Prospects for Technology in Education

Prospects for Technology in Education

In Distance Education and Languages (2005) a study ‘Making Online Students Connect: Ethnographic Strategies for Developing Online Learning Experiences’ by Andreas Schramm was published which offers an overview of technology used to create several online ESL courses in the early 2000s. Technology used by creators was nearly cutting-edge at the time and yet a little bit more than ten years later almost all their solutions are out-dated. For example, the creators propose the use of bulletin boards for both plenary meetings and task-based small group discussion (Schramm, 2005, p. 235). Today, forums are still widely employed in online courses; however, their primary use is to provide long-term support through asynchronous communication. For more immediate purposes Skype or Google+ Hangouts appear to be a more appropriate choice; while Google+ Hangouts are free of charge for group communication, Skype offers this function only as a part of paid subscription. Next, where the course requires sharing of audio files, the described solution is to produce audiocassettes or CDs, the option of audio streaming is mentioned by the creators as not yet explored (Schramm, 2005, p. 239). Of course, today, with the use of Web 2.0, uploading an audio file to a web-cite does not pose any difficulties. An even more student-friendly solution is recording a podcast with specifically created and simple to use software and sharing it through, for example, iTunes. Further, the creators describe the use of digital photos accompanied by verbal commentary, provided separately, to explain a concept (Schramm, 2005, p. 239). From today’s standpoint this would not be considered quite efficient. Images and audio commentaries can be combined in a simple video created with user-friendly video-editing software and then uploaded to a free platform – such as Vimeo or YouTube – where students can access, share and discuss it. However, the main difference is that the creators did not have at their disposal a single platform that would make it possible to concentrate all student activities in one place and make them interactive. They, for example, describe setting up a webpage for uploading lectures as plain text documents, supplementing them with learning materials scanned and uploaded to a separate password-protected web-cite (Schramm, 2005, p. 234, 240). Introduction of VLEs, which is closely associated with Web 2.0, in the second half of the last decade mostly solves the problem of a single all-integrated space for students to learn. Therefore, even with this brief comparison, it is evident that within a short period of time technological innovations created better interconnectedness, interactivity and collaboration spaces.

At the current stage of technological development, with m-learning gaining more popularity, VR educational spaces, major universities sharing their courses online for free and digital native generation flourishing in social media, the question may arise of may it get better and, if so, how?. The answer is probably yes, but with the current trend of insufficient funding in the highly competitive educational market the universities stand a risk of not being able to continue to exist in their traditional form (Leer, Ivanov, 2013; Swartz, 2013). However, introduction of more online content and standardizing of materials could help, according to Swartz, universities to adapt to new circumstances by reducing the cost of delivery by almost a third: ‘online learning can markedly reduce costs … the American National Center for Academic Transformation has helped universities reduce more than a third of their costs’ (2013).

A step further for universities to become more cost-efficient is to offer fulltime online degrees, a strategy many universities are currently putting to practice. While there are free online degrees, it is the paid ones that could solve university’s problems. From the financial point of view, benefits of such move are quite self-evident. Universities can enrol more students and reduce their delivery cost Swartz (2013). Students, in turn, spend less on tuition and, in addition, get the advantage of e-learning flexibility. However, when it comes to quality, the debate has been going on whether a fulltime online degree is as effective as a traditional one. In 2007, East, LaMendola and Alter (2014) cite a study conducted among USA college deans and, according to the results, 67 per cent of respondents felt that an online degree program would not ‘compare in quality to traditional graduate degree programs’. Seven years later, in 2017, a report delivered by BABSON Survey Research Group stated that 74.1 per cent of ‘academic leaders [in the United States] rated the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face’ (Allen & Seamen, 2014, p.10). Students also vote for more online education: according to the same report, 33% of all higher education students in the USA have enrolled in at least one online course. Though, the growth of online enrolment has been steadily dropping since 2009 and reached 6.1 per cent in 2014. Hannover Research firm reports 699 institutions offering online degrees in the USA and almost 9,000 programs (‘Education trends,’ 2014). It is evident that universities are embracing this opportunity not only because of its attractive financial side but because the model seems to be academically effective.

