Week 17 activities

Noble

• administration against faculty
• removal of intellectual property rights
• automation and digital mills
• monopoly over knowledge
• paying more and getting less

Hara and Kling

• learner frustrations
• lack of understanding between student and teachers
• caution in promoting virtues of online learning
• it cannot be wholly the instructors fault

Cuban

• main teaching vehicle still the lecture
• adoption of technology by few - but use of technology personally to make faculty lives easier
• changes too fast paced to be in policies

Brabazon

• teachers biggest losers
• administration relying on good will of teachers
• students expectations of a 24/7 culture/ laziness of learning
• did we forget to tell students how to learn?

Do you think these issues are representative of the broader picture of technology adoption in universities?

I think that the issues raised resonate with those of any adoption or change in the status quo. There will be the few who quickly adopt, and then the majority who lag behind. The difficulty in a university setting is that the faculty are often part of a larger machine. And often it is those outside of the influence, or the early adopters that who are pushing for change. It is therefore of no surprise that those that shout the loudest get the best breaks.

I was reminded of the interview I did for my second TMA in H807. Here I interviewed a small company who had broken away from the publishing industry to utilise what the internet could offer. Because they created a small organisation, they could be innovative and adapt to new technology a lot faster than larger organisations because they were small. At the latest web browsers, they could integrate and utilise them fairly fast.

What issues would you personally identify as problems associated with the use of digital and networked technologies in education (either in your practice or more generally)?

Within my own context, we are working with volunteers that will own their own technology. This brings different problems. We have to accept that if we are using technology for learning, it has to be an option , among others, and not the only form of learning. We have to use programmes that are easy to use, and give support to volunteers in using them. We also need to up skill our trainers and training mangers so they are confident in using them. We know from research that training managers are wary of online learning because they have less control over it.

So there are similar issues - access, acceptance, quality, training trainers and learners

What are your personal thoughts on the relationship between technologies and educational reform? (For example, is technology itself a cause of reform or an instrument used to encourage reform?)

Is technology a cause of reform? It may be. Traditionally reform seems to come about through the need of levelling - of reducing the inequalities across poverty, gender, class. One could say that there is a levelling of technology needed and thus Technology drives reform. This could also link to the, long standing push for education to provide citizens that are useful to society. (Victorian times schools were designed to teach useful topics to society - grammar schools formed to teach grammar and bookkeeping so people could go into business and Brabazon picked this up in the education reforms in Australia). There does seem to be evidence that technology can be an instrument in changing education, because of the approaches to learning it afford.

Reform however, is ultimately driven by people, whether individuals or organisations.

What influence do you think the producers and developers of technologies and services have on university decisions about introducing new technologies?

Producers and developers play a huge part in this. If they worked alongside or even within universities then a huge step would be taken to adopting technology.  Maybe it would be more beneficial to include them as members of staff than to buy in the services?