What is elearning doing to teaching

1
What is e-learning doing to teaching?

• Martin Oliver
• London Knowledge Lab
• Institute of Education

2
How I learned to stop worrying and love technology

• What does e-learning mean? (And to whom?)
• Exploring a dystopia
• The futility of changing practice
• A glimmer of hope?(Or why we neednt worry
  after all)

3
What are we talking about anyhow?

• Computer-based learning, computer-assisted
  learning, Multimedia learning, Communication and
  Information Technology, Information and
  Communication Technology, E-learning, Technology
  enhanced learning

4

• If someone is learning in a way that uses
  information and communication technologies
  (ICTs), they are using e-learning. They could be
  a pre-school child playing an interactive game
  they could be a group of pupils collaborating on
  a history project with pupils in another country
  via the Internet they could be geography
  students watching an animated diagram of a
  volcanic eruption their lecturer has just
  downloaded they could be a nurse taking her
  driving theory test online with a reading aid to
  help her dyslexia it all counts as e-learning.
• Towards a Unified e-Learning Strategy (2003)

5

• E-learning exploits interactive technologies
  and communication systems to improve the learning
  experience. It has the potential to transform the
  way we teach and learn across the board. It can
  raise standards, and widen participation in
  lifelong learning. It cannot replace teachers and
  lecturers, but alongside existing methods it can
  enhance the quality and reach of their teaching,
  and reduce the time spent on administration. It
  can enable every learner to achieve his or her
  potential, and help to build an educational
  workforce empowered to change. It makes possible
  a truly ambitious education system for a future
  learning society.
• Towards a Unified e-Learning Strategy (2003)

6

• It can leap tall buildings in a single bound,
  stop a moving freight train and catch bullets in
  its teeth
• (Not in Towards a Unified e-Learning Strategy
  sadly)

7
Dearing and the new teachers

• Discourse analysis of attitudes towards
  technology
• With Holly Smith, UCL
• Students as informed consumers (otherwise
  passive)
• Teachers as materials developers (only)
• Materials will enshrine the core of their
  teaching
• Pedagogy in the service of economic concerns

8
SMEs and other shifty characters

• Too often instructional designers leave these
  important what-to-teach decisions to so-called
  subject-matter-experts (SMEs). Often a SME knows
  how to perform the task that is the goal of
  instruction but is unaware of the knowledge
  components that are required to acquire this
  knowledge and skill. A primary role of the
  instructional designer is to determine these
  granular knowledge components and their sequence.
• Merrill, 2001

9
Nobles digital diploma mills (1998)

• The distribution of digitized course material
  online, without the participation of professors
  who develop such material is assumed to
  improve learning and increase wider access. In
  practice, however, such automation is often
  coercive in nature - being forced upon professors
  as well as students - with commercial interests
  in mind. This is a battle between students
  and professors on one side, and university
  administrations and companies with "educational
  products" to sell on the other.

10
Havent we been here before?

• Learning objects (and learning styles)
• Instructional design (and behaviourism)
• Intelligent tutoring systems (and student
  modelling)
• Teaching machines (Skinner, 1958)
• Learning Technology as Groundhog Day (Mayes, 1995)

11

• Can it really be this bad?

12

• WebCT made me do it

13
How lecturers worked with VLEs

• Sharing resources and practices
• Learning from best practice
• How does the Virtual Learning Environment affect
  the way that tutors design for learning?
• With Mira Vogel, Goldsmiths

14
Moodle made me do it

• The design and development of Moodle is guided
  by a particular philosophy of learning, a way of
  thinking that you may see referred to in
  shorthand as a "social constructionist
  pedagogy".
• http//docs.moodle.org/en/Philosophy

15
Irony

• Least used features of Moodle
• Wiki
• Glossary
• Workshop
• but some very successful (instructional)
  lessons

16
How does technology change teaching?

• Review from a small project (with Sara Price)
• Familiar issues raised
• Flexible study (time and location)
• Formalisation and industrialisation of curriculum
  work
• Insecurity amongst educators about lack of
  understanding and/or skills
• Consequent growth in academic development
• Emergence of new roles, such as learning
  technologists
• Changing conception of what it means to be a
  teacher (facilitator, organiser of knowledge,
  producer of educational content, etc.)

17
How did technology change teaching?

• Moving discussions online
• Nothings really changed
• But it is completely different
• erm what?

18
The same, only different

• Tutor provides support to students, looking for
  difficulty, unhappiness etc.
• Watching the group, noting behaviour etc.
• Scan room note silence etc.

• Tutor provides support to students, looking for
  difficulty, unhappiness etc.
• Use student monitoring fuctions
• Generate list of contributions note low
  contributors click email button

19
Whats going on?

• Preservation of strategic purpose
• The values remain unchanged
• Implementation changes
• Unrecognisable at the level of detail

20
What does that tell us, then?

• The technology is not neutral
• but it isnt an omnipotent evil either
• Influence, suggestion and intention
• but it doesnt determine the agenda

21
Values

• Was that really a good idea?
• Regimes of surveillance (Land and Bayne)
• Stupid computers and inspectable pedagogy
• Making practice routine to improve efficiency
• Whose values should be represented?
• And can we talk about all this, please?

22
So

• E-learnings an incoherent mess
• Opinions have polarised
• The best intentions of designers are thwarted by
  practicalities
• Technologys increasingly associated with
  worrying agendas

23
So

• Technology is implicated
• Technologies are designed(often reflecting the
  values of the designers, not teachers who might
  use them)
• Linked to agendas of efficiency
• An opportunity for agendas of accountability

24
What might e-learning be now?

• We can do this differently
• Scepticism about the hype
• Evaluate use, not technology
• Recognition of teachers expertise(even if they
  cant tell us what theyre doing)
• Reflection of teachers values(because itll
  help them and encourage use)
• Development as an opportunity for dialogue