A less profitable for universities yet significant in terms of promotion of global education step was taken in 2012. That year the concept of MOOC (massive open online courses) was popularized by the New York Times to mark the launch of the first one by Stanford University called “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” in 2011 (Crawford, 2013). Encouraged by its success – more than 160,000 students enrolled – many acclaimed universities such as MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, and Harvard followed suit and currently there are seventy universities that provide mostly free MOOCs on three platforms: Coursera, edX and Udacity (Crawford, 2013). MOOCs seem to offer a utopian vision of global education: students from all over the world and all kinds of backgrounds engaging in free high quality education at any time of day. Swartz exemplifies the global reach of MOOCs by stating that students from every country on Earth, except North Korea, have enrolled in MOOCs and further stresses that this model of education represents the ‘ultimate democratization of learning’ (2013). On the other hand, a more down-to-earth goal stated by universities for creating MOOCs is to increase university’s visibility and attract new students (Allen & Seamen, 2014, p.25). In all respects, such future of educational technology appears rather promising. However, only three years after its launch, some institutions fear that MOOCs are not a sustainable and such fears are likely to be more widespread as the initial enthusiasm wears off (Allen & Seamen, 2014, p.27). Nevertheless, for as long as MOOCs exist, care must be taken to ensure the claimed high standard of educational materials is continually maintained and that innovations are not introduced for the sake of innovations but in order to contribute to the learning process.

Both of the described above trends of applications of technology in education lie within more or less the same stream of digitalization of content and its subsequent, either free or paid, presentation to students. Some envision that technological innovations will also influence the internal structure of universities. Crawford (2013), for example predicts that in the foreseeable future graduate and postgraduate students will be largely moved online, while undergraduate student experience will traditionally take place on campus. MOOCs are likely to remain a part of a blended learning approach not in the least due to the unquenchable belief in the role of face-to-face teaching and in paramount importance of peer interaction. However, Hanover Research report (2014) contradicts this prediction to some extent. Out of the aforementioned almost 9,000 online degree offerings, 3,839 are associate’s and bachelors degrees, even though a significant proportion of the total is constituted by online certificates. It is almost a third of all offerings, which might mean that general acceptance of the validity of undergraduate online degrees is not too far-fetched. Dawson cited by Crawford, goes even further and makes a compelling prediction that in the future the concept of a degree will be redefined. At least to some degree learning will happen right in the process of work (‘just in time’ learning). Employers will be more interested in one’s ‘knowledge’ (a capacity to act effectively based on previous experience) and the value of knowing some ‘information’ (something that can be found online) will, therefore, decrease (2013).

With further technological innovations combined with deeper understanding of teaching styles that work most effectively in technology-enhanced classrooms changes may soon widely penetrate the off-line learning environment as well. It can be transformed into an open flexible collaborative space for students and teachers, in more of an advisory capacity. Leer and Ivanov (2013) predict that with the learner-centred approach changes may happen to curricula in that they will become less ‘rigid’ and allow students to engage in more meaningful research, possibly even with peers from other departments and faculties, and more productive interaction with teachers. Some also consider the possibility that, taken the increasing demand for funding, this creative kind of education will be reserved for well-off students, while those who cannot afford to pay for a traditional on campus experience, including commuting and rent expenses for many, will have to opt for more affordable online options or MOOCs. Crawford deems such course of events as rather probable: ‘…universities offering on-campus experiences to elite students who can afford to pay, while students who can't afford an elite education [will be] relegated to a MOOCs education’ (2013).

There is no doubt that technology in education is here to stay one way or another. Almost 70 per cent of higher educations institutions in the USA deem online education a major part of their long-term development strategy (Allen & Seamen, 2014, p. 8). European Commission does not fall behind. As one of targets in Europe 2020 strategy, it established ‘40% or attainment in tertiary education’ which will require increase in capacity of higher educational institutions and ICT is the choice (EC: Education and training, 2014).

However, whatever innovations are actually implemented in the future, it is critical to ensure that their nature is not sporadic and inconsistent. Installing a full class of desktop computers or laptops and an overhead projector and not providing the staff with the necessary training or not installing educational software will result only in this expensive hardware being abandoned or used not to the full of its capacity. Leer and Ivanov (2013) warn that a lack of comprehensive strategy is one of the key factors why integration of technology may not produce desirable outcomes in students’ performance. They maintain that ‘technology is only as good as humans who create it’ and that even the most sophisticated device, if not properly incorporated in the learning process, will not help students succeed in learning. No matter how much advanced, technology is just another tool in the educational process, but, when applied accordingly, it can indeed help students gain knowledge efficiently and in an engaging way.

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