David's Blog

Reiser wrote a two-part article in 2001 which summarized the history of Instructional Design and Technology and drew some important conclusions. According to Reiser, of the many lessons we can learn from his review, likely the most important is that there has been a consistent tendency of over-estimate the degree of impact that new technologies would have (Reiser, 2001, p. 61). Reiser (2001a) was cognizant of the fact that he was writing at a time when computers and the Internet were just beginning to make their influence in education. Reiser believed these technologies would likely have a greater impact that those that preceded them. However, given the lesson that he identified, he predicted that, “such changes, both in schools and in other instructional settings, are likely to come about more slowly and be less extensive than most media enthusiasts currently predict” (p. 62). Continue reading “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: the slow transformation of educational technology and what we can learn from it”

Effectively, the basis of the innovation in the use of computers in education has been to serve two separate purposes: computers provide new opportunities as learning aids; but, computers are also used to assist in distance education, whose existence long predated their advent. One of the earliest attempts took place between the early eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, where courses in short hand were offered by correspondence (Börje, 2005; Moore & Kearsley, 2005). The University of London was the first university to offer distance learning degrees in 1858 (Sheldon, et al., 1998). Continue reading “Online Learning is New, Distance Education is Not”

The Scientific Method

Helen Keller wrote, “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose” (1936, December 10). One of the most meaningful ways of pursuing a worthy purpose is to conduct research that expands our knowledge of a subject, solves a problem or dispels prejudice and, ideally, contributes to a change in policy that results in the betterment of society. In an article for The Guardian, Matthew Goodwin’s first of 10 tips for how academics can engage policy-makers states: “Only do it if you believe it is important. Seriously” (2013, March 25). He notes that John Gerring once said that social science should be pursued for the sake of the betterment of society, not for the sake of science alone. Gerring also said that while not every study will be intended for a policy outcome, each academic should give due consideration to what citizens and policymakers care about, or may care about. (cited in Goodwin, 2013, March 25). Continue reading “Social Science for the Greater Good”

Technolibertarianism

The movement in support of open educational resources (OER) is perceptibly founded on noble principles of altruism. However, OER emerged out of the open source software movement, which is more specifically founded in technolibertarianism, also known as cyberlibertarianism, whose conception of “freedom” derives from a libertarian rejection of government intrusion more closely related to right-wing politics than the left-wing it would otherwise be presumed to be associated with.

Continue reading “From Left to Right: The libertarian roots of the Open Education movement”