In this activity for LRNT524 in the Master of Arts in Learning and Technology program at Royal Roads University, we were directed to read Dron (2014) and Goldman et al. (2012) and post our\u00a0thoughts, concerns, and questions.<\/p>\n
In running an educational institution with hundreds of courses, running the courses efficiently is, in my opinion, absolutely critical. Dron (2014) makes the following point:<\/p>\n
The more we embed processes and techniques in our tools, be they pedagogies or machine tools, the fewer choices are left to humans. The price we pay for the efficiencies and capabilities offered by hardening our technologies is therefore the loss of capacity to make changes, but the price we pay for softening our technologies is in effort, speed, and potential for error. A central theme in the evolution of distance learning is thus a tension between creativity and efficiency. It is usually easier to adopt a soft technology in the short term, but more difficult to sustain it in the longer term. (p. 242)<\/p>\n
In the real world where there are finite resources, each course usually cannot have its own custom learning technology solutions. It is not scalable. There is a limited amount of resources that can be put towards supporting courses, and these resources may be utilized elsewhere with greater benefit. There needs to be a careful allotment of resources. Do you ever see huge amounts of resources used on a single course or module and thought they could have been used more effectively had resource allocation been more carefully considered?<\/p>\n
According to Dron (2014) “disruptive technologies are innovations that at first may result in worse product performance than what came previously” (p. 245). I think this is important to keep in mind. Existing technologies may have had decades of refinement. It helps to have a broad understanding of technology to be able to examine a new technology and predict how it might be improved in the upcoming years. It may make sense to pick a technology that is slightly inferior today because it is believed that it will be better than the alternatives in the near future. In my experience, institutions select technologies and stick with them for a while. Ideally selected technologies will be the best over the duration that the institution is using the technology and not necessarily what is currently the best. Do you have any experience with selecting learning technologies and having them either turn out to be good or poor choices in the long run?<\/p>\n
In reference to LMSs, Dron (2014) states that “unfortunately, they have proven to be hard technologies, brittle and inflexible, creating a strong set of path dependencies and proprietary lock-in, even when implemented through open source tools” (p. 255) and references Lane (2009). I read over Lane and do not believe that this statement is accurately paraphrasing Lane. Lane (2009) argues that instructors teaching online tend to be web-novices and will usually use the defaults in LMSs, and that these defaults strongly guide the pedagogical approaches employed by these instructors.\u00a0Lane concludes that “with web novices, pedagogy must be emphasized before features and tools. Starting with the CMS [LMS] features creates a backward process” (p. 4). This is something that people in my department are keenly aware of and is believed to be true for all learning technologies. How much of a problem do you think this is? Do you commonly see instructors using learning technology tools without starting with or considering the pedagogical underpinnings?<\/p>\n
Dron (2014) also states that there is significant complexity in making changes to an LMS when the sought after functionality is not built in to the LMS, and that Moodle is flexible through plugin modules, that programmers can develop. This ignores the fact that Moodle is a web platform that can link or embed resources or activities on the web, which is the World Wide Web’s raison d’etre<\/em> (Berners-Lee et al., 1994). Instructors using Moodle, at my institution at least, have the freedom to link to or embed the numerous web-based activities and resources available to add extra functionality to their courses. If an institution does not allow this then it is an issue with the institution’s policy and not the LMS, since this is a default feature of Moodle. Do you agree that linking or embedding external activities and resources opens up a huge amount of flexibility to an LMS such as Moodle? Is the idea of an LMS being a walled garden a myth?<\/p>\n Goldman et al. (2012) states that post-secondary students need more development in critical thinking and problem solving and that Goldman et al. believe that design thinking has the potential to improve critical thinking and problem solving. I strongly agree that critical thinking and problem-solving skills in post-secondary students need improvement and would expect that design thinking would help. What do you think?<\/p>\n References<\/p>\n Berners-Lee, T., Dimitroyannis, D., Mallinckrodt, A. J., & McKay, S. (1994). World Wide Web<\/a>. Computers in Physics, 8<\/em>(3), 298-299.<\/p>\n