Changing University Teaching, Reflections on Creating Educational Technologies

Citation

McLaurin, A. (2000), "Changing University Teaching, Reflections on Creating Educational Technologies", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 152-155. https://doi.org/10.1108/qae.2000.8.3.152.1

Are you an “innovator” or a “laggard” when it comes to the adoption of new technologies in higher education? Possibly, you are an “early adopter”, or, less heroically, simply part of the “early or late majority”? One of the essays in this collection alludes to these “adopter categories”, but substitutes a more nuanced range of context‐sensitive “stances”. This term is preferred as it indicates that attitudes are subject to change; “scepticism” may become “oppositional”, or be transformed into “boosterism”, depending on circumstances. This terminology is taken from Chapter 6 of the book, in which the authors link their argument to case studies – narratives which describe the experiences of a range of academics confronted by the threats posed or opportunities offered by the new educational technology. In its critical and reflective analysis, based on case studies, the essay is typical of the 13 contributions to the book.

All the contributors are involved in the adoption of new technologies, but none can be accused of the “boosterism” which sees the adoption of new technology as unproblematic. The authors, incidentally, demonstrate the deep learning, which they advocate, by reflecting critically on their varied experience of educational change. In their concluding chapter the editors reflect interestingly on the risks, harms and benefits of change. Their distance from gung‐ho attitudes can be gauged from their warning that the “determination of risks and benefit is usually in the hands of those who wield influence and power, and so typically changes are likely to benefit them, even if the rhetoric is in terms of a common good”.

The multicultural scope of the collection is a distinctive feature, including an essay by Richard Wah, on technological change in the University of the South Pacific, and Olugbemiro Jegede, examining “cultural border crossing”. Samuel Haihuie, writing about his experience in Papua New Guinea, reminds us that in distance learning “distance can be both spatial but also a social and economic separation between provider and recipient”. It is also clear that one of the risks entailed in the development of information and communications technology is that universities in developing countries will not be able to afford the investment necessary for successful implementation. The divide between the two worlds is seen most sharply in Chapter 9, in which Neil Hanley and Stewart Marshall narrate their contrasting experiences in Singapore and Swaziland. The two halves of the essay illustrate very well the importance of social, cultural and political contexts for the implementation of educational innovations.

There are a number of other thematic oppositions which recur throughout the book; for example, that between deep and surface learning. Another contrast, explored by Garrison and Anderson, is that between the use of technology to support dominant practices and its use to transform and disrupt them. Their discussion, like many in the collection, illustrates a point made in the Introduction, that “technology is not a tool – it is an art or science of how to use a tool for a purpose”.

Although this is a book of contrasts, David Harris in his chapter on Knowledge and Networks points to the blurring of distinctions, between student and researcher, or writer and publisher, when using the Web in education. His essay contains a provocative suggestion for the future role of the universities: “to help regulate the knowledge provided by others … to deconstruct discourses found elsewhere, to explore their universalistic claims, and root around for the actual mechanisms that produce apparent coherence”. One reservation about the book is that there is not enough of this kind of speculative writing about the very purpose of universities, now that their role as gatekeepers of knowledge is being challenged by new technology.

However, anyone interested in educational change will find something of interest in the essays which make up this volume.