This document discusses the evolution of technology-enhanced learning over the past 10 years in UK higher education. It traces how technology has moved from a focus on computers to being systemic and implicated in broader changes to education. While technology was initially seen as a way to make learning more interactive and personalized, it is now tied up in issues like the crisis of confidence in public education and the shift to more managerial and standardized approaches. The document ends by outlining three hopeful stories for the future role of technology: open educational practices and content; developing digital literacy beyond just skills; and designing education to prepare students for an uncertain future.

1. Ten Years in Technology-Enhanced Learning:
How far have we (really) come?
Helen Beetham @helenbeetham

2. Ten Years in Technology-Enhanced Learning:
How far have we (really) come?
Helen Beetham @helenbeetham

3. Education Technology Timeline

4. Education Technology Timeline
3500 BCE writing

5. Education Technology Timeline
3500 BCE writing
1453 moveable type

6. Educational Technology timeline

7. Educational Technology timeline
2001 online field trips

8. Educational Technology timeline
2001 online field trips
2005 interactive textbooks

9. Educational Technology timeline
2001 online field trips
2005 interactive textbooks
2024 learning and work
completed at home

10. Educational Technology timeline
2001 online field trips
2005 interactive textbooks
2024 learning and work
completed at home
2030 computers replace books

11. Technology stories are stories about the future...
...that tell us a lot
about the present

12. Technology stories I have heard

13. Technology stories I have heard
Technology will make learning more interactive
Technology will make learning more personal
Technology will make learning more collaborative
Technology will make you more productive
Technology will undo all the effects
of educational disadvantage

14. Technology stories I have heard
Technology will make learning more interactive
Technology will make learning more personal
Technology will make learning more collaborative
Technology will make you more productive
Technology will undo all the effects
of educational disadvantage
‘E-learning is important because it
can contribute to all the government's objectives
for education - to raising standards, improving quality,
removing barriers to learning, and, ultimately, ensuring
that every learner achieves their full
potential’ (DfES 2003).

15. Technology stories I have heard

16. Technology stories I have heard
Technology will make learning more interactive
Technology will make learning more personal
Technology will make learning more collaborative
Technology will make you more productive
Technology will undo all the effects
of educational disadvantage

17. Technology stories I have heard
Technology will make learning more interactive
Technology will make learning more personal
Technology will make learning more collaborative
Technology will make you more productive
Technology will undo all the effects
of educational disadvantage
‘Soon there won’t be any technology, it will all be
direct, you know. Mind to mind. Or just that one
technology, the mind to mind one.’
Computer science student, 1999

18. Education is also a story about the future
When things changed
very little, people
learned through
imitation, observation
and enculturation
Formal education (for a few) really got going in Western
Europe with the Reformation
Extended to the majority during the industrial revolution
-> beginning of a national, public education system

19. Education is also a story about the future
Hypothesis: society invests in (public) education to the
extent that young people have to be prepared for a
future that is different from the previous generation
The curriculum
= a map of that
possible future

20. Co
m
Te pu
ac te
rs
hin
g in
& Te
Le a ch
Ne ar ing
nin
tw g Ini
tia
or Te t
ke ch ive
d no
JIS
Le
a lo gy
rn
Mapping the story of
C ing Pr
e- og
lea
Be rn
nc ing
hm pr
ar og
Te kin ra
ch g m
e- m
no
log Le e
y- ar
En nin
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RP an
Technology Enhanced Learning in UK HE
ve
lop /T ced
ing EL L
ea
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Di rn
git ing
al
Lit
er
ac
y

21. Mapping the story of
Technology Enhanced Learning in UK HE
From computers to networks to
technology-enhanced environments
From teachers to learners
From computer-based activities
to digital universities
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

22. Mapping the story of
Technology Enhanced Learning in UK HE
From computer-based activities
to digital universities
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

23. Digital technology is systemic in education
‘We are not
rethinking some
part or aspect of
learning, we are
rethinking all of
learning in these
new digital
contexts’ (2007)

