LAUSR

Some of the papers, often very interesting and comprehensive papers, which do not make it into this journal misconstrue its purpose and scope. The well-published academic will be only too aware that selecting a journal on the basis of its aims and scope is the first step towards successful submission, followed closely by noting and using the published author guidelines. This journal aims to publish papers on all aspects of the design and use of interactive learning environments, supporting individual and collaborative learning in the domains of education, training, life-long learning and knowledge sharing. Within that broad overview then, what are we actually seeking? Certainly scholarly research, which is well informed about current and developing trends in learning with information technology. We might consider all types of research papers, including historical studies, longitudinal studies, case studies and research conducted through survey and experimental or quasi-experimental method. Most of our papers fall into the latter categories, involving empirical or survey research. However, conceptual papers are also welcomed, where a deep knowledge of the relevant literature can be challenged, and innovative insights developed for dissemination and wider debate. What is all this research for? We could be cynical and suggest that career development and promotion of academics was a leading reason for research; such are the demands on today’s academics that urgent publication is often a high priority. However this can at most only be a by-product of genuine research. If we consider for whom the research is conducted, we know that other academics will probably be the main readership, but in this field it is often practitioners and policy-makers who are a more important audience. To borrow an economic term, we are discussing the derived demand for learning necessitated by the demand for improved teaching and better policy decisions from politicians and organisational leaders. Learners should be the main beneficiaries of this research, but effects on those learners are mediated by many variables, not only environmental ones. Such intervening variables are likely to make experimental and survey research tricky. Campbell and Stanley set out an enduring list of threats to the validity of experimental research in all forms of education and social science back in 1963, which is still worth remembering: threats such as individual maturation which can affect post-test results when compared with pre-test data, also statistical regression on retesting of a cohort group. They write disparagingly of what they call a “one-shot case study” in terms of the value it can offer to readers: a viewpoint strongly espoused by this editorial team, since a single case study, often with relatively few participants, however exciting and innovative, is still a single case study. Then there are perennial issues with survey research, including sampling, instrumentation, field work, data entry and data preparation. Academics, practitioners and policy-makers need more than simple headlines, or papers which are self-congratulatory about an innovation on the basis of a satisfaction survey alone: they need evidence which is rigorously collected and tested, and reproducible, at least within a defined context, before that research can have an effect on their practice. Do we primarily need research which has an effect on practice? If research is largely to contribute to knowledge, it may be sufficient to produce exploratory studies which ask difficult questions and confirmatory studies which seek to refine the answers. Here we are facing the issues of knowledge production as questioned by Gibbons et al. in 1994, issues of modes of knowledge production which are defined by disciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, theory production and application.