Digital Technology Education and its Impact on Traditional Academic Roles and Practice

Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, Aug 2010

This paper explores the interface between digital technologies and the teaching labour process in Australian higher education. We develop an adaptation of the seminal Clark (1983, 1994, 2001) and Kozma (1991, 1994) debate about whether technology merely delivers educational content unchanged – technology as the ‘delivery truck’ – or whether education is changed as a result of using different technologies – education as ‘groceries’. Our adaptation is an extension of this metaphor to include the academic teacher as the driver of the grocery truck. With the implementation of new educational technologies, the human resource management aspects of job design, motivation, skilling and work identity are often overlooked, with critical debate about the impact on the teaching labour process seldom considered. In this argument, we will unpack the Clark-Kozma dichotomy of the education/technology interface by looking beyond the embedding of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Australian higher education to examine more broadly the changes to the traditional academic role as the creator, developer and delivery agent of the educational groceries. This has been reinforced by the marketisation of the sector and the concomitant reconfiguration of the traditional teaching process. All this has led to changes in the sense of work identity for academics (McShane, 2006). While we embrace ICT as a potential benefit for both students and academic teachers, we seek to ensure that the ‘truck driver’s’ evolving role is acknowledged in scholarly debates and included in models of learning and teaching if long-term sustainable work practices are to be achieved. One such model is offered.

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Digital Technology Education and its Impact on Traditional Academic Roles and Practice

Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice Digital Technolog y Education and its Impact on Traditional Academic Roles and Practice Jennifer Sappey Dr 0 1 2 Recommended Citation 0 Sappey , Jennifer Dr and Relf, Stephen , Digital Technology Education and its Impact on Traditional Academic Roles and Practice, Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice , 7(1), 2010. Available at: 1 Stephen Relf Charles Sturt University 2 Charles Sturt University Follow this and additional works at; http; //ro; uow; edu; au/jutlp - Abstract This paper explores the interface between digital technologies and the teaching labour process in Australian higher education. We develop an adaptation of the seminal Clark (1983, 1994, 2001) and Kozma (1991, 1994) debate about whether technology merely delivers educational content unchanged – technology as the ‘delivery truck’ – or whether education is changed as a result of using different technologies – education as ‘groceries’. Our adaptation is an extension of this metaphor to include the academic teacher as the driver of the grocery truck. With the implementation of new educational technologies, the human resource management aspects of job design, motivation, skilling and work identity are often overlooked, with critical debate about the impact on the teaching labour process seldom considered. In this argument, we will unpack the ClarkKozma dichotomy of the education/technology interface by looking beyond the embedding of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Australian higher education to examine more broadly the changes to the traditional academic role as the creator, developer and delivery agent of the educational groceries. This has been reinforced by the marketisation of the sector and the concomitant reconfiguration of the traditional teaching process. All this has led to changes in the sense of work identity for academics (McShane, 2006) . While we embrace ICT as a potential benefit for both students and academic teachers, we seek to ensure that the ‘truck driver’s’ evolving role is acknowledged in scholarly debates and included in models of learning and teaching if long-term sustainable work practices are to be achieved. One such model is offered. This journal article is available in Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice: http://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol7/iss1/3 Introduction While there is contention about framing changes to the teaching labour process in the performative discourse of management (Barnett and Coate, 2005) there is nevertheless a need to acknowledge and respond to the significant impact of ICT on the actual tasks of teaching – the labour process (Smith, Ling and Hill, 2006; Snyder, Marginson and Lewis, 2007) . Currently in many Australian universities there is a rarely challenged assumption that digital technologies offer ‘win-win’ to institution and student alike, and that the academic is neutral in the process. As an industrial sociologist and an educational designer we blend data from two theses, empirically based, one in the industrial sociology of Australian higher education and the impact of flexible delivery on teaching (Sappey, 2006), and the other in education design and l(IT)eracy practices of academics writing online (Relf, 2007) . We also draw on a work journal of our initial engagement with online teaching, and we reflect upon the impact of digital technologies on the role and identity of teaching academics. Our focus is the seminal debate between Clark (1983, 1994, 2001; Clark & Salomon, 1986) and Kozma (1991, 1994) in the early 1980s and throughout the 1990s, on the role of instructional technology and media in learning and performance. It still lies at the heart of the development and adoption of new educational technologies today. Although not definitively resolved one way or the other, the proposition that media do or do not influence learning has been embedded in much of the development of digital technology education (Olusakin, 2008; Bassili and Joordens, 2008; Kong and So, 2008; Bassili, 2008; Robert and Lenz, 2008) . Using a metaphor of education as groceries and the grocery truck as the delivery technology, Clark’s position was “that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition. Basically, the choice of vehicle might influence the cost or extent of distributing instruction, but only the content of the vehicle can influence achievement” (Clark 1983, p.446). Kozma (1991, p.179) strongly refuted Clark’s position, arguing that particular forms of media have particular affordances and learning benefits which should influence the choice and use of pedagogy. In 2010, the debate retains its significance as the platform for evaluation of the impact of ICT in education. In US educational debates, explicit reference is made to the Clark-Kozma debate. It is Bassili (...truncated)


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Jennifer Sappey Dr, Stephen Relf. Digital Technology Education and its Impact on Traditional Academic Roles and Practice, Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 2010, Volume 7, Issue 1,