As I write (and rewrite and rewrite) the overview for the first week of Technology, Learning Systems, and Culture, a course I’m co-teaching with Stephanie Moore at the University of Virginia, I’m trying to pull examples from recent history to frame the (wonderful!) readings Stephanie assembled. Our first week’s reading list includes Andrew Feenberg’s 1999 essay that sets the stage for the critique of technology we will undertake in this course. He contrasts a focus on the revolutionary potential of the medium to a focus on the design and use of the technology. This contrast is seen in the Clark/Kozma Great Media Debate where Clark’s argument that “media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement” is contrasted to Kozma’s rebuttal that certain media “possess particular characteristics that make them both more and less suitable for the accomplishment of certain kinds of learning tasks.”
Feenberg also introduces our class to the concept of technological determinism (e.g., the belief that innovations cause social change) that will be challenged in future readings in this course. Feenberg argues that technology (and our technology gurus) should not determine our practices but our desired practices should steer the future development of technology. I’m asking the students to consider how the observations and predictions in decades (centuries?) past continue to play out. For example, think about the how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were heralded as an innovation to forever change higher education, as argued in “The Campus Tsunami” by David Brooks, but challenged by others as merely (poorly executed) attempts to scale existing strategies. While the shine has long worn off MOOCs, time will tell their impact. However, it seems another example where the strategies (versus the technology) will ultimately determine their fate.