{"id":449,"date":"2019-09-16T12:37:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T19:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/?p=449"},"modified":"2019-09-20T10:40:28","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T17:40:28","slug":"academic-libraries-and-edtech-lessons-from-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/academic-libraries-and-edtech-lessons-from-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Academic Libraries and EdTech: Lessons from the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Photo by\u00a0Dollar Gill<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a>]\n

While reading Reiser (2001) and\u00a0 Weller (2018), I had experienced a fascinating fast-track historical overview of the 20th-century technologies in education, as well as an account of the last 20 years in the development of EdTech. It is evident from these readings, that the speed of technological development was either including “accompanying educational frameworks” or most often these new technologies were “seeking an application” in educational settings (Weller, 2018, p. 48). While academic libraries are following the trends in Higher Education with regards to technology, very often they also serve as tech hubs on campuses (especially with such tools as 3D printers, RDM, Digital Humanities software, as well as tools for qualitative and quantitative research).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this blog post, I would like to reflect on the impact technological changes had on the academic libraries and how libraries can keep up with the most recent developments in Higher Education. I think Weller’s words reflect perfectly the state of the academic libraries today: “<\/span>nothing changes while, simultaneously, everything changes” (Weller, 2018, p. 44).<\/p>\n

Meaningful lesson:<\/strong> Despite Thomas Edison’s prediction in 1913 that “books will soon be obsolete in the schools” due to motion pictures (Saettler, 1968, p. 98, as quoted in\u00a0 <\/span>Reiser, 2001, p. 55), academic libraries still <\/span>strongly rely on text as the “dominant communication form in education” (Weller, 2018, p. 40). The goal of academic libraries is to provide the best support to the students and professors, responding to their needs in a given situation. This requires knowing our clients and anticipating their academic needs, as well as meeting them where they are. So while Edison’s prediction about books was false, a book today did morph into its different forms (including e-book, audiobooks, interactive books), which students prefer more and more, and which libraries are happy to deliver.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Contradictory lesson: <\/strong>At the same time, however, according to a 2008 study by Rowlands et al. (2008), the students are “format agnostics” (p. 301). As a result, students can still rely on text, as a primary source of information, but they do not necessarily pay attention to the format of the text, since, according to Rowland et al. (2008) “content is no longer format-dependent in cyberspace” (p. 301). As a result, we see tendencies in academic libraries to reduce their print reference collections, since they are becoming more and more obsolete, and at the same time provide access to high-quality\u00a0 tertiary sources (such as encyclopedias, online handbooks, and bibliographies), asserting going back to the traditional methods of the research process, which relies strongly on the use of tertiary sources. These tendencies might not necessarily appeal to the younger student population today, and libraries might need to find an alternative way of approaching this new situation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Overall, while some of the technology trends in education, described by Weller (2018) <\/span>have been widely accepted in the libraries (such as embedding library instruction into the LMS, having an active social media presence, developing video tutorials, support open access among others), in my opinion, libraries do not fully utilize the potential of the educational technologies, especially with regards to meeting the needs of distance learners. While the students’ needs have been continuously evolving, students are faced with what Weller (2018) calls “the dark side of edtech” (p. 45) especially as it relates to fake news, information overload, ethical use of information, overconfidence bias<\/a>, digital literacy, and more.\u00a0 There is a great potential for academic libraries to address these needs in the academic environment and moving beyond just being a hub for new technologies, but also help students navigate them with more confidence and success.<\/p>\n

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Reiser, R. A. (2001). <\/span>A history of instructional design and technology: Part I: A history of instructional media<\/b><\/a>. <\/span>Educational Technology Research and Development<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>49<\/span><\/i>(1), 53-64.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rowlands, I., Nicholas, D., Williams, P., Huntington, P., Fieldhouse, M., Gunter, B., … & Tenopir, C. (2008). The Google generation: the information behaviour of the researcher of the future. In Aslib proceedings<\/i> (Vol. 60, No. 4, pp. 290-310). Retrieved from https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/content\/doi\/10.1108\/00012530810887953\/full\/html<\/p>\n

Weller, M. (2018). <\/span>Twenty years of EdTech<\/b><\/a>. <\/span>EDUCAUSE Review, 53<\/span><\/i>(4), 34-48. Retrieved from <\/span>https:\/\/er.educause.edu\/articles\/2018\/7\/twenty-years-of-edtech<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Photo by\u00a0Dollar Gill\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash] While reading Reiser (2001) and\u00a0 Weller (2018), I had experienced a fascinating fast-track historical overview of the 20th-century technologies in education, as well as an account of the last 20 years in the development of EdTech. It is evident from these readings, that the speed of technological development was either including “accompanying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0115\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}