So much of how we operate in our educational settings is built upon the technology we use. Depending on what the medium of the education learners may have a better or perhaps worse learning experience.

In chapter three of Technology, E-learning and Distance Education, Bates (2005) discusses a framework that he “[…]believe[s] to be important for selecting and using technology in open learning and distance education[…]” (p, 49).

The framework Bates provides us is called ACTIONS: access, cost, teaching & learning, interactivity & ease of use, organizational issues, novelty, and speed (Bates, 2005).

These are all fairly self-explanatory. Access, how accessible is the tech? Cost, how expensive is it? Teaching & Learning, does it fit your lesson/learning model? Interactivity & ease of use, how immersive does the tech allow learners to be and how intuitive is it? Organizational issues, will your organization have a problem with the tech? Novelty, is the tech trending or very new? Speed, does it take very long to develop or update learning with this tech?

I find these are some great factors to, but I do feel like something is missing. An important aspect to learning technology is flexibility or the features it has (Dron, 2014). Flexibility and features can allow for instructors and students to change and flow with the class implementing more elements conducive to the student’s learning (Dron, 2014). For this reason I would like to add an “F” to Bates’ ACTION to make it into, FACTIONS.

References

Bates, T. (2005). Selecting and using technologies in distance education. In Technology, E-learning and Distance Education (2nd ed., pp. 41–66). Taylor & Francis Group.

Dron, J. (2014). Innovation and How we Change. Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda, 237–265. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9dH9AwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA237&dq=water+taylor+and+francis&ots=FO3_1cbZvM&sig=bVYig9e3pS6iQrxQ64Vz9vB5Gzo