Epistemological Approaches to Digital Learning in Educational Contexts

Linda Daniela

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000062830
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Epistemological Approaches to Digital Learning in Educational Contexts is dedicated to topical issues in school education and pedagogical science related to the learning process in a technology and media enriched environment. It opens up discussions on the development of the educational science sector and strategies for smart pedagogy to promote synergy between technology and pedagogy to support students in the learning process.

The book presents different perspectives on how to evaluate the enhancement of technology use, which can help improve Computational Thinking skills. It also helps in identifying the changes in pupils' algorithmic thinking through programming in Scratch 2.0. The book further explores the way digitally-mediated materiality may support teaching practice and proposes tools that are available for the educational curator in a digital learning environment.

This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of higher education, vocational education, and digital learning.

Chapter 1

Concept of smart pedagogy for learning in a digital world

Linda Daniela

Introduction

Historically, there have been situations involving many different myths, challenges, and societal expectations regarding the outcome of education. In earlier times, education and acquired knowledge, which was gathered by their ancestors, was exclusively accessible to a certain class of people. Gradually, education became more democratic and accessible, creating the foundation for various major breakthroughs and the industrial revolution, and now, we are facing a digital revolution. As early as 1965, Moore predicted that technology would become more affordable as, with the introduction of new solutions with a low cost, the cost of joining different networks would be low too (Moore, 1965). The start of the digital technology revolution is considered to have been in the year 1971, when Intel introduced its microprocessor (Chan et al., 2006). The next major milestone in the widespread use of technological solutions was the definition of the principles of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the 1980s and its result with the first written Web browser in 1990, the outcome of Berners-Lee and Cailliau’s work (1990), and its opening for public use in 1993. Initially, these advances had a greater impact on the information and communication technology (ICT) industry, but it is now clear that digital solutions have entered the educational landscape and their potential is already being widely exploited, and there is no controversy about their usefulness. The use of digital technology in educational settings has been given various names, such as computer-supported collaborative learning (Stahl, 2006); computer-assisted instruction, computer- aided instruction, computer-based learning or computer-mediated learning, which are considered synonyms (De Bruyckere & Kirschner, 2019); ICT for education (Usluel et al., 2008); e-learning (Pituch & Lee, 2006; Selim, 2007); mobile learning (Sharples et al., 2009); distributed learning (Mühlenbrock et al., 1998); asynchronous learning (DeNeui & Dodge, 2006; Dziuban et al., 2007); networked learning (Jackson, 2004); ubiquitous learning (Rogers, 2006); and technology-enhanced learning (Mooij et al., 2014), which are used to describe the application of ICT to teaching and learning (Kirkwood & Price, 2014), to provide flexibility in the mode of learning (Zhu et al., 2016), and to describe learning activities or learning environments in which technology is used as a facilitator, as a support, or as a scaffold learning processes (Barak, 2007; Plesch et al., 2013).

However, not all actors in the educational environment perceive these innovations with open arms, and not all educators strive to try and implement all innovations at once in their professional activities. In the public sphere, the educational environment is sometimes condemned for not using technology more intensively and confidently to change the traditional learning process, but for educators, technology in its own right does not change the learning process, the content being offered, and the importance of the student’s cognitive, sensory, and socio-emotional developmental context. In this chapter, the term technology-enhanced learning is used and described in the next section, which considers perspectives using which the enhancement generated by the use of technology can be analysed. The following is an insight into the smart pedagogical principles applicable to a digital learning environment.

Technology-enhanced learning as the context for smart pedagogy

It is clear that as technology advances, it is increasingly being used in the educational environment to change different dimensions of the educational system, and one of the dimensions of the education system is the learning process that has been using computer technology and communication network solutions (WWW) already for some time. We currently know many different ways in which Advanced Learning Technologies (ALTs) can be used and will inevitably continue to expand and evolve as new technological solutions emerge, so at this point in time, the term technology-enhanced learning (TEL), which is increasingly used in different parts of the world, also includes earlier terms that describe the use of technology in different ways. TEL’s various aspects have been intensively analysed for decades. The use of this term also illustrates what is expected from the use of technology, i.e. it can be introduced and used to support learning (Guri-Rosenblit & Gros, 2011).

Technology in the learning process is believed to help students make their own decisions, develop and diversify knowledge and skills, create diverse learning environments, and allow students to self-evaluate and provide feedback (Green et al., 2005), as TEL promotes an active, inclusive, ubiquitous form of learning and the formation of learning communities (Barak, 2012, 2014; Rafaeli et al., 2004). TEL is a continuously changing process where different technologies are used in the learning process to support students to become smart, motivated learners who know how to construct their knowledge and are supported by competent educators who carry out predictive analyses of processes (Daniela, 2019).

