Week 2 – eLearning
Week 2 proved to be yet another highly engaging and thought provoking discussion amongst the group. My heart goes out to those in the class who are in different time zones as I don’t know how they could possibly manage to sleep after such dynamic discussion going on into the wee hours of the morning!
During the tutorial I found myself having to reassess firstly my own use of digital resources throughout Medical School, and then compare that to current practices for Med Students. I realised that I had been very naive whilst using it as a student and not once had considered the bigger pictures of why that format been chosen, what was happening to my data I uploaded and who was benefiting from it being used.
As a group we the tried to consider digital innovation critically by thinking about what and who drives it, and how it sits within our working environment. The notion of “need” being a key driver of innovation was almost unanimously agreed upon, but perhaps less well understood was the role of private companies and their role in innovation within eLearning. Although the altruistic approach that we would strive to achieve within education would be an open development approach, there is without doubt a huge role played by institutions/companies that wish to profit from advancements. Is this a bad thing? Or is it comparable to so many other industries where private sector drives development? Furthermore is the consequent global improvement of digital standards enough to justify this?
Again, I am left with more questions than answers!
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Thanks Sophie – great post! If you haven’t already, have a listen to the interview with Ben Williamson (see “Audio resources” in LEARN). Quite an eye opener re the ways commercial platforms become entrenched in education systems.
Hi Sophie, As you suggest, there always seems to be more questions for each answer – but you have certainly slipped deeper into the rabbit hole – which is a good thing. You will have seen, perhaps, that I backtracked a little on my somewhat simplistic view of how commercial interests impact upon innovation and development. Digital education, in this sense, and as you imply, really is no different from any other sector. Multiple actors make up the eco system and not all of them are agreeable. Remember, we owe the internet to military defence spending, and a lot of medical advances arise through conflict. My own sense (though like you I have more questions than answers) is that what is particularly lacking here is a component of the digital ecosystem that provides the checks and balances that we observe in other civic and economic structures. A lot of work continues to be done in the dark, and there is little to safeguard the ‘little guy’.
However, if this is a territory that interests you enough, an economist called Mariana Mazzucato has some challenging ideas about the nature of innovation and societal value that could – again, in my opinion – prove highly relevant to how the sector progresses. Essentially, she points to recognising innovation as a consequence of large scale economic grants from central government which, historically, like the arpanet which informed the development of the WWW, seed the ground from where individual innovators make their mark (and, to date, take all the glory and profit)
Again, if you wanted to explore further how all aspects of a culture inform how the culture progresses as an ecosystem, you could do a lot worse then browse through Howard S. Becker’s Art Worlds.