Wcet Denver: Re-Thinking E-Learning Research

Re-Thinking E-Learning Research Norm Friesen [email_address]

Overview
Chapters have appeared in:
Mind, Culture & Activity
AI & Society
ijCSCL
E-Learning
Ubiquity

Overview
Re-thinking assumptions about technology:
Technology as the driving force for educational change
Technology & faculty change
Technology & research paradigms
Research across the disciplines

Technology & Educational Change
A new technology “impacts” student outcomes, student satisfaction, education overall
Technology as a disruptive force in organizations, institutions
Technologies “afford” certain pedagogies by virtue of their design or function
Technological change as occurring by law

Example: “tipping point”
The… "opportunity to [act] before the tipping point arrives will occur only once.“
“… tools and techniques are developing at an accelerated rate, a rate that calls for an effective response—the preparedness of educators in schools with technology integrated into all subject areas.“

Impact of Technology
Technology is a force acting from outside
Technology acts on its own
The arrival of technology is inevitable
The object impacted is otherwise immobile
The consequences of impact are massive
From: Darkmatter

Laws of Technological Change
Moore's law (the regular doubling of computer processor speeds)
Gladwell's "tipping point" (change occurs via an "epidemic" dynamic)
Kurzweil's "law of accelerating returns" (the exponential nature of technical innovation)
These laws may hold in terms of the spread of disease, or numbers of transistors. But…

But…
Changes in technological capability
Bandwidth, processing power, storage
Do not result in direct and proportionate changes in:
learning abilities,
teaching performance
use of technologies
Other institutional metrics

Wikipedia 2009

Encoded in Research Designs
Rogers’ "Dissemination of Innovation" Model:
Technology disseminated through a population
Adoption and resistance as the only responses
technology as a kind of "unmoved mover," decisively influencing education from the outside
Technology as pre-given in its uses, design, purposes, functions, etc.

Wikipedia 2009

Encoded in Research Designs
quasi-experimental designs that define technology as a treatment or control
Measure its educational effects or outcomes
produces results deemed either controversial, inconclusive or as “fatally flaw[ed]” (Bernard et. al. 2004; Russell, 1997
fundamental questions about technology & change are unasked and unanswered; instead, a tacit understanding is shared…

Technological Determinism
technological determinism : “the belief that social progress is driven by technological innovation, which in turn follows an ‘inevitable’ course.” Smith, 1994, p 38; also http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tecdet.html
“ optimistic” hard determinism: “the advance of technology leads to a situation of inescapable necessity [with the future being] the outcome of many free choices and the realization of the dream of progress…”(Marx & Smith, 1994; xii).

Counter-Examples
“ progress” can sometimes fail, or be stopped dead in its tracks –or can be “co-opted” (DCMI)
The persistence of the classroom as a site of educational practices
The Web as being modified and adapted for education: WebCT or Moodle
adaptation has occurred in a manner that seems to have had the end effect of reinforcing rather than disrupting many conventional educational practices and organizations.

Technology as Negotiated
Users interpret & “domesticate” technologies
Computer and communication technologies are open to multiple uses, non-uses, & improvisations
Processes of construction & negotiation
is "an 'ambivalent' process of development" that is "suspended between different possibilities" (Andrew Feenberg, 2002, p. 15)
Web 2.0 specially suited to this approach

Feenberg: Technology in E-Learning?
Technology is not a destiny for e-learning
Technology is instead a scene of engagement & struggle

http://scope.bccampus.ca	30
http://webct.georgebrown.ca	8
http://www.slideshare.net	3

Wcet Denver: Re-Thinking E-Learning Research

by Norm Friesen on Oct 23, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

3 Embeds 41

Statistics

Wcet Denver: Re-Thinking E-Learning Research — Presentation Transcript