However, there are also some critical aspects in the use of the term TEL, as the term is currently used in a wide variety of contexts and it is not always clear which of these contexts is more relevant. In an educational setting, when it comes to TEL, it is assumed that technology enhances something. Unfortunately, technology is often at the forefront, and comes at the expense of enhancing the actual learning. Kirkwood and Price even point out that TEL is more often considered synonymous with the use of technology and the improvement of technology infrastructure (2014), with less emphasis on the enhancement section that should be attributed to learning.

It has to be admitted that in cases where the technology itself is not at the forefront, knowledge is the next most important indicator of the success and failure of the learning process. Many world-wide studies measure educational success in quantitative terms, a traditionally accepted measure of quality in education. When it comes to the enhancement of learning in a technology-enhanced (TE) environment, it is important to remember that the learning process has different goals, from the development of cognitive processes to knowledge growth to what it means to live and work in a TE environment. There is research that demonstrates that learners’ knowledge in TEL has not improved significantly from the perspective of quantifiable parameters (Lee et al., 2018; Saunders & Gale, 2012). There are articles where the authors try to say that the impact of using technology in the learning process is exaggerated (Naidoo & Raju, 2012), or even create a drop-out risk (McPhee & Soderstrom, 2012). There are other articles claiming that TEL improves learning (Chamizo-Gonzalez et al., 2015; Chen & Lan, 2013; Lansari et al., 2010; Laru et al., 2012; Rockinson-Szapkiw, 2012), but these articles do not provide conclusive research evidence (Daniela et al., 2017). While not denying the necessity of measuring knowledge and measuring changes in that knowledge, and speaking of the objectivity of such measurements in terms of quantitatively analysed data, it is also important to accept that there are a number of factors that influence the evidence of TEL:

• - In the educational environment, it is not possible to ensure that all variables affecting knowledge development are kept constant, as measured solely by the impact of technology. A comparison between experimental and traditional learning groups is also almost impossible, because here too, it is impossible to ensure that everyone involved in the learning process is exactly the same, or to ensure that a technology-driven group receives exactly the same materials, in exactly the same way, as is the case with a non-technology-driven group, and vice versa. It is not possible to guarantee that students who do not have access to technology in the educational environment do not use them outside the educational environment either.
• - Extensive and long-term research on the impact of the use of technology on knowledge can make no sense because technology advances so rapidly that the technologies and technological solutions being explored may already be outdated by the time all research findings are finalized and recommendations made.

These considerations point to the need to use ongoing assessment methods, such as learning analytics solutions, to measure the growth of knowledge in a TEL environment, and to develop a pedagogical activity model where teachers, using predictive analytics competency (Daniela, 2019), predict potential results without knowing them yet. This will take pedagogical work to a new dimension, which will be discussed in more detail in the section on smart pedagogy as a way of organizing pedagogical activities in the TEL environment.

Returning to the TEL process, in addition to measuring and analysing specific quantifiable knowledge, it is also important to analyse what the use of technology can bring from the perspective of the learning experience, how attitudes to learning are shaped, and the effects of time constraints where there is no direct supervision of the learning process by the educator. What influences the retention of knowledge in operative memory, how analytical processes evolve and how they develop, and how these developments improve our understanding of different processes?

Thus, TEL needs to be analysed from several dimensions and each must apply its own research methodology. The results achieved must also be analysed not only from a statically stable point of view, but from a future perspective and a consideration that technology has become our daily ally as it evolves, and when analysing TEL. It is important to remember that enhancement can be analysed from (i) the perspective of knowledge growth; (ii) the perspective of knowledge acquisition; (iii) perspectives on knowledge accumulation; and (iv) perspectives on knowledge access (see Figure 1.1). It is not always possible to focus on one aspect of knowledge by analysing exactly what a TEL process has improved; the most important outcome may not be the increase in knowledge, but rather a change in the way knowledge is acquired, accumulated, and used to understand how the technology world works and to pave the way for new advancements.

Figure 1.1 Knowledge dimensions.

Knowledge growth (i) is typically measured quantitatively across multiple dimensions, such as expansion, improvement, faster acquisition, a deeper understanding of some concepts, or other indicators of knowledge (hereafter, the generic term “knowledge gains” will be used to describe this dimension of knowledge growth).

From a knowledge acquisition perspective (ii), technology allows access to knowledge in different ways and environments, and allows individuals to regulate the process of knowledge acquisition by themselves. These are knowledge and ideas that are acceptable both from (i) a scientifically verifiable perspective (the Earth is still round); (ii) a general public good perspective (nuclear power can also be destructive, even though it has been scientifically discovered and is commonly used); and (iii) the perspective of the rights and freedoms of the individual ...