Matt Bower - Design of technology-enhanced learning : integrating research and practice

Integrating Research and Practice

By

Matt Bower

Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

United Kingdom North America Japan India Malaysia China

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2017

Copyright 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78714-183-4 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-182-7 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-911-3 (Epub)

T echnology is changing everything in our world, including education. People have the ability to access information and communicate anytime and almost anyplace through a range of increasingly powerful and easy to use apps. In education, technology enables students and teachers to rapidly collect data, represent knowledge, share perspectives, digitally construct, and collaborate from almost any location. However, too often the use of technology for learning is presented as a panacea that will solve all educational ills. The reality is that simply using contemporary technologies in education does not guarantee a successful lesson, and in fact, using technology poorly can render a learning experience confusing and meaningless.

As technologies change, it is crucial that educators (school teachers, academics, pre-service teachers, and educational designers) respond in a principled fashion based upon a deep understanding of pedagogical issues, rather than haphazardly based on intuitive or superficial reasoning. Maintaining a focus on pedagogical issues means that educators can avoid being distracted by the novelty of new technologies and concentrate upon how each technology is influencing interaction and learning. Accordingly, in order to develop an accurate and confident command of technology-enhanced learning issues, educators need to understand the research of the field. Similarly, if learning technology researchers want to have far-reaching positive impact, their work needs to penetrate beyond the surface technological features through the underlying learning and teaching issues at stake. Understanding the key issues and research across technologies enables researchers to accurately position their work and demonstrate how it is making a contribution to the field overall.

As a teacher educator and educational researcher specializing in the technology area, I frequently lamented that the technology-enhanced learning literature was disorganized and disparate for educators who wanted to utilize it. This was a problem because most educators simply do not have time to find and distil learning technology research relating to their area of focus. Why wasnt there a single resource that synthesized the key learning technology literature in a way that educators could immediately apply? At the same time, educational technology researchers are incredibly time-poor, and while they have immense expertise in their specific sub-areas, the breadth of the technology-enhanced learning literature means that it can be difficult to acquire an accurate sense of the empirical research as a whole. This is particularly true when it comes to understanding research relationships between different technological platforms from an educational design and practice perspective.

This book directly responds to these maladies by drawing technology-enhanced learning research and practice closer together. It does this by synthesizing the general and empirical learning technology literature to clearly identify the key educational potentials, issues, and design considerations relating to technology-enhanced learning. By examining this synthesis of research findings, educators can immediately adopt an evidence-based approach in their designs, and researchers can instantly position their work within the broad context of technology-enhanced learning field.