International Forum of Educational Technology & Society
Background
The 'stand-alone and self-contained' approach in the design
and implementation of educational technology is rapidly coming
to an end. In the future, educational technology resources
will be integrated, requiring that the traditional 'module'
based focus is replaced with a design approach supporting a
'community of modules' that are selectively integrated by a
'community of teachers' for various courses to suit a
'community of learners'.
The original purpose for the use of computers in education was
to individualise instruction and a lot of attention has been
paid to the individual learning styles, though a lot remains
to be done in terms of enhancing the individual learning
experience. It appears, however, that efficient and effective
methods of attaining the social goals of a better educated and
well informed citizens and the role intelligent systems can
play in it have not been explored significantly. The focus
should be on both the individual and social objectives of
education. Accordingly, there is a need for a public platform
where the educational system developers community (including artificial intelligence community) and educators
(teachers, academic managers, educational policy makers) can
discuss their own perspectives on prevailing situations and
priorities for further research and development. The need for
such a dialogue is apparent when we see how insular these
communities are in relation to each other:
- Educators aim to use technology to enhance individual
learning as well as to achieve wide spread education and
expect the technology to blend with their individual approach
to instruction. However, most educators are not fully aware of
the benefits that may be obtained by proactively harnessing
the available technologies and how they might be able to
influence further developments through systematic feedback and
suggestions.
- Educational system developers and AI researchers are sometimes unaware of the needs and
requirements of typical teachers, with a possible exception of
those in the computer science domain. In transferring the
notion of a 'user' from the human-computer interaction studies
and assigning it to the 'student', the educator's role as the
'implementer/ manager/ user' of the technology has been
forgotten.
