Understanding technology and Technology Enhanced Learning

Listing all the different technologies and their ‘limitless’ functionalities that may assist, enhance or transform learning, particularly in this digital age, is challenging. This is especially so as new technologies emerge virtually daily, thus contributing to an ever expanding ‘wish list’. Consequently, because of the different technologies that are used for educational purposes, as well as the different learning materials and different learners that factor into the TEL equation, finding a definition of TEL that suits all can also be tricky (Dror, 2008).

What’s more, Selwyn (2008) purports that TEL in education takes place within specific social, cultural, political and economic contexts. This resonates with my theoretical stance on technology in general, with the differing contexts also needing to be considered as a ‘one size fits all’ global definition may not be suitable in Australian contexts (see also Cox, 2008).

Contributing to this discussion, and similar to Educational Technology, different versions of TEL exist over time and in different locations with the result that TEL has been known by a number of terms including: learning technology; online education; computer-based learning; e-learning; instructional technology, distributed learning, mobile learning, hybrid learning to name just a few (Bayne, 2014; Guri-Rosenblit, 2009; Guri-Rosenblit & Gros, 2011). However, TEL has recently become an accepted term in both Australian and UK contexts (see ACODE, 2014, Australian Government, 2016b, Bayne, 2014, HEA, 2017).

Noting the definition of technology discussed earlier, in terms of ‘enhance’, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines it as to “heighten, increase; especially: to increase or improve in value, quality, desirability, or attractiveness” (Enhance, 2017). The combination of both terms in the context of education would have ‘technology enhanced’ as being the use of technical means to improve teaching and learning in some way or means. Such improvements have been said to possibly occur at three different levels, and as related to the type of intervention:

1. “efficiency (existing processes carried out in a more cost-effective, time- effective, sustainable or scalable manner)

2. enhancement (improving existing processes and the outcomes)

3. transformation (radical, positive change in existing processes or introducing new processes)” (HEFCE, 2009, p. 2)

That said, in its 2005 report, the OECD concluded that ICT in higher education had more impact on administrative services than on teaching. The report additionally outlined how TEL often does not meet local needs or is relevant to cultures, and hence many strategies have failed to meet planned outcomes (OECD, 2005).

Guri-Rosenblit (2009) has talked of the gap between the expectations of technology to enhance teaching and learning and the lack of successful implementations that have had any positive change in educational environments. This is due, in part, to educational technologies not being directed at problem areas and therefore not adding any value educationally (Guri-Rosenblit, 2009; Zemsky & Massy, 2004). Problematic therefore, is viewing technology as a way of improving education without thoroughly investigating what the problem is in the first instance. Secondly, there is a need of questioning if technology provides a ‘better’ solution than that of a non- technology focussed one:

…we tend to start by looking at the functionality and wondering what we can do with it, rather than focussing on the problems of learning…as new technologies emerge, a new generation of researchers starts to explore what they can do, projects emerge and then, after a short while, interest fades as an even newer technology emerges (Rushby, 2013).

Additionally, with many studies focusing on the ‘technology’ and in developing questions regarding how technologies can be used in education, findings often promote existing educational models rather than responding to identified teaching and learning issues (Kirkwood & Price, 2013a, 2014; Laurillard, 2008b; Westera, 2004), or in determining new ways to teach and learn with technology. This seems to be also the case in European HE sectors, with traditional pedagogical models based on teachers ‘transmitting’ knowledge to students (a one-way teacher led transference of knowledge) as still dominating and driving teaching and learning (Schneckenberg, 2009). Moreover, many of the research questions explored in the past have already been, more or less, answered by previous research and as such, the result is a cycle of researching obsolete questions and not learning from pre-existing lessons (Rushby, 2013; Rushby & Seabrook, 2008).

If we fail to learn from history of [ICT] in education and work-based learning, we are condemned to repeat it. We will continue to cycle round and round the innovation cycle, unaware of the lessons from which we could learn, making relatively little progress the questions that were being asked at that time had already been answered, at least in part, in educational technology findings dating back to the 1980s (Rushby & Seabrook, 2008, p. 199).

