Matthew Allen

Is E-Learning True to the Principles of Technology?
(John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning)
Keynote Paper at E-Learn conference, 2009, Vancouver

Disclaimer: Live blogging; see end for reflections, side notes.

Begins by emphasising the wide variety of capacities of nations to engage successfully in elearning

Declares the “absolute importance of technology in the educational development of the world”; attempting to link purposes and technology together. Fears that we are missing out on the benefit technology might bring. Will present argument that explores the relationship between the purpose and use of “Technology”, and what technologies for learning might bring).

Breaks into a short description of the Commonwealth of Learning (note its emphasis on technology and development, especially role of distance learning / technology, especially at secondary school AND teacher education; examples of bringing education TO the traditional farming communities).

For higher education he indicates the central challenge: wider access; higher quality; lower cost. With traditional methods, you can’t achieve increases in access at lower cost with quality; you get ONE or TWO of the three (but not all three). Discusses the ‘iron triangle’ which links exclusivity and quality. Educational technology CAN give you all three.

Technology = “application of scientific and other organised knowledge to practical tasks by organisations (including both people and machines)”; notes Smith – four principles of technology (division of labour; specialisation; economies of scale; machines/ICTS). Uses the OpenU as the example – eg division of labour between content / process / delivery experts; massification – 1M students worldwide; use of ICTs essential).

Daniel emphasises that it’s not just or mainly ‘online’ – eg Indian national open schooling – 1.6 million students, mostly print based.

But question: is elearning true to the principles of technology? (meaning: scale, etc). Asserts that academics like elearning because it enables them to maintain the ‘cottage industry’; is very sceptical about ‘elearning’ as a major force for economic change. Asserts that, overall, there are no differences (or, worse, are increased expenses) from introducing ‘elearning’. This doesn’t matter in 1st world, especially; but really is a major problem in developing nations. So, technology (elearning) must change the system, not just layer on top of it.

Returns us to an emphasis on producing, sharing content: the Open Educational Resource Commons – information freely available, and usable in print form as much as online, will make a major difference in countries that are developing. Another example, Wikieducator: commitment to creating, sharing and using open content.

Discussion of VUSSC; major project of CoL, to coordinate and network the small states of the commonwealth’s university activities. It’s as much about QA, management, assistance as ‘virtuality’ – again, emphasising how organisation is critical, not just ‘using’ elearning.

Fear is: Elearning is “provoking a throwback to pre-industrial times” which would vitiate its major cost and other savings and benefits.

Good comment in Q&A – universities which invest heavily in space might get caught by the number of students who are studying ‘sort-of’ on campus – actually spending quite a lot of time offcampus. [This strikes me as an effect of the network society - people, even younger and naive social subjects are not investing very much significance in buildings and places - investing in networks and forms.]

Side Notes
There is a consistent emphasis of technology as a force in society.There is also a degree of blindness to the changing nature of the economic-technological system of the Internet. However, it’s interesting to consider the background – the very strong emphasis in CoL on developing nations, with limited infrastructure. Something as simple as having free, good-quality, pdf files of information can have a major difference / impact in developing nations; it’s not about sophisticated elearning.

On reflection, the challenge is to distinguish between ‘elearning’ as a kind of global force for change and as a way of doing what is already done and thought, but in an era of networked ICTS. Systematisation, massification and so on, are not the only productive and quality-enhancing approaches to the use of technology. Some of the answers to questions also indicate a degree of naivete or, at least, out-datedness from Daniel about the way in which elearning is now being done. Curiously, Daniel is on stronger ground when he argues that people good at teaching should focus on it, and do it in teams (the real lesson of OpenU); the idea that ‘elearning’ should – only – be done in this way is incorrect

Tags: AACE, e-learning, liveblogging

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 00:27 and is filed under Conferences, Events, keynotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.