Which side of the wall are you on?

by Ms Rita Kop, Mrs Clare Woodward

Is the new web 2.0 technology the panacea many claim it to be? And how influential is it to those who reside on the wrong side of the technological wall? It is estimated that about half the UK population does not use technology and 25 percent of these people do not see any relevance of technology to their lives. There are those like Selwyn who doubt if Web 2.0 technology will even enhance learning at all. The digital natives - digital immigrants typology by Prensky adds another dimension to the debate around the digital divide, and even the Net-generation seem to use it for fairly trivial activities related to chatting with their friends rather than the collaborative and constructivist learning experience envisaged by enthusiasts.

The potential of the latest web 2.0 and mobile technologies and the possibilities for personalisation, network and community forming they offer, place the learner at the centre of the learning experience, rather than the tutor and the institution, and could be instrumental in determining the content of the learning experience. By influencing education for all, they also revive the ideals of 'adult education for liberation' as argued by Illich and Freire. Their vision was to see people take ownership of the learning process, rather than institutions controlling their education.

This paper will report on research in progress in an HE Department of Adult Continuing Education analysing the effect of moving away from a learning experience wholly directed by the institution, towards a more personalised one where students have more control over the content of the curriculum. The research will establish whether a negotiated approach involving the use of social education technologies in adult education, and a greater control by the students over shaping the content of their learning programme will have a liberating effect on individual student's ownership of learning. The research approach will use an integrative learning design framework and will apply this model to experience design.

The paper will also assess developments in this area by drawing upon literature including Illich's considerations that education must be fit for purpose in relation to the personal, social and educational needs of participants. Moreover, it will fundamentally explore the issues of 'ownership of one's own learning process' and the extent to which the new social software tools enhance the learning experience.

ID Number: 1207

Date: Tuesday, 4th September 2007

Time: 1545

Location: Law and Social Sciences Building, Room A3

Theme: Learning technology for the social network generation

Presentation: KopandWoodwardBrickwall.zip (The file which you can access from this link is the responsibility of the author of the Abstract to which the file relates, not ALT.