Technical Codes of Online Education

1. Technical Codes of Online Education Ted Hamilton Learning Spaces Project www.learningspaces.org

2. Technical codes of online education Full paper: Case study of early educational computer conferencing at WBSI. • Learning spaces: develop alternative methodologies for understanding user experience of educational technology • Tie in: looking at how social, experiential, and technical factors inter-relate - not just at “impacts” of technology • This talk: • Outline of “evangelical” discourse of online education • “Technical codes” • Interpretations of the computer in education Addresses the need to question ed tech on the basis of social and experiential dimensions. Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

3. Online education in the 1990s 1980s: dispersed set of experiments into new educational media 1990s: online education seconded to address major problems and priorities in the university: Administration: cost-effectiveness Industry: access to global education markets Government: policy goals in knowledge-based economy Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

4. The Virtual University An “evangelical” discourse: Not just new technologies - a transformative force in and a new form of higher education Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

5. Whatkind of technological revolution? “[…] we would be wise to ask whether the particularly quaint way that we manufacture, distribute and deliver [higher] education will survive the arrival of the information railroad.” -- W.A. Wulf, 1998 “The potential to remove human mediation in some areas [of the university] and replace it with automation - smart, computer-based, network-based systems - is tremendous. It’s gotta happen.” -- Robert Heterich, 1997 “The key to the success of [initiatives in online education] is, of course, detailed execution and associated, institution-wide organizational development strategies with the aim of ultimately enabling the automation of online teaching and learning support systems.” -- James C. Taylor, 2002 Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

6. An “evangelical” discourse Critics: Online education an extension of administrative power and corporate interest - automation, commodification, commercialisation. “[…] the universities were not simply undergoing a technological transformation. Beneath the change, and camouflaged by it, lies another: the commercialisation of higher education. For here as elsewhere technology is but a vehicle and a disarming disguise.” -- Noble, 2002 Proponents: changes required from universities in order for the innate potentials of new technologies to be realised. “[online education] can be used to transform the institution, enabling new markets, new learning outcomes, and new strategic goals to be achieved. However, the latter requires radical changes to the current operation of universities, in particular the way teaching is organized […Universities] will need to transform, or they will die.” -- Bates, 2004 Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

7. Deterministic basis of evangelism • Technology as a fait accompli • Consequences of technology irreversible • Absolute nature of technological change • Technology as product Problems with determinism • Starts from technology • Subordinates social factors • Generalises from technical potentials Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

8. A conceptual shift: Technical codes Underdetermination: Technologies do not only “work” with respect to their functionality, but also with respect to aims, goals, and priorities held by those engaged in the design process. Online education/Ed Tech: must rely not only on technical functionality, but also on operative definitions of the process, practice, and structure of education and educational communication - their “success” depends upon their effective embodiment and support of such definitions. Technical codes: the background of assumptions, values, priorities, goals, and interests which give shape and direction to technologies and socio-technical change The technical code is a historically and socially relative framework for translating social factors into rational design principles - historically variable and subject to intervention - “nothing is written” Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

9. The automation agenda in ed tech Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

10. Critiques of the computer in education • Lyotard (1979): computer is a means of “externalising knowledge from the knower” - commodification. • Aronowitz (2000): students “respond to pre-packaged material” delivered by a casualised labour force - deskilling. • Klass (2000): casualised labour force traded in for “actors” - deprofessionalisation. • Robins & Webster (1999): computer facilitates extension of “instrumental progressivism” in education - corporatisation. • Noble (2002): CME extends the Taylorised labour process and commodified educational products of correspondence - automation. CME: education to information; faculty to “content providers”; university becomes a commercial information producer. Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

11. The computer as representational Plato: “students will receive a quantity of information without real instruction” - Phaedrus (c. 370 BCE). Technology: • Acts primarily on information • Supports a pedagogy of information delivery-acquisition • Remodels education according to this pedagogy Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

12. Other areas of support Educational Technology: • Past: correspondence, broadcasting, CAI • Present: CD-ROM courseware, web-based courseware • Future: “Intelligent Flexible Learning” Theories of distance education: • “the most industrial form of education” (Peters) Economic imperatives/interests: • Industrial model of information production • Commercial model of information consumption Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education

13. A paradigm for educational technology The technical code of evangelical online ed. Content-based pedagogy Transmission model of CMN Ed. Techs./ Online education (automation deskilling commodification) Cognitive educational theory Economics of educational reform Hamilton - Technical Codes of Online Education