Thus, it is not surprising that, even with multitudes of educational institutions taking up TEL, Daniel (2007) noted that the introduction of successful educational

technology was rare. He also attributes failures to strategies that neglect to take into account education costs, no matter what mode of delivery used, and that there is a problem with wanting to cut costs associated with education, whilst still wanting to increase access to high quality educational experiences. Using educational technology in this sense, he says, is neither economically or pedagogically sound due to increased difficulties in sustaining such strategies.

Thus, enhancing learning via educational technology may be more successful, Latchem says, when “applied to pressing needs not easily met by conventional means and systems and when scientific and other organised knowledge are applied to reducing costs and increasing volume and access while assuring quality” (2014, p. 4).

2.2.3 Understanding pedagogy, paradigm shifts and Technology Enhanced Learning

Along with the differences in terminology, the role of pedagogy has also shifted, with educational technologies seen as having potential to promote a paradigm shift from teaching to learning. This is “a new mode of learning at universities which is

conceptualised as a flexible, self-organised and collaborative process”

(Schneckenberg, 2009, p. 412).

Surprisingly, global research on TEL indicates that explicit statements about what TEL actually means are rare and additionally, questions have arisen on what exactly is being enhanced when technology is used for teaching and learning (Bayne, 2014; Kirkwood & Price, 2014; Price & Kirkwood, 2016). Indeed, there are criticisms of the very use of the term Technology Enhanced Learning, with Kirkwood and Price (2014) writing that “it is often taken for granted that technologies can ‘enhance learning’” (p. 7). Other criticisms are levelled at its possible positivist stance, that is, the “underlying belief that digital technologies are…capable of improving education” (Selwyn, 2011, p. 713). Hence, the very purpose of using technology and the

effectiveness of it in enhancing learning is beginning to be questioned (Attwell & Hughs, 2010; Guri-Rosenblit, 2009; Kirkwood & Price, 2014; Price & Kirkwood, 2014, 2016). Price and Kirkwood (2016) also claim that technology’s use is often poorly connected to pedagogy, creating gaps “between pedagogy for learning and the use of technology for learning” (p. 227). The thought is that using educational technology to enhance learning shouldn’t be seen as something that will give miraculous results, especially when applied to vague educational issues.

The above perspectives on pedagogy and educational technology points to the need of further investigation into how the use of technology affects what is valued in terms of knowledge and what it means to know and learn. By doing so, new pedagogies may arise from research that open new ways of viewing the world the way we live and act (Veletsianos, 2010).

Not so long ago educational technologies were seen as a new way of doing something familiar but without a change in pedagogy, which Salmon indicated as being a first stage understanding (Salmon, 2005). Salmon’s second stage involves educational technologies being used in new ways “to advance beyond what was possible in the classroom or to combine traditional approaches with [educational technology] in effective and worthwhile modes to meet new objectives and purposes of teaching and learning” (Salmon, 2005, p. 202).

Selwyn (2016, p. xi) view is that there are varying levels of change, from modest through to wholesale revolution with teaching and learning, thusly:

 improvements in learning (e.g. learning being authentic, situated or networked); or improving learners (e.g. improved engagement, better experiences; supported to learn);

 enabling educators to do their jobs better and attend to more learner needs, being responsive to societal and economical needs whilst remaining cost effective;

 transforming education process and processes, that is, shaking up the nature and form of education;

 Creating a digital revolution where the status quo is challenged, and there is a redistribution of power and control (p. xii).

This thought is extended but by Säljö (2010) who has theorised “that technology does not facilitate or improve learning in a linear sense, rather it is currently changing our interpretations of what learning is and changing our expectations about what it means to know something” (p. 56). In explanation, he says that technologies impact on our culture and communicative/cognitive activities by affecting the ways in which society develops and provides access to social memory, “that is, the pool of insights and experiences that people are expected to know about and to make use of” (p. 56). Through this new way of knowing we apply intelligent actions utilising technology and this new process is “transforming our conceptions of what learning is; our expectations of what people should master, and how human skills should be cultivated” (ibid.). This view further changes what it means to know and learn:

…to learn something is to be able convert information stored in the expanding external symbolic storages of our social memory into something that is new, interesting and consequential for a practice or an issue. (p. 62)

These extended views challenge conventional ways of knowing, teaching and learning that the HE system is built upon.