Goldsmiths - University of London

Image bar

Why technology-enhanced learning?

We are living through a revolution with many facets. Recent years have seen profound changes as parts of civil society have begun to migrate online. Rich communication over vast distances in real time has become normal. Little brother watches us. News breaks in Twitter; 'citizen journalists' challenge established media business models. Anybody can publish; internet search engines act like vast peer review systems. Authority is challenged; reputations are in flux; reputation challenges accreditation. Notions of intellectual property, identity and even existence have been complicated by the internet. Mass movements are mobilised and dissipated there. A milestone in these developments was the appointment, in May 2009, of a government Director of Digital Engagement.

A look at today's learners and their uses of technologies (Melville, 2009; Rowlands et al, 2008) shows that many are participating in these changes. Most own a laptop and mobile phone but that a digital divide endures in terms of skills and access. Nine out of ten students use social networking sites as 'me', 'we' and 'see' spaces for private interaction, group interaction and performances, respectively, but collaboration is largely haphazard. Information literacies remain a deficit area; learners have problems question-finding and forming effective searches, critically analysing the results of these searches, and synthesising new findings with what they already know.

How could such developments not effect existing ways of learning and teaching in universities?

Yet the world learners encounter in higher education conducts itself according to a very different set of norms. Stephen Downes (2009) predicts,“In the years to come, we will say that it was a quiet decade, with the existing system having remained largely unchanged, almost unsuspecting, even, of the major changes that were to follow.” Today's learners may be accommodating of established systems, but:

"Effectively, they are managing a disjuncture, and the situation is feeding the natural inertia of any established system. It is, however, unlikely to be sustainable in the long term. The next generation is unlikely to be so accommodating and some rapprochement will be necessary”. (Melville, 2009)
Learners' expectations are far from the only pressure for change facing higher education in this area. Others were well summarised by Helen Beetham (2000):
"The pressures for change are well-known - massification, diversification, the information revolution, competition from other providers, employability, lower unit costs, a wide range of government agendas such as lifelong learning and public accountability. Unlike many other professional bodies, learning and teaching in HE will have no time to establish itself as a stable community of practice, working to recognised and well-established standards. Almost the only constant will be the need to change."

We are responding. From Goldsmiths' Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy (2007):

“The Strategy will, therefore, outline the ways in which we intend to support students to become self-motivated learners, enabled to take responsibility for, and control of, their learning whilst at Goldsmiths and beyond.
...
We will explore the development of more informal social spaces and other tools including social software, communication (e.g. wikis and blogs) and conferencing tools, video streaming and assessment tools to enhance learning, facilitate widening participation and improve opportunities for student feedback.”

Learning technologists in Goldsmiths' Learning Enhancement Unit exist to engage academic staff in experimenting with new technologies, making informed critical judgements about them, and envisioning a how they might be used to advance learning and teaching. We aim to support you with knowledge, cases and examples, and practical assistance, and we hope to link you up with others who are intrepid in similar directions.

The technologies we can help with are often free, cheap, or things you may already have access to. They include creating, editing and making available MP3s, online and social bookmarking, blogging in different media, creating and using news feeds, real-time voice and video communication, designing learn.gold spaces, setting up learn.gold activities, online social networking, and more. For each of these, we keep the learning, teaching and academic experience and hoped-for outcomes as our central concerns.

Using the menu, explore our pages to find out more about us, see what workshops we offer, read our blog, get started with learn.gold (Goldsmiths virtual learning environment), and more.

Please contact the GLEU learning technologists with any enquiries.

References

(All web addresses accessed September 18, 2009)