Goals of Educational Technology

Goals of Educational Technology

Educational technology research always had an ambitious agenda. Sometimes it only aims at increased efficiency or effectiveness of current practise, but frequently it aims at pedagogical change. While it can be considered as a design science it also addresses fundamental issues of learning, teaching and social organization and therefore makes use of the full range of modern social science and life sciences methodology.

"Technology provides us with powerful tools to try out different designs, so that instead of theories of education, we may begin to develop a science of education. But it cannot be an analytic science like physics or psychology; rather it must be a design science more like aeronautics or artificial intelligence. For example, in aeronautics the goal is to elucidate how different designs contribute to lift, drag maneuverability, etc. Similarly, a design science of education must determine how different designs of learning environments contribute to learning, cooperation, motivation, etc." (Collins, 1992:24).

Technology is therefore both a tool and a catalyzer and it can become a medium through which change can happen.

Educational technologists would not therefore consider the computer as just another piece of equipment. If educational technology is concerned with thinking carefully about teaching and learning, then a computer has a contribution to make irrespective of its use as a means of implementation, for the design of computer-based learning environments gives us a new perspective on the nature of teaching and learning and indeed on general educational objectives. (O'Shea and Self: 1983: 59).

3 What is it about ?

Defining the field is both simple (e.g., see the definitions at the top) and difficult. There are a several perspectives.

3.1 From an instructional design perspective

Besides being a field of research, Educational Technology is synonymous for { Pedagogy, Learning, Instructional design, etc.} with technology and therefore also an engineering discipline, a design science or an craft (whatever you prefer).
In order to define educational technology we may ask ourselves what constitutes an instructional design and what disciplines look at these constituents.

The instructional design space

Even from a pure "engineering perspective," it doesn't make much sense to talk about Educational Technology just in terms of Instructional design models or instructional design methods. An instructional designer also feels concerned by more fundamental disciplines like general learning theory or pedagogical theory. These theories provide interesting insights on issues like the relation between learning type or learning level and appropriate pedagogic strategy, how affect and motivation may influence the learning process, what multimedia design can learn from theories on human information processing or cognitive load, why metacognition and collaborative learning is important etc.

3.2 From a design-research oriented perspective

More design-oriented educational technologists rather look a cross-section of several phenomena, i.e., they adopt an interdisciplinary approach that will ultimately lead to better pedagogical designs in a given area.

Crosssections

Owen (2008) identifies three key pedagogical facts that "organise" the ICT-enhanced pedagogical landscape.

Owen (2008): Pedagogical Underpinnings for ICT Enhanced Learning & Teaching Design

3.3 From a fundamental research perspective

Many researchers in the field rather adopt a more fundamental research stance and they focus on small well defined problems such as "under which conditions can multimedia animations be effective."

3.4 From an institutional perspective

A field is implicitly defined by journals, conferences and study programs.
The Journal of Interactive Learning Research published by the association for the Advancement of Computing in Education included on March 2006 the following enumeration of interactive learning environments that gives an idea on the technical scope of the field.

• authoring systems
• cognitive tools for learning
• computer-assisted language learning
• computer-based assessment systems
• computer-based training
• computer-mediated communications
• computer-supported collaborative learning
• distributed learning environments
• electronic performance support systems
• interactive learning environments
• interactive multimedia systems
• interactive simulations and games
• intelligent agents on the Internet
• intelligent tutoring systems
• microworlds
• virtual reality based learning systems

Note: Main-stream e-learning is a special case of computer-based training and computer-mediated communication. It also may include other elements like passive or interactive multimedia animations.

3.5 From a technology perspective

Each time a new technology appears soon after it may be hailed as a new solution to education by both researchers and practitioners. Therefore, one also could argue that fundamentally speaking, educational technology research and practice is technology driven (although not many members of the community would accept this stance). E.g., see Daniel Chandler's Technological or Media Determinism discussion.

3.6 From a "where is it used perspective"

• Distance education
• Blended learning
• Technology-enhanced classrooms (at all school levels)
• Informal learning (of various sorts)

Note: e-learning often refers to technology or designs used in distance teaching, but it also is used to describe any sort of technology use in education. Now that most e-learning initiatives in public higher education turned out to deliver less than what was promised, e-learning is no longer a hype word a