Creativity and Critique in Online Learning: Exploring and Examining Innovations in Online Pedagogy

By George Callaghan

This book explores emerging practices in distance education that have been facilitated by the development of educational technology. The volume examines core themes in distance education including online education at scale, embodiment in online environments, connectivity in online education and the personalisation of learning experiences within online education. The first section of the book examines online teaching tools, and explores how they are being used to enhance and promote student learning. The second looks at some of the broader challenges encountered by online teachers and those responsible for designing online learning material. While this volume will be of significant interest to distance learning universities and colleges, it will also be a valuable resource to traditional Higher Education Institutions, who are increasingly searching for innovative ways to reach and teach their students. This edited collection will be of value to scholars of online education as well as practitioners and policy makers looking to enrich their notions of online pedagogy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Jun 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9783319782980

Book preview

© The Author(s) 2018

Jacqueline Baxter, George Callaghan and Jean McAvoy (eds.)Creativity and Critique in Online Learninghttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78298-0_2

2. The Context of Online Teaching and Learning: Neoliberalism, Marketization and Online Teaching

Jacqueline Baxter¹  , George Callaghan²   and Jean McAvoy³  

(1)

Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

(2)

Department of Economics, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

(3)

School of Psychology, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Jacqueline Baxter (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

George Callaghan

Email: [e-mail]

Jean McAvoy

Email: [e-mail]

Keywords

Online teachingOnline learningHigher educationeLearningTechnology enhanced learningDistance learningNeoliberalism

Introduction

Online Teaching in the Marketised Environment

Higher education in the UK has been transformed due to political, social and economic changes that began in the 1970s. These transformations, based largely on shifts to the political economy of capitalism, not only occurred in the UK, but took place across the world, facilitated via organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), The World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund (Henry et al. 2001). These shifts have resulted in changes across education systems and led to the globalisation, privatisation and deregulation of public policy as a whole. In addition to this, increasingly nomadic, highly mobile global capital has reduced the policy salience of governments at the nation state level (Deacon 1997: 2), contributing to what Appadurai describes as the beginnings of the dissociation of politics from the territorial space of the nation (Appadurai 1996). It is against this background that governments in the developed countries of the global economy have pursued neo-liberal economic policies, rejecting the state interventionism that defined the period of the post war consensus. As a result, many nations have focused on ensuring the global competitiveness of their national economies, whilst looking to education to provide the skills and knowledge in order to be able to do this (Gourlay and Stevenson 2017),

Aligning with the global neo-liberal consensus, new public management forms have criticised old state bureaucracies as, highly centralised, rule-bound, and inflexible organisations that emphasise process rather than results, [and] impede good performance (OECD 1995: 7).This has resulted in the imposition of private sector ideals such as competition, a focus on performance and widespread use of governing by targets and numbers (Power 1997). These foci have essentially changed the purpose of the university, from the education of the elites in business, politics, culture and the professions, to the provision of marketable skills and research outputs to the ‘knowledge economy’ (Radice 2013: 408).

The changes to public service policy have profoundly affected the ways in which university education is conceptualised (Lingard et al. 2003). They have also created new ways of framing policy problems, creating normative discourses that urge universities towards a more global outlook with a priority on preparing students for work in a global economy. However, as Henry et al. outline, this must be done with far less resource as, Leaner and meaner, the state now operates against a background of growing social instability, loss of social cohesion and deepening inequality (Henry et al. 2001: 28). They have also changed perceptions of the student who, in policy terms, is interpellated as a fee paying consumer (Clarke 2007): an individual who is buying ‘a product’ and ‘a service’. Education and student needs in this respect must be placed as central to the processes and policies surrounding education. This is reinforced by instruments such as The National Student Survey and the huge marketing campaigns instrumentalised by universities across the piece.

It is within this social, cultural, political and economic context that discourses surrounding online education have emerged: colouring and conditioning the ways in which both students and university staff perceive and embrace new technologies and new ways of teaching. Changes to the way in which HE is conceptualised have played out alongside the concomitant growth of online teaching and learning as Babson’s recent report, based on the US distance learning market, indicates (Allen and Seaman 2017). The report illustrates that while enrolments on online distance learning courses continue to grow, the number of students physically attending post 16 education is shrinking, arguing that:

Distance education continued its pattern of growth for yet another year. Fall 2015 saw more than 6 million students taking at least one distance course, having increased by 3.9% over the previous year. This growth rate was higher than seen in either of the two previous years. In higher education, 29.7% of all students are taking at least one distance course. The total distance enrollments are composed of 14.3% of students (2,902,756) taking exclusively distance courses and 15.4% (3,119,349) who are taking a combination of distance and non-distance courses. The vast majority (4,999,112, or 83.0%) of distance students are studying at the undergraduate level. Public institutions continue to educate the largest proportion of distance students (4,080,565, or 67.8%), while private non-profit institutions passed the private for-profit sector for the first time. (Page 7)

Yet according to a survey reported at the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digifest Conference (Earney et al. 2017), in spite of the billions of dollars being invested in edtech startups, only 21% of educators surveyed thought that we would come to rely on these companies for teaching and learning, whilst 69% believed that the expansion may result in a few tools we in the HE sector can adopt for teaching and learning. When asked How important is organisational culture in the successful adoption of education technology, 100% of respondents replied either that it can totally make or break it (55%) or that it can significantly speed up or slow down its adoption (45%).

