Interesting in studying the impact of technology on higher education
Main results / identified trends from surveys and studies
1- change is slow, and not radical: a gradual "stretching the mold"
depends on:
- where do you go to do teaching and learning
- who decides what and how you learn
- came up with 4 quadrants or scenarios for change: institution decides/learn
on campus
-- back to basics"- this is still the heart of what higher ed does
-- The global campus: institution decides/learn globally
-- stretching the mold: professor decides/learn on campus
-- the new economy: professor decides/learn globally
the stretch has started, it is not systemic
ubiquity of technology: ICT is widely used in teaching and learning, but part
of a blend
- not replacing the instructor
- not replacing the lectuer or the book (those are still the core technologies)
- being used as a complimentary part of the blend
The term eLearning is NOT generally used for learning experiences which are
to some extent supported with information and communication technology
- this is a general trend and experience: no special term for this
- higher education course management systems are common tools
3- Instructors are doing more, but with no reward (working harder and doing
more)
-- offering more flexibility
-- spending more time because of technology
These trends for higher ed are NOT the same for corporate sectors
corporate arena has 3 separate worlds/forms of learning
- elearning: everything is via the computer with or without a network
- classroom sessions
- informal learning via knowledge management, networks
blended learning has become a buzzword in corporate circles, her studies indicate 30 different variants of blended learning
2 different dimensions underly the
1- location and time (question in corporate settings: do you have a face to
face meeting at all?)
2- human interaction (extent to which the instruction involves interaction
/ sharing / learning in a team context)
Challenges is not technical
- seeing learning as this seamless set of options that can help you learn,
this type of thinking and the human organization that goes behind it is really
just being talked about in most corporate areas
Features of corporate learning that have always been there (some different
from higher ed settings where they are absent)
- client satisfaction
- business needs (shared agreement on why we are doing something, allows for
common standard of measurement for what we are doing: higher ed tends to be
driven more by research interests, programmatic interests)
- cost versus impact
- changes in the field
corporate very focused on user interface
4 main lessons from corporate
1- concern for the learner: CLIENT
-- professionalism
-- concern for all aspects of the learning experience
-- learning environment
2- have a concrete and shared objective
-- focus on shared problems in real situations
-- often directly linked to competence framework and career progress
she never has to deal with technical problems at Shell: always has to deal with them at the university
3- integrating formal and informal learning
-- communities of practice
-- best practices
-- esp in knowledge management filed (databases that are repositories for capturing
in-house experiences)
4- providing quality multimedia learning objects
-- e-modules for just-in-time learning
-- simulations
-- diffusion is poor of simulations, emodules, multimedia resources relative
to the corporate world
Lessons from higher ed valuable for the corporate world
1- use technology to stretch the mold of classroom courses
-- technology extends the instructor, not replaces her
-- supporting new pedagogies, such as contribution
-- students find or make, and submit: building as the course progresses
2- flexibility
-- in learning resources (students find their own)
-- with regard to individual differences
-- coporate thinking of WWW tends to be very negative and suspicious: how would
we control quality? what if engineers found something that is poor quality?
(maybe they should be able to discern such things)
3- importance of higher-level learning
-- from knowledge acquisition to knowledge sharing and construction
-- corporate model is even more on: you read and answer these MC questions,
and then we will call that learning
4- Assessment
-- higher organization tends to be much better organized in terms of assessment,
scoring rubrics, assessment portfolios, individual and group assessment,
etc
-- scores tend to be much more limited and have less meaning
-- may not be a possibility of not passing (just being there = passing, you
have learned it)
-- variety of types
Both sectors are learning about:
- the use of technology to support and extend learning
- different forms of learning, different assumptions
- importance of context of learning
- implications of technology and change for the ways people learn and work
Personal context that people bring with them have to be more important!!! (me: it is not just about content when it comes to teaching and learning)
Book she co-authored 2 years ago:
"Flexible learning in a digital world" by Betty Collis and Jef Moonen,
2001
http://www.kogan-page.co.uk
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