Martin Oliver

Can 'Blended Learning' Be Redeemed?

Although the term ‘blended learning’ is widely used, this article argues against it. Two arguments are advanced. The first is primarily philosophical, although it has several pragmatic implications. It proposes that ‘blending’ either relies on the idea of dichotomies which are suspect within the context of learning with technology or else becomes ineffective as a discriminating concept and is thus without purpose. The implication of this is that the term ‘blended’ should either be abandoned or, at the least, radically reconceived. The second argument proposes that learning, from the perspective of the learner, is rarely, if ever, the subject of blended learning. What is actually being addressed are forms of instruction, teaching, or at best, pedagogies. The implication of this is that the term ‘learning’ should be abandoned. The second half of the article attempts to redeem the concept of blended learning by arguing that learning gains attributed to blended learning may have their explanation in variation theory. It offers a new way to conceptualise what is being ‘blended’ that is theoretically coherent, philosophically defensible and pragmatically informative. The article concludes by setting an agenda for further work in this area.

Does E‐learning Policy Drive Change in Higher Education?: A case study relating models of organisational change to e‐learning implementation

Due to the heightened competition introduced by the potential global market and the need for structural changes within organisations delivering e‐content, e‐learning policy is beginning to take on a more significant role within the context of educational policy per se. For this reason, it is becoming increasingly important to establish what effect such policies have and how they are achieved. This paper addresses this question, illustrating five ways in which change is understood (Fordist, evolutionary, ecological, community of practice and discourse‐oriented) and then using this range of perspectives to explore how e‐learning policy drives change (both organisational and pedagogic) within a selected higher education institution. The implications of this case are then discussed, and both methodological and pragmatic conclusions are drawn, considering the relative insights offered by the models and ways in which change around e‐learning might be supported or promoted.

Implementing Technology-Enhanced Learning

In this chapter, we look at the implementation perspective from the start- ing point of the fundamental educational aims that unite the academic community. We argue that interactive and cooperative digital media have an inherent educational value as a new means of intellectual expression. Our primary concern is not the op- timisation of knowledge transmission but the use of digital technologies to enhance intellectual expressiveness and creativity: helping the students in their appropriation of the world with a special emphasis on their intellectual development, it is essential for the education system to incorporate new digital media as tools for intellectual ex- pression and production. We outline the main issues relevant to the implementation of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) - the link to overall educational aims, the relationship between innovation and practice, the importance of user engagement, the nature of TEL research, and the characteristics of the local context, and the nature of TEL as a catalyst for change. The chapter concludes with some of the key lessons learned in recent research and development projects that will help to develop more successful ways of ensuring that the technology achieves its potential to enhance learning.

Fostering Relevant Research on Educational Communications and Technology

Describing research as ‘relevant’ implies that there is an aim that it should serve; asking further how such work can be fostered raises questions about the encouragement and control of research practices. This chapter explores the idea of relevance in the context of research on educational communications and technology, and considers the mechanisms through which groups such as researchers and policy makers foster work that serves their interests. Firstly, historical patterns of cycles of promise then disappointment for technologies are noted. Then, the idea of relevance is considered in relation to the audiences with interests in work in this field. Next, mechanisms for fostering particular kinds of research are discussed, using concepts from Communities of Practice to frame the discussion. The chapter concludes by identifying ways of fostering relevant research that are distinctive to work in this field, such as the use of templates for knowledge representation and processes such as participative design, and problems that will persist in achieving this, such as the need to contextualize research claims in relation to specific teaching contexts.

It’s Not All About the Learner: Reframing Students’ Digital Literacy as Sociomaterial Practice

Digital literacies are an important area of contemporary research and practice. However, policy and research on this topic relies almost exclusively on capability or competence models of “digital literacy”. These decontextualised, cognitive accounts ignore the insights of New Literacy Studies (e.g. Lea and Street. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157–172, 1998), which have shown that focusing on a ‘free floating’ learner, without reference to settings, resources and cultures, fails to explain important aspects of how literacy practices are achieved and enacted. Adopting a sociomaterial account of learning provides an alternative to these narratives about student literacy. From this perspective, ‘literacy’ is an achievement that involves the successful coordination of human and non-human actors—including teachers, other learners, pupils, devices, texts and so on. Drawing on work undertaken as part of a JISC-funded project, we critique mainstream ‘learner-centred’ accounts of digital literacy; outline the theoretical framework on which our work has been based; and present a series of case studies that show how an individual’s ability to act in a digitally literate way depends on much more than an assumed set of stable, internalised qualities. These cases involve data collected by students through multimodal journalling over a period of 9–12 months, and from in-depth interviews that explored what these meant to them. This analysis shows how learners’ practices are shaped by the social and material environments in which they are enacted, and reveals that learners are engaged in an ongoing, improvisatory process of both adapting to the environments in which they work, whilst also adapting these environments.