The deserted teaching space: Educational technology and the human interface - A personal reflection

How is the human person benefiting as a person, and not just as an anonymous client user, involved in the process of "learning"? Where does the human fit into this new environment, and is this of benefit to both the process and the human's involved.

A point of clarification - I am not coming at this matter as a professional luddite, but as someone who is involved in the development of the technology that supports the new flexible learning concepts, of online learning distance education and the like. However a "discussion" with my father, on the role of the human person in this brave New World, has got me thinking about what we, as Educational Technologists are actually trying to achieve.

My father, too, is, or rather was, no technophobe, being a retired senior research scientist working with the CSIRO Building Research Division (when such a thing existed), where he was its head. He presented his concerns, in the form of a radio dissertation for the Radio National's Ockham's Razor. He spoke of the negative effects on the human community and its personal interaction, resulting from the advent of the answering service, automated switchboards and the like. His point was that the technology was alienating the society that was meant to benefit from these changes.

This raised further questions in my mind. I was seeing academics promoting the concepts of client centred learning. Where students could "learn" within their time, and on their own terms.

Academic staff, becoming involved in developing interactive multimedia, whether it was in CD-ROM or online format. Schools in various universities across the world were soon putting their courses onto the web, and increasing the level of access to knowledge to a level never dreamt of by those who taught them, and encouraged them to become academics. The field of education, and learning seemed to be blossoming. Even secondary school students were being "required" to have access to a computer "laptop", rather than just books, pens and so on.

And yet - And yet, with this change in approach, there seems to be an incapacity to reflect on what these changes were meant achieve. Was the academic staff member, now "free from the trials of face to face teaching" or because there was this "perceived gap" in the time, was expected to do more.

More by administrators, who governed by funding and organisational criteria, not relating to the new world order, who seeing that there was this "self operating course", arranged for there to be more time for lecturing, and face to face teaching.

The student, too, was presented with a new environment where the discipline of the group, was essentially removed and the motivation to learn was placed on their shoulders. They were responsible for their learning, and through the new technologies, were to be supported by the designers of the content within the technology. These were, for the most part still learning the information paradigms of the media, or were technicians, who were more adept at the construction of the product, than the rationale for its existence.

Conclusion - The need to reflect on what is expected within these changes is increasing in importance. There is a need to, not so much, "stop the world", but slow it to review where it is going. Must - for instance - flexible learning strategies be just 'code' for web based delivery? How do we, in our various capacities, ensure that the technology can be flexible in terms of the learner's needs and not just in terms of the providing organisation and the budget requirements?

I hope this presentation will provide a basis on which we can return to our various environments and place demands on these new technologies, so as to ensure they meet our needs. There needs to be both, an action learning and change management approach to their implementation, so as achieve the freedom and flexibility we are seeking within the process of the learning.

In this we need to factor in levels of human interaction that will allow these changes to be managed in such a fashion as to ensure that they aren't threatening. That allows for new strategies of learning to occur and to accountable within a transparent process.