Education Technology

Increasingly technological developments are moving into the academic arena and there is a widespread growth in their application to higher education. Academic and popular debate surrounding this implementation of technology can be divided into two broad camps; those advocating the dynamic and innovative potentials of technology for learning and those critiquing what is viewed as an inappropriate push for technology which, they argue, serves to disguise the commercialisation of higher education.

While opponents and advocates debate the perceived benefits and drawbacks of technology little empirical evidence has been paid to student experiences of online education, beyond quantitative measures of academic outcomes and student uptake. Without an understanding of how students work with technology in practice, this debate becomes abstract.

Kate Orton-Johnson