24. Digital technology is implicated in the crisis
of confidence/legitimacy in public higher education

25. Digital technology is implicated in the crisis
of confidence/legitimacy in public higher education
“higher level skills for a
knowledge economy”
“a consumer revolution
for students”

26. Digital technology is implicated in the crisis
of confidence/legitimacy in public higher education
From collegiality to managerialism
From innovation to standardisation
From public service to
consumer benefit

27. In telling hopeful stories about the technological
future...

28. ... we must not ignore the crisis in front of us
politics
power
disadvantage
finite resources

29. Some hopeful signs from the world of technology

30. Some hopeful signs from the world of technology
ingenious devices
connectivity -> emergence
power, speed & scale
multimedia capture / design
information = communication

31. Some hopeful signs from the world of technology

32. Some hopeful signs from the world of technology
‘I took the whole published works of Ted
Hughes into that archive with me, on my laptop. And
that meant, when I saw... that image he’d changed, I
could search through everything he’d every written and
trace it, and find the echoes... That would have been my
whole PhD, 20 years ago.
English studies student, 2011

33. Three hopeful stories about
the future of education in a digital world
The new means of knowledge production:
open content and open educational practices
The new critical being: digital literacy beyond ECDL
Education/al/development for an uncertain future

34. Open content and open educational practices
using and supporting others to use
re-using content in
open content
teaching contexts
open research data
open peer review
open publication
and comment
collaborating openly
across borders
supporting public access to
knowledge using open source tools
teaching/learning in open networks

35. Open content and open educational practices
Capetown Declaration (2009)
We encourage educators and learners to actively participate in the emerging open
education movement... creating, using, adapting and improving open educational
resources; embracing educational practices built around collaboration, discovery and the
creation of knowledge; and inviting peers and colleagues to get involved.

36. Digital literacy: from skills to practices
(digital literacy - maslow’s hierarchy, schon’s
double-loop learning)
interrogating the ends as well as the means)

37. Digital literacy: from confident use to critical action
Graduate Attribute Statements
a confident, agile adopter of a range
of technologies for personal,
academic and professional use Technoliteracies must
(Oxford Brookes University) become reflective and critical,
our graduates will be confident users aware of the educational,
of advanced technologies; they will social, and political
lead others, challenging convention assumptions involved in the
by exploiting the rich sources of restructuring of education,
connectivity digital working allows
technology, and society
(Wolverhampton University)
currently under way
to be effective global citizens and
interact in a networked society (Kahn and Kellner 2005)
(Leeds Metropolitan University)

38. Digital literacy: from confident use to critical action
‘questioning the ends for which technologies offer themselves,
as well as the means by which they are useful’ (2010)

39. Design for an uncertain future: the new curriculum

40. Design for an uncertain future: the new curriculum

41. Design for an uncertain future: the new curriculum
'Engaged students – the leaders of
tomorrow – are encouraged to see
how their own ideas can lead to
collaborative change … If institutions
can embrace passionate student
advocates, they will be in a good
position to drive forward innovation
and to make a real and genuine
difference to the services they provide.'
Dale Potter, Students’ Project
Coordinator, University of Exeter

42. Some resources
• JISC/HEA UK OER programme
• JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme
• JISC Curriculum Design and Curriculum Delivery programmes
• Design Studio

43. A thought from Dewey
The great advance of electrical science in the last generation was
closely associated... with the application of electric agencies to
means of communication, transportation, lighting of cities and
houses, and more economical production of goods. These are
social ends, moreover, and if they are too closely associated with
notions of private profit, it is not because of anything in them, but
because they have been deflected to private uses: a fact which
puts upon the school the responsibility of restoring their connection
in the mind of the coming generation, with public scientific and
social interests.
John Dewey (1916)
Photo by S.Groppi, downloaded from http://www.flickr.com/photos/groppi/105326649/ under a creative commons licence