Archive

I have spent the last few years working with my academic colleagues to encourage them to use and experiment with technology to support/enhance the learning and teaching experience.

In the last year or so I have realised that actually that’s not what I should have been doing at all, I should have spent more time asking them what they wanted to try and achieve in their teaching and if that involved technology to support that then great, but if it didn’t then so what?

I think this quote sums it up nicely for me:

“Transformation is more about the human and organizational aspects of teaching and learning than it is about the use of technology” - Laurillard, D. (2007). Introduction. In Beetham et al. Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age Designing for 21st Century Learning. New York: Routledge, 2013.

So to help my colleagues think about how technology might support their teaching I have developed a conversational framework to help with discussions. The framework has been developed based on 4 E’s.

Enable, Enhance, Enrich & Empower and conversations are focussed around these 4 key questions: What can technology “enable” us to do? How can technology “enhance” what we already do? How can technology “enrich” our learning experiences? How can technology “empower” learners & teachers?

More details of this framework (which is still in development) can be found here: http://flippedacademic.co.uk/4e-introduction/