Monday, May 18, 2009

e-learning and pedagogical innovation


QUOTE from paper :

" While e-learning in higher education is now considered (indeed, sometimes welcomed by many staff) for its potential, real development beyond projects initiated
by innovators has so far been modest. Most HEIs are still struggling to engage a significant percentage of students and staff in e-learning. All HEIs are vulnerable to a wide variety of pressures but have a high resistance to change. They are awash with rich resources in the form of intelligent keen individuals who are rarely appropriately directed to pedagogical innovation nor are self-motivated to radically transform their teaching.

E-learning, whether combined with other forms of teaching and learning or not, is multifaceted and involves shifts both in understanding and behaviours. Most academics responsible for both the curriculum and the pedagogical processes arising from e-learning have not made these shifts. It is most unlikely that a whole university
can be ‘re-engineered’ (Brown, 2002) to accommodate the major changes associated with e-learning. Many academics still view e-learning as impersonal, constraining and insufficiently adaptive to the needs of a wide variety of learners."

http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/683122_750429621_727477304.pdf

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Managing adoption of e-learning

A systemic framework for managing e-learning adoption in campus universities: individual strategies in context

PHD by Carol Russell under the supervision of Gilly Salmon - Very high level stuff !!!

Word cloud by wordle - (cheers for sharing this tool with me Connie P.)

Wordle: Bringing about Change


Chapters of interest:

Page 2 - Context
Method: Action research developing cross discipline innovative teaching & edu technologies (ITET) fellowship program over 5 years.
Page 5 - Complexity and diversity: discussion on individual staff development, communities of practice, knowledge creation process, individual differences - as a rationale to "combine individual perspectives on adoption of new technologies in order to identify systematic patterns across university's learning & teaching activities as a whole"
Page 9 - Motivation, confidence & constraints
"evidence that building shared educational knowledge that is explicit (codified)

and externally acknowledged, within a cross-discipline community empowers the

individual teachers to make changes to learning and teaching systems and curricula in

association with their use of e-learning technology"

Page 13 - Discussion & Conclusion
"staff development for individuals, on its own, is not enough to bring about change"
National strategies + institutional strategies + individual strategies