E-Learning |
ISSN 1741-8887 |
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It is often claimed that the new information and communications technologies hold great promise for improving the quality, flexibility and effectiveness of education. We are told that its benefits will impact on the practices of learning and teaching and of research alike. Indeed, some theorists and practitioners argue that with the 'revolution' in information and communications technologies the concept and practice of the education itself will change radically. It is predicted that education institutions will offer a broader range of teaching and learning opportunities to provide for a much more diverse student body. Learning experiences will become more closely tailored to the needs of individuals and groups. Learning and teaching based on the new technologies will help to maintain quality of education and overcome the traditional limitations of time and space associated with the industrial model of education. The new technologies also will help to provide improved access and increased effectiveness, especially for students suffering disabilities or those from remote areas, and they will also shape the future of lifelong learning, offering flexible programmes of study to those with work or family commitments. In short, it is claimed that learning, teaching and research will become transformed in the new environment. Students will expect continuous access to the network of the institution at which they are studying. The mode of course delivery will be radically transformed and much of the organisation and communication of course arrangements will be conducted through virtual space. Yet, depending on the underlying assumptions attaching to them in specific cases, these same descriptions can take on very different meanings for constructing educational utopias. According to one strongly subscribed - if not dominant - technicist account, the new technologies provide for a learner-centered, market-driven model of education based on tele-learning in cyberspace. This vision tends to obscure cultural differences, insisting that the model could be applied equally anywhere in the world. In fact, it is often touted as the global solution to the problem of modern education. The purported justification for such a vision lies in systems theory and 'education as communication'. From this perspective the classroom becomes a communication machine, and communication is reduced to the three functions of transmitting, storing and processing information. This is often seen to constitute the 'new paradigm of education'. It is a paradigm that is seen to overcome the traditional problems of space, storage and time of conventional education. In addition, it is seen to be learner-centred, problem-focused, flexible, accessible and much cheaper than conventional arrangements. Anyone can access information at any time and both the home and the workplace will become communication systems for education. According to this vision of e-learning, education becomes the global educational utility based upon forms of teleconferencing and the virtual classroom. Technically-driven understandings of education, as well as those that build on technologically deterministic concepts, require very careful scrutiny. At the same time, it is certain that diverse conceptions and practices of e-learning will continue to emerge, circulate, and evolve in the years ahead, and that it will not be possible for educators simply to ignore these. Neither will it simply be a matter of e-learning versus conventional learning. Already educators whose primary focus is classroom based learning predicated on critical and liberal ideals are asking how and what conventional approaches to teaching and learning can properly appropriate from diverse practices and processes mediated by the new computing, information and communications technologies - such as video and computer games. |
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