Last week’s theme on ocTEL focused on a fundamental question in Technology Enhanced Learning: why are we doing this? In what ways is TEL better than other forms of learning? Many remain suspicious that it isn’t better, so we need good, robust answers to this challenge. If we’re saying learning is enhanced, what kinds of enhancement could we, and should we, be aiming for?

Contributions are still coming in on these question, so perhaps it’s premature to declare a ‘wrap-up’ — I certainly don’t want to discourage further thoughts — but Week 9 on managing TEL projects and risks is now under way, so a little clearing of the ground is in order.

The first activity kicked off with by encouraging you to review some recent examples of new TEL models that purport to make learning cheaper and/or more accessible, with a view to identifying implications for your own teaching and learning practice. Much of the debate tended to start from an assessment of whether these models are either inspiring or irrelevant.

Joseph Gliddon has a natty technique with his to-camera video blogs, demonstrated to good effect in his slightly dystopian extrapolation from Open Educational Resources to widespread job losses in higher education (do check the comments as well, presenting a few different sides of the argument, including a startup business: “We question the added value of a university and think that there’s more to e-learning than watching one-way video. We can do better and we will do better.” Hmmm, well at least there’s one bit of that we can all agree on.) Read more >>