Technology and the Teacher

As Sarah Davies and colleagues point out: the policy language surrounding technology enhanced learning [often] embodies a simple economic calculation: in exchange for the use of technology there will be enhanced forms of learning. (Davies and Bartholomew 2017). Highlighting that this is not necessarily the case, they emphasise that people are at the centre of the process and that neglect of the human element is to miss out on the very essence of what teaching and learning is all about. A number of researchers have also pointed out that the concept of nurture should be central to any institution adopting this type of learning and that this is created by an environment that supports and rewards innovation; an environment that is critical, evidence-seeking and evidence creating, recognising the need to deploy human labour and development of institutional resilience through policy (ibid: slide 54, see also, Tobin et al. 2015; Szucs et al. 2009; Rushby and Surry 2016).

In terms of nurture, many institutions appear to have some way to go, yet as Flavin, drawing on the idea of learning technology as disruptive technology, points out, If we look at what students and lecturers do, rather than what we would like them to do, we will have a firmer evidence base from which to progress and an enhanced knowledge of actual practices with ICTs to support learning and teaching, which can comprise an influence on the kind of modules and programmes we design and on the way we structure and support learning in higher education. There is something to be learned from disruptive behaviour. (Flavin 2016: 22).

The turn towards online learning throughout education can and does elicit contrasting responses, from the giddy excitement of early adopters right through to the head shaking cynicism of the old timers (Weller 2011; Veletsianos 2016).

Looking Back: Reactions to Innovation

Online teaching, when viewed in terms of the long history of teaching and pedagogy, is still in its infancy. We are still developing language to talk about it; examining new ways to promote its development, and still in many ways resistant to the thought that it may eventually replace face to face teaching. In order to place this in context it is first useful to examine the ways in which earlier pedagogical innovations were received when they first started to emerge. One example of this is the practice of writing, and Rheingold, in his book on digital literacy, cites an interesting fifth century BC extract from the work of Plato on writing:

The fact is that this invention will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learnt it. They will not need to exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written, calling things to mind no longer from within themselves by their own unaided powers, but under the stimulus of external marks that are alien to themselves. So, it’s not a recipe for memory, but for reminding, that you have discovered. And as for wisdom, you are equipping your pupils with only a semblance of it, not with truth. (Rheingold 2012: 50)

Clearly the response to being able to record and reflect upon human activity in written format was not universally welcomed. If we jump forward to the invention of the printing press there were also those who saw threats and limitation, for example the eighteenth century French philosopher Diderot who expressed concern that the increasing availability of books would constrain learning as there would be too much choice (an early version of information overload) (Rheingold 2012: 99). More recently there are those who are critical of the web’s capacity to increase learning (Carr 2010), those who argue that we should be constantly aware of its threats and limitations (Wolf 2008) and those who seek to develop digital literacy skills which allow us to leverage the capacity of the web, to use it to augment our mental capacities (Rheingold 2012; Weller 2011; Veletsianos 2016).

What is clear is, as Veletsianos writes in his 2016 book on digital scholarship, that The history of scholarship is largely intertwined with the history of technological innovation (2016: 13). He goes on to at describe how we are seeing an ideological shift occurring among scholars from established frameworks of academic scholarship and discourse, towards structures that are more participatory and empowering, as, "Participation in social media allows the scholar to connect with others (e.g., other scholars, practitioners, the general public) in ongoing discussion and reflection (2016: 23). Just as earlier cultures worked with and through challenges with increasing information by developing encyclopedias, libraries, card indexes and reference systems, so our contemporary culture necessarily must develop tactics which allow scholars and students to create critically reflective learning communities through using digital networks and information.

Teaching and Learning Online

There are now many volumes that focus on online teaching and learning, these range from Gilly Salmon’s seminal work on online forums (Salmon 1998; Salmon 2002), to more recent work which examines online identities (Thomas 2007; Gale et al. 2007), faculty development online (McQuiggan 2007; Boettcher and Conrad 2016) and other aspects of online learning such as motivation (Anderson 2004; Baxter 2012; Huett et al. 2008; Lee and Martin 2017). The field is moving fast and is informed not only by advances in technology, pedagogy and neuroscience, but by the ways in which online engagement is integrated into the lives of individuals in the form of news, online banking, social interaction and how we choose everything from household goods to holidays. Previous research has shown that the ways in which teachers learn about online teaching are not purely confined to formal learning but are assimilated through a blend of life experiences and interactions with their students and other teachers. It also demonstrates that issues such as student motivation, retention and completion have to be considered in new ways in order to explore the progression and retention of online learners (see for example, Baxter