A list of the papers I read this week, a few notes on what I thought of them, and some on why I chose *not* to include them in the structured blog task for this week.
At the start of this week, I logged into Moodle and checked the tasks and activities for the week ahead. I printed out the core and further readings and signed up for the Skype session. Well done me, I thought. This week is going to be different. This is the week I’m going to catch up.
I have recently moved to compressed hours so I can spend a little more time with my daughter. This is proving to be wonderful, but it does of course mean that after a long day at work, and time with my family, and putting my daughter to bed, I have about two hours every evening to study. Still, I thought, read 1-2 texts a night and this should be fine.
And I have thoroughly enjoyed having some weighty journal articles to read and reflect on. BUT, note to self, don’t start with the Marxist. Hall’s principal argument (that TEL has been co-opted by capitalism) felt like an angry shout into the void. For example:
“A key driver in this process is the reality of competition between universities as competing businesses, or capitals. Driving efficiencies through technology is critical, and TEL forms part of this process”.
Is he criticising TELs ability to drive efficiency? Is he anti-efficiency per se? UK students attending University as a percentage of population has increased hugely in the last two decades. Efficiency matters if we are to continue to be able to teach increasing numbers of students. Rallying against this felt like an argument from a place of privilege.
Similarly, when Hall argues
“the statements made by Gartner and Willetts reveal the tensions that exist between the quantitative, data-driven risk-management that pervades the higher education choice agenda, and the qualitative realities of the humane relationships that academics seek to develop with their students”.
my first thought was ‘really?’ How are these mutually exclusive? Hall doesn’t specify.
Perhaps I should have chosen Hall’s article because it was the one which frustrated me the most. But I didn’t want to have to re-read it several times as the basis for the critical analysis task.
I then moved on to Sian Bayne’s What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? “What is wrong with technology? What is wrong with enhanced? And finally, what is wrong with learning?” I got used to having to search terms such as “transhumanism” but overall I enjoyed the paper. We should all check our language. ‘I’ll keep that in the ‘maybe pile’ I thought to myself.
The last of the core readings for the week was the one I most enjoyed reading: Hamilton and Friesen’s Online education: a science and technology studies perspective.
“It should be noted that essentialism and instrumentalism are not “theories” of technology if by theory we mean a fully articulated, reflexively employed framework that enables us to interpret and understand some phenomenon. Indeed, it is our argument that a “theory” of technology in this sense is precisely what is missing from the bulk of research into online education”
Isn’t this because “technology” moves at such a pace rendering it impossible to understand and build a framework which would still be relevant 20 years later? Or perhaps I misunderstood his point?
I made lots of notes when reading this paper and I intend to write a blog post dedicated entirely to my thoughts on it. Before I forget the association however, I want to log that some of the points raised reminded me of the Stanford 2025 project, where we are encouraged to ‘choose a future to explore’.
I noticed that when I moved on to the further readings I was no longer having to check terminology or re-read certain sentences to aid with understanding. Perhaps this had something to do with the nature of the readings? Or perhaps by now, I was becoming more immersed in the language of the subject?
I was initially attracted to Selwyn’s Minding our language: why education and technology is full of bullshit … and what might be done about it because, like a child, I enjoy the juxtaposition of swearing with a serious endeavor. Much of the paper feels, to my mind, instinctively true. So many of us whose livelihoods depend on EdTech can be guilty of ‘EdTech speak’. It’s not, of course, always intentional. There are valid reasons why, once a shared language takes hold, people are loathe to let it go. Because we understand what is being spoken about when we all speak the same language. It also reminded me of this.
I would have considered using this article as the basis for my critical analysis but it isn’t an academic journal article so doesn’t comply with the requirements of the task.
By the time I read Groeger’s Discrimination by design: the many ways design decisions treat people unequally I was feeling pleased with myself that I had made reference to exactly this point in a discussion board post last week (albeit with a link to a Guardian article, rather than an academic journal).
Finally, I watched the interview at Economist.com with Evgeny Morozov on Technology: the folly of solutionism. I particularly enjoyed his assertion that “it is the very imperfection of our environment that makes us human”. This reminded me of my favourite Leonard Cohen track, Anthem, when he sings “Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in”.
He also better articulated one of Hall’s arguments when he talk s about how technology is being used to offload problems from governments to citizens (eg why tackle obesity with greater regulation, when you can build a consumer app.)
So, this leaves Peach and Bieber’s Faculty and online education as a mechanism of power. It is this article which I will attempt to analyse for the structured blog task this week.
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