- Author:
David Noble
- Subject:
- Grade Level:
- Abstract:
In recent years changes in universities, especially in North America, show that we have entered a new era in higher education, one which is rapidly drawing the halls of academe into the age of automation. Automation - the distribution of digitized course material online, without the participation of professors who develop such material - is often justified as an inevitable part of the new "knowledge-based" society. It is assumed to improve learning and increase wider access. In practice, however, such automation is often coercive in nature - being forced upon professors as well as students - with commercial interests in mind. This paper argues that the trend towards automation of higher education as implemented in North American universities today is a battle between students and professors on one side, and university administrations and companies with "educational products" to sell on the other. It is not a progressive trend towards a new era at all, but a regressive trend, towards the rather old era of mass-production, standardization and purely commercial interests.
- Languages:
English
- Content Types:
Articles and Reports
- Content Topics:
Teaching and Learning, Research
- Conditions of Use:
No License
- Reviews
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This piece had every opportunity to be a useful dispassionate review of the relationships developing among businesses, technologists, and universities. Unfortunately, Nobel quickly succumbed to the temptation to editorialize, and his personal disdain for commercial entities, educational technologists, and university administrations drowned out any insight that otherwise might have been present. Consider the following paragraph:
"Last but not least, behind this effort are the ubiquitous technozealots who simply view computers as the panacea for everything, because they like to play with them. With the avid encouragement of their private sector and university patrons, they forge ahead, without support for their pedagogical claims about the alleged enhancement of education, without any real evidence of productivity improvement, and without any effective demand from either students or teachers."
Any valid point he might have that educational technologists sometimes fail to back up their technology recommendations with pedagogical research is too soft to be heard over the din of his biases and bloviating rhetoric. The rest of the article is similar. Not recommended.
