{"id":264,"date":"2020-09-13T12:15:58","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T19:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/?p=264"},"modified":"2020-09-27T10:31:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T17:31:03","slug":"25-years-of-ed-tech-a-reflection-on-chapters-9-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/25-years-of-ed-tech-a-reflection-on-chapters-9-18\/","title":{"rendered":"25 Years of Ed Tech: A Reflection on Chapters 9-18"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image by\u00a0Mediamodifier<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0Pixabay<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this article, I reflect on Chapters nine through eighteen of author Martin Weller\u2019s book \u201c25 Years of Ed Tech. Throughout these Chapters, Weller continues to chronicle the histories of various education technologies. My goal for this post is to identify two central themes from these Chapters: one that reflects relevancy to today\u2019s higher education industry, and another that reflects contradiction by today\u2019s higher education standards. To help illustrate my points, I first need to establish the context in which I read this third of the book.<\/p>\n

This past week I was absolutely swamped with grading final exams and prepping fall courses; time was at a premium to say the least. After long and sometimes trying workdays, I turned to Weller\u2019s chapters for some much needed \u201cme\u201d time. However, as I read, and perhaps triggered by my own exhaustion, I found myself thinking \u201cI already know there is major resistance to change within the education industry and that many innovative technologies are tossed or forgotten because of a lack of adoption by the end user\u201d. My entire educational experience, from middle school on, has demonstrated that many learning institutions struggle to keep up with innovative technology and learning practices \u2013 it is frustrating as a student, and perhaps even more frustrating as an educator. After contemplating Weller\u2019s writing, I started to think about \u201cwhy\u201d rather than focusing on the specific technologies covered in each Chapter. Why is widespread adoption of ed tech so difficult to achieve? Why do some students struggle with learning environments while others thrive? Why do some schools continue to use out-dated content and delivery methods? Taking all of this into consideration, I have extracted two central themes that I would like address.<\/p>\n

There is no \u201cone size fits all\u201d in education<\/h3>\n

By chronicling the many shortcomings and successes in the ed tech industry, one could argue that Weller views end-user satisfaction as an underpinning factor that impacts the adoption of education technologies, a perspective, of which, I see as highly relevant in my current work as a post-secondary educator. But how do we effectively accommodate the various competencies of learners, educators, and content creators simultaneously? Is it even possible? Learners, much like educators, possess unique personality traits that predict education and organizational preferences, and it is my opinion that these preferences affect our openness to adopt and implement new education technologies. As Weller points out, current technologies can be implemented to individualize the learning experience. For example, personalized learning environments (PLE\u2019s) can be used to deliver a unique and individualized learning experience to students. Imagine a learning environment that generates specific learning objects and components in accordance to the user\u2019s exact learning preferences. The problem is, nobody has the time to modify the learning environment once courses begin, not the students, nor the teachers. I am no expert in programming, but perhaps artificial intelligence and some form of automation can be developed to aggregate various learning management system components to automatically meet the needs of the student. For example, based on an assessment prior to the course start date, the LMS automatically populates the student’s PLE with all the learning tools they desire to use. Until such automated features come to light in mainstream education, the concept of time will continue to inhibit our ability to truly adopt an individualized learning approach. Until educators and students are afforded the time or capacities to customize the learning experience to truly suit their needs and lifestyles, the failures of the ed tech industry are destined to repeat.<\/p>\n

Software Sedimentation is not Universal<\/h3>\n

Weller suggests many institutions experience great difficulty adapting from one education technology to the next, a phenomenon he refers to as sedimentation (p.65). For example, during my undergraduate program, I experienced first-hand how some colleges use outdated learning management systems and learning software and express absolutely no interest in deviating from such standards – once a practice becomes a norm within an organization, it becomes very difficult to introduce and implement new ideas or concepts. It was evident to me at the time that this was likely due to a lack of resources or personnel, and now that I have had a chance to investigate this from the instructional designer\u2019s perspective, it is clear that this was likely the case.<\/p>\n

However common software sedimentation may be, the institution of which I currently teach actively encourages innovation and deviation from previous versions of the school. We conduct weekly meetings with faculty and members of the design team to plan and implement new approaches to content delivery and learning management systems. Whether it be through student accommodation design, user interface updates, additions of new collaborative tools, and so on, we are always striving to implement up-to-date strategies that effectively enhance the learning experiences of our students. The fundamental challenge we are continually faced with, however, is that students and instructors have very little time to customize the experience, which again supports the need to develop automated implementation strategies. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting serge of online learner enrolment, my institution has taken precedence to remove or update all outdated content and learning objects from our system \u2013 we are now, more than ever, focused on moving forwards with innovative technology, a theme, of which, I predict will become more widespread over the next year.<\/p>\n

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References<\/p>\n

Weller, M. (2020).\u00a025 years of ed tech<\/em>. Athabasca University Press.\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.15215\/aupress\/9781771993050.01<\/a><\/p>\n

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Image by\u00a0Mediamodifier\u00a0from\u00a0Pixabay\u00a0 In this article, I reflect on Chapters nine through eighteen of author Martin Weller\u2019s book \u201c25 Years of Ed Tech. Throughout these Chapters, Weller continues to chronicle the histories of various education technologies. My goal for this post is to identify two central themes from these Chapters: one that reflects relevancy to today\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0163\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}