The Buckmaster Fuller podcast from the BBC ( see previous post ) is not helping me much to get a clearcut definition of design Science. It may be more useful to just look at the various ways these words are used. Or start with what interests me and then see where this connects.

The first Management Learning at Work conferences were soon after the collapse of the dotcom bubble

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

(The Learning Company, bought by Mattel in 1999 for $3.5 billion, sold for $27.3 million in 2000.)

so it was a time to look at long term recovery of what might be possible. I liked the opening keynote from John Burgoyne as the bright side was not ruled out before we started. But the conference themes moved on to leadership and critique. we never got to much on how technology could work in practice.

The Deming Special Interest Group of the CQI has a much more practical approach. But learning is not a priority, it turns up as a topic in situations where learning is not happening. This can be quite often. Also there is an overlap with web design or how content is promoted. The MoSO model is freely available.

The OLDS MOOC still has a couple of weeks to go. Design Science seems to be in the background. There is definitely an interest in design but so far not enough use of a definition of design science that it could be compared with other situations.

I mention this in particular because the MoSO model will be the focus for a face2face meeting on March 15th. It will be compared with another model on sustainability for organisations, based partly on design science. I think there will be a lot of overlap between Deming and design science but this will be clarified during the meeting.

So far in #mtw3 John Burgoyne has not said much about design science though there has been mention of scientific leadership ( possibly as a joke though) There are journal articles about design science and management but not any evidence this is being used by actual managers ( so far as I can tell ) . So maybe design science is the same for learning design and management but this is not yet clear.

In the online test runs for #mtw3 we have looked at academic publishing towards the end as an example of innovation, as studied at the Work Foundation . This could be a bit wider, to look at educational organisations, how learning is supported, forms of publishing within this. The OLDS MOOC course includes a look at the Larnaca Declaration. This covers Learning Design but I don't think it covers the changes in organisation that might be expected.

http://www.larnacadeclaration.org/

Meanwhile reporting on Futurelearn suggests there could be some disruption

http://www.indiaeducation.net/resources/interviews/martin-bean-vc-the-open-university-uk.html

We were later joined by Don Nutbeam, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton, one of the partner institutions of Futurelearn.

Nutbeam: Traditionally, the universities have always drawn the students to them. Now, the universities are going out to the students. So partnering with The Open University and Futurelearn is absolutely fundamental to our motto of taking Southampton to the world instead of asking the world to come to us. So the best universities in the world are going the way of the best businesses in the world - becoming more global - travelling across countries, becoming multinationals.

So I think design science could relate to learning and organisation. More posts about this over the next couple of weeks. Also related comments on LinkedIn etc for #mtw3 #mosocoop #oldsmooc , trying not to go too far off topic at any one time.