Technology in Learning and its Application within WBL

The evolution of DE delivery as described in the previous section has reached the mobile age where ubiquitous computing has become commonplace. WB learners are now on the move more than ever and thus want to be connected to content, academics and peers to be able to carry on with their learning anytime, anywhere using any tool as they wish. In light of this, applications of technology have become important for the delivery of WBL.

Currently the prominence of ICT and other external influencing factors; economic, social, cultural and the changing role of governmental policy are driving the inner life of the HE sector. In that respect many HEIs are turning to e-learning technologies for improving the quality of learning by means of access to resources, services, long distance collaborations and exchanges (Gyambrah, 2007). The distance and time barriers to access to learning sometimes found in WBL can be largely compensated by using technology. The term technology enhanced learning or technology enabled learning (TEL) refers to any online or electronic facility or system that directly supports learning and teaching. This may include a formal VLE, e-Assessment or e-Portfolio software tool, or any Web 2.0 tools. This includes any system that has been developed in-house, as well as commercial or open source tools (Browne et al., 2010).

New technology can actually remove barriers to WBL. It is not only the learning content where technology can be helpful in distance delivery of WBL but other features of learning and teaching as well such as learning interface, communication, and assessment. According to Reeve, Gallacher et al. (1998), there are two key current themes in HE, i.e. WBL and the use of new technology in teaching and learning. Despite the constraints, they see considerable potential for new technology to promote greater access to learning and, in particular, to WBL. Indeed the combination of these two approaches, technology-based learning and WBL, is already a significant feature of the current LLL agenda. In attempting to outline how a successful synthesis might be achieved it is clear that the use of technology does not replace existing WBL approaches but it has the potential to make them more effective. However, the greatest contribution of new technology lies not in its ability to deliver materials to learners but in the opportunities it affords for more and better forms of communication; communication between work-based learners and between them and the university. In this way new technology can be used to support learners in their exploration of the curriculum in the workplace.

There are a series of general problems that are caused by global socio-technological changes. Evolution is presented as a trial-and-error process that produces a progressive accumulation of knowledge. At the level of technology, this leads to ever increasing productivity, or decreasing of the friction that normally dissipates resources. As a result, flows of matter, energy and information circulate ever more easily across the planet. This global connectivity increases the interactions between agents, and thus the possibilities for conflict. Dealing with climate change, our rampant energy needs, our increasingly crowded planet, and our resultant pollution, are challenges not only for technology development but also for policy-makers and other agents of social change. Margaryan in his book attempts to define the major challenges facing organisations and to analyse how technology- enhanced WBL can respond to these socio-technological challenges (Margaryan, 2008). This is brought into sharp focus that advocates a technology-enhanced WBL approach. The

assertion that ‘technology can serve many roles to support WBL’ certainly seems a touch

simplistic in the contemporary learning context. It does, however, articulate clearly the paradigm shift to a pedagogy that acknowledges the more situational and experiential emphasis on learning that is driven more by work requirements than subject matter disciplines. It also focuses on the use of technology to enhance WBL and it describes the design, development and evaluation of a web-based, repository-type tool which contains a range of reference materials to support practitioners in designing or updating work-based courses.

Technology to support learning is defined by any electronic or digital systems or products used to enhance the learning and teaching process. The evidence based practice in technology enhanced learning informs the decision making by practitioners in the use of technology to support employability and employee learning in HE. The student population is also increasingly diverse, with many part time and work‐based learners. According to Finlay, Dean et al. (2010), the adoption of technology to support employability and employee learning needs to be understood against the background of growing demand for employability to be included in the curriculum from students, employers and Government. This makes the need for effective technology support for employability and employee learning more critical. They identify four learning technology areas as particularly noteworthy to support employability and employee learning which are increasingly prevalent in the literature as following:

 the use of e-portfolio systems  the use of web 2.0 technologies  the use of simulation

 and the use of open educational resources

One example of open educational resources is MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) which are the latest addition to the acronym-bound lexicon of HE, and quite possibly the most significant of them all (Boxall, 2012). They represent a new generation of online education, freely accessible on the internet and geared towards very large student numbers. Over recent months there has been a remarkable spate of major MOOCs ventures from top-ranked universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley, offering free access to lectures and courses sourced from world leaders in their fields. And in July 2012, 12 universities in the US and Europe

announced their involvement in ‘Coursera’, an internet course platform created by two

Stanford University scientists. It is also one of the innovations related to the teaching and learning aspects of post-secondary education that is attempting to engage seriously with the economic, social and educational demands of our time. Interestingly, it provides a fundamental challenge to existing practices and provides new possibilities for post- secondary pedagogy and education. The essence of online learning can be viewed as learning anytime, anywhere, using any tool which very much aligns with the modern day multi-task daily routines. Presently, state-of-the-art dedicated networks have been established in many countries in order to facilitate the delivery of online post secondary level academic as well as professional programmes developed by universities and other private and public sector post-secondary educational institutions. The Joint Academic network (JANET) is one such network established by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK with the vision of easy and widespread access to information and resources, anytime, anywhere. JISC works for HE Funding Councils as well as in partnership with the Research Councils (ja.net, 2010).

However, technology should not be used for its own sake and there is a need for evidence to show which applications of technology are effective in this area. According to the synthesis produced with the aim of informing the decision making by practitioners in the appropriate use of technology to support employability and employee learning in HE, evidence is categorized using the dimensions of type of evidence (account, informal and systematic) and level of evidence (course, institution, multi‐institution) (Finlay et al., 2010). The findings of the study indicates that technological interventions are introduced for pedagogic, economic and developmental reasons and primarily focused on delivery, assessment (including credit‐bearing) and feedback, with a small minority of examples concerned with streamlining processes. The main benefits cited include improved

engagement, greater flexibility and availability of resources, better support for students as well as improved efficiency and quality, better monitoring, easier and greener delivery, better engagement with employers and skill development for students (Finlay et al., 2010).

There are five main areas of use of technology often found in WBL (Liyanage et al., 2011a):-

1. e-Learning portal

2. Communication

3. Assessment

4. Content

5. Technological support to students

The authors above conclude that a number of factors facilitate and/or obstruct the effective implementation of technology to support WBL and there are still a number of barriers to using technology in novel and imaginative ways to provide learning and teaching provision fit for the twenty first century.