individual articles, whilst copyright in AJET as a compilation is retained by the publisher. Except for authors reproducing their own articles, no part of this journal may be reprinted or reproduced without permission. For further details, and for details on submission of manuscripts and open access to all issues of AJET published since the journal's foundation in 1985, please see http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/
For editorial inquiries, contact the Editor, Associate Professor Catherine McLoughlin, School of Education (ACT), Australian Catholic University, PO Box 256, Dickson ACT 2602, Australia. Email: Catherine.McLoughlin@acu.edu.au, Tel: +61 2 6209 1100 Fax +61 2 6209 1185.
For review process, production and business matters, contact the Production Editor and Business Manager, Dr Roger Atkinson, 5/202 Coode Street, Como WA 6152, Australia. Email: rjatkinson@bigpond.com, Tel: +61 8 9367 1133. Desktop publishing (PDF versions) and HTML by Roger Atkinson.
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