I’ve spent my 8-year graduate school career (yes, I know that’s too long ;-) studying educational technologies and their impact on the teaching and learning process, and I’m planning to spend a 20+ year career working with faculty to continuously evolve and improve the teaching and learning process by engaging appropriate technologies.
Since I first engaged the educational technology field almost 8 years ago, I’ve been amazed by the complex depth and breadth of the field; that’s true of any discipline, but educational technology has undergone tremendous growth as a discipline over the last 25-30 years (since the introduction of the PC to the consumer market). While we, as educational technologists, have worked hard to develop our field and the contributions we may make to the quality of teaching and learning in educational institutions, I believe we may have “missed the boat” in one regard.
If we’ve truly done our job as change agents, how is it possible for a colleague in a “more traditional” humanities/behavioral sciences discipline believe it was correct and appropriate to classify and dismiss untold hours worth of instructional design and instructional media development services provided to him/her to develop digital resources for her/his online course as nothing more than, “Oh… that’s just tech support?”
The simple answer I offer is, “Educational Technology, as a field and discipline, is STILL in the library.” That’s at least true in a couple of institutions with which I’m familiar, and I suspect that it’s true in many other institutions as well. What does that mean? What are the implications?
Technology’s impact on the learning environment has changed . . . Educational technology had simple beginnings as a small department consisting mostly of equipment and part-time staff holed up in whatever dark, dank closet in the back corner of the library begrudgingly offered to them by the librarian. The early educational technologies were filmstrips, audio cassettes, and overhead projectors. The training and knowledge required to use the devices focused, and rightly so, on the mechanical use of the system. Effectively using those devices in the classroom required faculty to engage short, how-to, push-button type training sessions before “doing their voodoo” of wrapping instruction and pedagogy around the technology. The pedagogy surrounded the use of those learning technologies in the classroom and relied upon theories of teaching and learning with which faculty were mostly familiar. However, as educational technologies have progressed, the pedagogy pervades the use of learning technologies in the classroom and relies upon theories of teaching and learning with which faculty are rarely familiar. Technology and pedagogy have become inextricably intertwined, but being able to use a technology is vastly different from being able to teach effectively with it in the classroom. Knowing how to set up a discussion forum in an LMS, post a message to students, and reply to their comments is dramatically different from the skill of facilitating an effective online discussion as a learner-centered, constructivist learning experience. Teaching in the online learning environment effectively requires much more than just knowing how to use the proper points and clicks to add an item to the learning management system, and there now exists 25+ years of in depth literature surrounding the use of digital technologies in learning environments that justifies that claim.
Faculty and instructional leadership perception of learning technology has not . . . Despite the growth of educational technology into an entire discipline worthy of career-long dedication, I believe many administrators and faculty formed an understanding of educational technology from the early beginnings, and their perception of what educational technology is has not evolved with the discipline. If it had, my colleague would have known how ridiculous his classification of my discipline as “tech support” was before I explained it to him. If it had, there wouldn’t be entire community college campuses or even systems without a hint of instructional design or technology resources to support faculty. If it had, online courses wouldn’t begin with learners after merely ten hours of preliminary design and development work. Ultimately, if we were to ask a broad number of faculty and instructional leadership to describe what an educational technologist is and does, would the most frequent definition more correctly define what educational technology was 25+ years ago?
What are the potential implications?
Inaccurate institutional understanding regarding the depth and breadth of the educational technology field potentially results in several inefficient or undesirable outcomes.
- Learners do not receive instruction utilizing appropriate contemporary technologies and approaches to teaching and learning. Intuitively, an institution that does not understand the complexity of educational technology and the underlying, constructivist learning theories will not adapt quickly to the needs of digital learners.
- Unreasonable burdens are placed on faculty. Faculty with terminal degrees in other disciplines are expected to produce instructional materials - online or otherwise - that often require skills and a knowledge base tantamount to another Master’s degree (in educational technology).
- Technology drives instruction rather than instruction driving technology - the tail wags the dog. Absent strong educational technology leadership, the future direction of technology in a learning institution will be guided by trends in the IT industry rather than trends in teaching and learning with technology. (I’m not suggesting that IT professionals have less value in educational institutions. I’m suggesting IT’s leading educational technology efforts is as inefficient an undesirable as an educational technologist ensuring the network or data warehouse remains functional and secure.)
- Institutions do not employ educational technologists to serve as change agents. Underestimating the value of instructional designers and educational technologists leads many institutions to underemploy or to not employ experts in the field.
- Training programs are too narrow. Many professional development or technology training programs for faculty focus more on how to use a technology rather than an in depth treatment of how to teach with a technology.
- Training programs are to shallow. Even if a training program explores pedagogical issues, they often do not do so in enough depth across a sustained period of time. For example, many distance learning certification programs offered by institutions to their faculty require as few as 16 and no more than 48 hours of focused professional development.
I’m certainly interested in the community’s thoughts regarding the accuracy of my perspective, and while I have my own ideas, does the community believe there’s a remedy to the issue?
Discussion