Generational Shifts: eLearning in Transition
Australian universities are in a very interesting transitional phase currently with respect to educational technology – particularly in terms of what’s happening online. Web innovation over the last few years has accelerated at a staggering rate, to the point where some are now arguing we have entered a completely new paradigm.
Catchphrase or not, the term “Web 2.0” has a firm basis in reality – or perhaps more accurately, virtual reality. Today’s web is so incredibly different in form and function to what it was just a few years ago that you can clearly delineate the new phase from the old.
What is being increasingly referred to as “Web 1.0”, or the old web, was characterised by websites whose purpose was to statically deliver images and text – and almost singularly to disseminate information. Publishing content required coding skills and a knowledge of servers and the software required to host the website. Relatively speaking, there were high barriers and costs to publish content to the web.
As a result, the pool of individuals and organizations that had a web presence was relatively small, and control of the information remained in the hands of far fewer people. The majority of web users were relegated to a position of isolated consumption.
In the new web the rules have changed, and so has the playing field. Weblogs (also known as blogs) and wikis enable rapid content creation, editing and deployment without requiring any coding skills or technical knowledge. Instant messaging, audio/video chat and web conferencing tools such as Skype, MSN Messenger, and iChat facilitate real-time communication between both individuals and small groups. RSS, podcasting and vodcasting allow for rapid acquisition of information from countless different sites. Video streaming and photo sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr permit the hosting and sharing of digital media. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.ici.ous facilitate the sharing and location of websites via keyword tagging.
Additionally, more recently, virtual realms like Second Life have emerged to enable the creation of rich interactive worlds where seemingly anything is possible and all aspects are generated by users – from the infrastructure and buildings to trees, flowers, clothing and people.
As significant though, if not more so, are the overarching themes of open dialogue, networking and collaboration. The new web is as much about bringing people together as it is about information. Content is not just produced and shared easily; it’s also easily discussed, commented upon, reused, and even criticised as well - and the speed with which this happens is astonishing.
In a matter of hours, a news story on an unknown blog can be picked up, quoted and discussed by dozens of others and quickly spread virally across the entire Internet.
Essentially, individuals whom were once only afforded the right of passive information consumption now have the power to create new content, pass judgement on the contributions of others, and influence the direction of the web itself. Indeed, this has begun to spillover into the offline world into most aspects of life ranging from politics and international relations to finance, consumer trends, and education.
Good or bad, subject-matter experts and nationally recognised news and media sources no longer have the market cornered on information dissemination. Web 2.0 has given a voice to the masses, and this has resulted in a fundamental perceptual change amongst students coming into universities.
Not only are many new students comfortable, confident and proficient in use of emergent technologies, they are equally accustomed to the immediacy, flexibility and freedom these technologies offer.
What students experience when coming to university though is an environment based largely in the old paradigm of a controlled, one-directional flow of information which is out of phase with the familiar principles of immediacy, flexibility and freedom they are accustomed to.
A growing consensus amongst educational technologists and eLearning specialists is that we must begin to accommodate the new paradigm to effectively address the perceptual changes in digital natives. By its nature though, the prospect of doing this involves affording more flexibility and opportunity to students in the learning process than has previously existed. Almost immediately this brings the new paradigm into conflict with more traditionalistic views of education in which the key role of the instructor, as the subject matter expert, is seen to be the dissemination of information; and the role of the student, the absorption of this information.
Thus we arrive at the quandary currently facing many universities worldwide: There is a growing generational gap between so-called “digital natives” arriving as students and the instructors expected to engage them in the learning process.
The challenge is how to address it.
