Great comments. I particularly agree about scalability. This is where the potential of open educational resources lie. If we can produce really high quality learning ‘modules’, then they can be used over and over again, with relatively small local adaptation, thus freeing up instructors to focus on interacting with their students, rather than delivering content. However, it’s no good just posting up lectures – they need to be modified for open access use.

I agree that we could be using synchronous technologies for bringing in outside expertise, but real-time interaction with experts is expensive (in terms of the time of the expert) and not always possible. What we could be doing more of though is using our alumni, and drawing on their work experience for our courses.

Thanks again for the comments, Tony

My frustration with e-learning is that, in many instances, it has only changed the way you access classroom content. The bullet points under “4. Enhancing the quality of learning” only really seem to facilitate the transfer of knowledge. A teacher posts videos of their lecture, students can communicate online, grades and other administrative tasks are streamlined, class notes are posted on moodle, etc. I think these are important tasks, but I don’t think these enhance the quality of the education. They only enhance the access to this education. The lecture could be dry and boring. The online notes could be scattered and irrelevant. The collaborative assignments could be unconnected to cognitive development. Thus, the technology is only a new channel for old methodologies. It doesn’t improve the quality of the content. It only improves the access to the content.

One powerful use of technology is its scalability. You can disseminate one good teacher’s classroom to an infinite number of users. Instead of a good teacher having an impact on the number of students who can fit in the room, the teacher can impact anyone who has an internet connection. This is where I think there is tremendous value to “e-learning”, and yet it doesn’t seem to be exploited. Instead, the technology simply allows the added convenience that students can access this information and content online. This hardly seems to be an improvement in quality, though it is an improvement in convenience.

The greatest value of the technology is that it can expand the limits of the classroom. In the next week, my brother (a nigh school physics teacher) is having a video conference call with Albert-Lazlo Barabosi, a world-renowned physicist, in his class. That is an example of exploiting the power of the technology to improve quality: you can now bring in a world-renowned physicist to a high school physics classroom with a connection to Skype and the Internet. This sort of use of technology is sorely missing in education today, and instead it is simply being used to streamline processes. Not in every instance, of course, but I think it is in the majority of cases.

Just some thoughts, of course. I’d be curious about what you think.

1. on the use of technology to lower costs…I think this is happening at more institutions than it may seem. For example, we hear frequently about increased class sizes where technology is being used to help provide more student-to-student interactions. The cost savings are hidden because they are used to offset lower government funding or to reassign faculty time to more prestigious research activities.

Unfortunately, the cost savings are not often thoughtfully developed as part of a larger strategy, nor are they always accompanied by changes in instructional design to insure learning quality is maintained (let alone enhanced…).

2. I appreciate your argument that our use of technology in teaching is not doing a good job of introducing our students to the knowledge work habits they will need in their careers. The best faculty work that underlies the productive changes in course design and technology use could serve as a model to students about the opportunities and decisions they will encounter in the workplace or as concerned citizens, but for this to happen we would have to encourage faculty to share the process by which they arrived at the new course activities, including the source of the ideas, how they will be evaluated, how the risks in the change process have been identified and will be managed, etc. We have a project starting up in the U.S. which I hope will make some progress on this, and have been in conversation with interested Canadian institutions.

5. re students views of technology use differing from faculty views: You might be interested in recent data providing support for this gap -

Lopes, V. (2008) Course Management Systems in Campus Based Learning, Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education Professional File, No. 29, December 2008.
http://ss.ucalgary.ca/csshe/sites/ss.ucalgary.ca.csshe/files/PF_29_Lopes.pdf

This study of community college students and faculty revealed significant differences between student and faculty perceptions of the use and value of a course management system (as used in their institution).