Five things

This is the third in a series of blog posts entitled 'Shaping Education for the Future.' Yesterday's post can be found on this link.

Previous posts in this series have outlined the need for universities to respond to changes, and to develop strategies for survival in a world where the future is uncertain. It is increasingly apparent that learning technology and digital communication will play a key role in the shaping of future higher education. For digital technologies to become as successful in education as ‘paper and pencil’, I believe that five strategies will need to be put into place:

1. Technology will need to become more ‘transparent’ (Wheeler, 2005). That is, technology will need to become so embedded into the day to day experiences of teachers and students that it becomes common place, and even mundane. The novelty value and opacity of technologies often prevent users from ‘seeing through them’, beyond the shiny toy with the buttons and lights, to a tool that is useful because it does something previous tools could not do.

2. Universities must offer better support to academics. Often teaching staff are pushed into situations where they need to cope with new ideas and new technologies without clear guidance. In such situations, many teachers will struggle and fail with technology, or they will resist to the point of rejection. Very few will actually succeed without help. Appropriate training, support services and dialogue will invariably overcome many of these issues (John and Wheeler, 2008).

3. Teachers need to see the relevance and application of new technologies. For teachers to adopt new technologies, they must first see the applications and understand the benefits (as well as the limitations) of the tool. If a tool adds nothing new to the teaching and learning equation it will be perceived as irrelevant and will be rejected (cf. Norman, 1990). I would add that new technologies should only be adopted widely if they have a use and can actually add something new to the learning experience (see point 5 below).

4. Teachers will need to gain greater confidence in the use of new technologies. This will mean that they will need to be continually adaptive and responsive to change as it happens. This relates back to training, which brings familiarity, but teachers also need to see beyond the technology, using it as an extension and enhancement of their own cognitive capabilities,in the sense of a ‘mindtool’. They will also need to see that technology can be contextualised into real and authentic teaching situations. And they will need to be willing to change their own practice occasionally.

5. Ultimately, more research is required into what can be done and what cannot be done with new technologies. How do we know whether or not something works, who it works with, and under what conditions it becomes less successful unless we study it? We can of course find out through trial and error, but more preferably, we can evaluate through thorough and systematic research where new technologies are tested out in authentic situations.

References
John, P. D. and Wheeler, S. (2008) The Digital Classroom: Harnessing the Power of Technology for Learning and Teaching. London: Routledge.
Norman, D. (1990) The Design of Everyday Things. London: The MIT Press.
Wheeler, S. (2005) Transforming Primary ICT. Exeter: Learning Matters.

Image by Freefoto


Five things by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.