November 6, 2011
I remember discussing Twitter with a colleague at an academic conference back in 2009. "We have to start using it," he told me. I asked why. His answer: "The kids are using it."
That argument underscores all that I find wrong with the application of technology in higher education. In recent years, professors have heard much about the virtues and promise of new technologies, painted as the saviors of an irrelevant higher-education system that has grown out of touch with today's learners. It has reached the point that some of us believe there is something wrong with us if we do not adopt these technologies in our teaching. But proponents of the new learning technologies seem to ignore the human side of using them. They seem content simply to shill for hardware and software companies, forgetting that just because we can do something does not mean we should.
I am a technophile. I believe strongly in the effective application of a variety of technologies to learning, and in the benefits they can provide. I have designed many online- and blended-learning courses at my university. However, every technology has both strengths and weaknesses.
While technology has made huge leaps in the past decade (not to mention the past century), I believe the relationship between student and teacher has changed very little since Aristotle's day. All technology does is offer us another way of doing what has been done for centuries. Where Aristotle may have used a stick to draw in the dirt to demonstrate, today's teacher uses a stylus or cursor to draw in the digital dirt of the computer display. Whichever tool is used, the actual learning that results depends totally on the skill of the teacher and the motivation of the student, not the technology involved. Of the two, the student's motivation matters most.
There is no learning without pain, Aristotle said. Regardless of which technologies we use (or do not use), the teacher's goal is still to motivate, demonstrate, clarify, and reinforce. The student's goal is to be open to instruction, to understand, to memorize-to learn. Technology will not make learning painless. It will not necessarily make learning easy or fun. It can, however, make learning more accessible, and, if properly applied, more effective. To appreciate the proper application of learning technology, we need to examine it within the context of human behavior. To do that, we must dispel many of the myths that have sprung up. Among them:
Myth 1: Digital natives are automatically digital learners. For years we have been told that students today (and here I am talking about those age 18 to 24) are different. These "digital natives" were born with digital spoons in their mouths. They have grown up with technology as a constant companion, and they outshine "digital immigrants" (those who were born before the digital age, as I was) at every turn.
Several years ago, as a part-time instructor of communication studies, I decided that since I was dealing with the digital generation, I would give each student a single page of course instructions during the first class. That sheet included the URL for the course's Web site and instructions about how to log on. The Web site was well prepared, with a course outline, interactive elements, and all lesson materials needed to participate in the course. Yet in the next-to-last class of the semester, students were still asking basic administrative questions that had been clearly explained on the Web site from the beginning.
Using the technologies common to digital natives did not make these students digital learners. Granted, they could download movies and music and play games. They could text one another and Google. But they had no idea how to work with their technology. That was the biggest difference I noticed between the digital natives and the digital immigrants.
Myth 2: Students prefer using technology to learn. Information accessed using the latest handheld technology may be what students want, but is it what they need? Even Marc Prensky, the author and an educational-software designer who coined the term "digital native," in 2001, wrote at the time that today's students "have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic, and 'tell-test' instruction."
This lack of patience and lack of perseverance are two traits often mentioned in connection with the digital generation. But when I was a young adult, I didn't have much patience or perseverance, either. These two valuable characteristics must usually be learned, but will students learn them if we constantly kowtow to their demands for easy access to content? I don't mean to imply that we shouldn't listen to students. Rather, we must consider carefully which ideas we adopt and which we shelve. Otherwise we will become more preoccupied with following the latest trend than with addressing long-term need.
Myth 3: Cyberspace is the new classroom. Traditional education is based on cloistering student and teacher away from the distractions of everyday life. The classroom is a safe place to read, listen, observe, discuss, question, think-to learn. But today, rather than schedule life around learning, as society has done for hundreds of years, we want to schedule learning around life. Learning becomes just one more aspect of a busy life. We want to package learning as something we do whenever and wherever it is convenient, believing that convenience will make it more appealing.
This is not new. Long before they had laptops and cellphones, some students used to read their textbooks on the bus ride home. They did so not because it was convenient, but because they were motivated to learn. Making learning more convenient by offering material through cell-phone delivery, for example, will not increase students' motivation and perseverance.
Even when students do gain access to content outside the classroom, the spontaneity, discussion, and group learning of the classroom setting can never be duplicated online. There will be a lag between question and answer. Measured learning at the pace of the group will not exist. Careful mentoring by a skilled teacher who can read facial and body language will not be possible. Gone will be the safety and comfort factor of the classroom. Without the minimal distraction zone afforded by the classroom, students will have to develop personal motivation, discipline, and organization-traits that are not yet fully developed in young adults.
Online teaching requires great planning and organization. An online teacher no longer teaches one class of 60 but 60 classes of one. Potential questions must be considered before they arise. Faculty members who must also juggle administrative and research duties face growing pressure from students to be instantly available by phone, e-mail, and instant messaging. Can they also be expected to make content instantly available in the myriad media formats available today? Professors need to choose the most useful media for learning, and students need to adapt, just as they did when all of them had textbooks.
Myth 4: Today's students are multitaskers. Today's digital natives are often touted as masters of multitasking, taking courses and doing homework online while listening to TV, chatting online, and talking on the phone. But multitasking is no more generational than ditching class in grade school for the swimming hole, and no more effective than it ever was. Instead of multitasking, we multidistrict. That is why the best place for study is still a quiet room. Use any technology you want for studying, but use only one at a time.
I am a firm believer in technology in higher education when it is suited to the content and based on a true understanding of how learning and teaching occur. New learning technologies afford us more opportunity to do that than ever before. Their true promise lies not in their ability to disseminate information, but in their ability to combine previously disparate media elements such as text, audio, video, and animation into a seamless flow of content.
If we fail to properly study and evaluate these technologies, we will soon find ourselves hurtling down the technology highway at faster and faster speeds, desperately trying to brake but increasingly out of control. When we eventually crash, the strongest supporters of the new learning technologies will point their fingers and claim that we were at fault, not the technology. They will be right.
Brian Cowan is an instructional designer at the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Windsor, in Canada, where he has designed many online- and blended-learning courses.
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