Subject: Re: [IFETS] Pre-discussion paper
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Sun 02 Apr 2000 - 08:17:12 MEST
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2000 16:17:12 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: [IFETS] Pre-discussion paper
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Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
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Dear IFETS-members,
As moderator of the upcoming discussion on the IFETS-Discuss, I have
been asked to summarise my discussion paper and to begin the discussion
with examples of questions that I believe would enhance our understanding
of the issues that the discussion paper has raised. Please find below a
short summary of the paper that I have presented for discusssion.
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Knowledge transfer and technology in education: toward a complete learning
environment.
Ania Lian,
University of Canberra
(Australia)
The change of topic from 'Toward an on-line learning environment' to its
present one has been largely a product of my reflection upon the task that
technology and education at large should play in our lives. It seems that
by reducing the place and function of technology in education to a single
form of exploitation, as the original topic did, would have, already, been
to narrow down our reflections to specific forms of use. As such, the
discussion about technology in education would no longer have been about
the ways in which we can enrich our teaching spaces. Rather, it would have
been reduced to a single way of understanding what technology, and,
specifically, computers, can do. A discussion about 'on-line' learning
spaces thus would have already been precluded by the assumption that
'on-line' is either inherently good because it facilitates access in ways
that "Face-to Face" teaching cannot, or that 'on-line' is an inevitable
reality that we must embrace.
Having therefore attempted to escape reductionist models which present
'on-line' teaching as either inevitable or an environment that can be
discussed in isolation from the larger picture which determines its shape
and function, the paper now turns its attention toward the structure of
the larger picture. Questions which the bigger picture seems to raise are
those regarding:
(a) the semiotics of our expectations as to what is it that we hope to
achieve with technology, and
(b) the creative opportunities which may open up as we free ourselves from
the chains of the stereotypes which hide behind the meaning(s) which we
commonly attribute to technology.
Given that my professional focus is to reflect upon the conditions which
shape the ways in which we organise our meanings, the paper therefore
poses the problem of technology and education as a problem of meaning
management. If signs, or words, are to be viewed as products of history,
the paper hopes to invite reflection upon the historical contexts which
have shaped our views and our expectations regarding technology in
education. Or, in other words, it invites reflection upon the question of
"Why is it that we use and think of technology in the ways that we do?".
The distinctions in Table 1 (below) have been explicated specifically to
enable us to divorce ourselves from the common (mis)conceptions regarding
the place and the function of computers in education. Questions which
Table 1 brings to our attention include:
(a) Do the ways in which we use technology facilitate communication? What
does it mean to facilitate communication, why is it important in education
and how can we ensure that communication channels have been opened?
(b) Do computers facilitate exploration/flexibility? What does it mean to
facilitate exploration and flexibility, why is this important in education
and how can we ensure that the exploratory capacities of our environments
are rich rather than poor?
(c) Do our environments enable our learners (rather than just the
teachers) to be creative? What does it mean to facilitate creativity, why
is this important in education and how can we ensure that it is creativity
that is encouraged rather than obedience to the regimes of Truth?
If we do recognise that there may well be a problem between the means that
we make available to learners and the goals that these means truly serve,
how can we resolve this problem? For example, how can education resolve
its problem with accountability, on the one hand, and creativity, on the
other hand? How can education resolve the problem of the distance between
the truths that it reinforces and the Real World where these truths should
find their application (cf. Agre)? Is technology here a friend that can
assist us in resolving such big issues? Or is technology simply a buzzword
which can be exploited through the machinery of public relations for
schools and universities to increase the public's belief that schools do
"care" about learners and their educational needs?
It is expected that the discussion which will follow over the next days
will not be reduced to these questions alone. The paper which precedes the
discussion is rather lengthy and possibly stimulates a variety of feelings
and issues well beyond the expectations of its author.
Table 1
(a) Communication
Computers do not offer opportunities for people to communicate.
Computers offer the possibility to connect computers together across the
world.
It is important to draw this distinction because communication is not a
function of connecting computers together. To allow people to communicate
is to reflect upon the different forms that communication can take and to
adjust the capacity of computers to the demands of these different forms.
For example, in the case of on-line learning, peer-group discussions
exploit a very narrow avenue of communication. While such discussions may
form a learning support for some learners, the limited scope of such
discussions and the artificiality of the environment which tells learners
that now is the time to talk and learn reduce the potential of
communication that otherwise can be exploited through computers and other
means.
(b) exploration
Computers do not offer exploration opportunities.
Computers offer the capacity to store and retrieve information at random.
Again, exploration cannot be equated with the computers' capacity to store
information and its random access. Like communication, exploration is a
complex activity which is determined by the conditions which exist and
whose quality can only be appreciated by the learner in terms of these
conditions. To allow for genuine exploratory learning is to inquire about,
and make available, conditions which locate the purpose of exploration,
and its significance, in learners' response to the demands that the
challenge of critical inquiry places on them.
(c) creativity
Computers do not allow for creative management of knowledge by learners or
teachers
Computers offer the capacity to organise information in many different
ways.
Creativity therefore is not a function of the software made available, or
a function of the teacher's appreciation of the final product. Creativity
needs to be considered in the multiplicity of dimensions that contribute
to one's sense of achievement. Thus for a learning environment to offer
ways for creative management of information, it is necessary to make it
possible for learners to approach learning and the solutions to the
problems that it poses in ways that do not constrain learners' methods of
analysis and production to a single way of doing things.
Ania Lian
ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2
please, check also my IFETS-site:
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2/lists/ifets/ifets.htm
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