Technology Enabled Learning - Myths

 
MYTH – There is a Single End-Point we have to Guess
Now that teaching and learning is significantly technology enabled, and in many ways driven, like any technology dependant function, it will continue to evolve rapidly, and certainly at a much faster pace than higher education is accustomed.
There will therefore be no single end-state that we have to guess, and then race to. The gap between what we can do now and what most instructors know how to make use of has been allowed to grow to the extent we need a significant change management to catch up, but this does not mean we have to guess the future. It is enough to catch up to the present, and then know that anywhere we get to we will have to leave very quickly. They key is to experiment in many different areas, without betting the house on them until they are proven. Past the ‘bleeding edge’ is where the most failures are. We were standing still for 1000 years, and now we all need to be jogging, without succumbing to a temptation to sprint.
MYTH - Our technology is not good enough to justify changing things yet
Pure online degrees were winning awards ahead of face to face degrees with the technologies available in 2005. Adding more technology should not get a higher priority than simply adding blended learning course design to take advantage of what is already available. Lack of technology is not an excuse for moving forward.
MYTH – We need to wait for MOOCs
Open Universities have been teaching very profitably to international markets for years. MOOCS are just one tool at the end of a spectrum from face to face to online. MOOCS extend the spectrum in the direction of online, towards a more efficient teaching model. MOOCs, or perhaps a hybrid MOOC/LMS may lower costs at some time in the future.
MYTH - Online is not as good as face to face
Sadly many face to face courses have little student-instructor or student-student interaction and rather rely on the student making notes at a dull lecture before sitting a multiple choice exam. Most students report more interactions in online courses than they get in a face to face courses. Yes we can do better at face-to-face, but a half decent online course can easily beat what we have relied on in higher education for hundreds of years. If we snub online we have to snub many of our on-campus degrees.
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Thoughts?
Simon Collyer