My knowledge of the history of education and technology is minimal. I remember in 1994 being part of the first year of students at UVic to receive a school email account, so the start of the textbook (Weller, 2020) seems apt to me, and my technology experience in education beyond word processing. I dropped out, and until I had a laptop and a smartphone in the mid-2000s, technology as we use it today was not a fundamental part of my daily life. Thus far, the reading content has been new to me.
The consistent theme or preference for face-to-face and traditional modes of education presented in chapters I have read (Weller, 2020) is not shocking because we are still seeing educational institutions struggling with this shift during and beyond the pandemic twenty-plus years later. As I read through the early days of ed tech and various chapters (Weller, 2020), I can see how the technology needed to be less cumbersome, accessible and user-friend for people to adopt. However, I do wonder why resistance to change is prevalent now, when in was demonstrated as early as 1999 that students wanted an opportunity for flexible online learning (Weller, 2020).
Is it because many instructors (even now) are subject matter experts (SMEs) employed as educators but are unfamiliar with educational theory and practices (Weller, 2020) that benefit the learning experience? Is it the fear of technology and/or lack of ed tech digital literacy? Is it that institutions do not want to invest the funds into developing their offerings? Maybe it is a bit of all of these things.
I adopted numerous best practices and ideas from my online courses and revised them to suit my needs. I wonder if you need to experience a well-designed online class with openness to embrace educational technology and tap into the 4Rs (now 5) (Hilton III et al., 2010). Is the experience of well-designed online education needed to scaffold the resisters into the ed tech realm? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
References
Hilton III, J., Wiley, D., Stein, J., & Johnson, A. (2010). The four ‘r’s of openness and alms analysis: Frameworks for open educational resources. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 25(1), 37–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680510903482132
Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech (1st ed.). ACP – Athabasca University Press.