Return to
ED-MEDIA
Conference
page
Pre-Conference
Seminar: Systems
for WWW-Based
Course Support
INVITED SPEAKER
Utilizing Disruptive Technologies in the
University:
Confessions of an Agent Provocateur
Terry Anderson, University of Alberta, Canada
This presentation looks at recent predictions of educational futurists and questions the reason information and communications technologies have had so little impact on teaching and learning within the mainstream university. Unlike the sustaining technologies used to support and enhance the research components of the University, instructional technologies are disruptive to the current culture and economics of teaching in higher education. Divergent strategies must be employed to ensure that the University adopts and exploits both sustaining and disruptive technologies.
Survey data will be presented differentiating the profile, needs and aspirations of innovators and early adopters from mainstream academics. I'll trace the development of programs and staffing in a university "new media centre" http://www.atl.ualberta.ca
and try to identify those factors in programming that succeed in biasing faculty and administration towards proactive and adaptive change. I'll note how efforts at funding new media centres can serve to reduce pressure for more fundamental change, through marginalization and the creation of enclaves of disenfranchised innovators. Finally, I'll suggests strategies and means by which the central core of the academic community can be induced and supported to use information and technology tools to protect and advance the fundamental values of the academic community. |
Terry Anderson,
Ph.D. Professor and Director of the Academic Technologies for Learning (ATL) unit, University of Alberta |
| Terry Anderson, Ph.D. is a Professor and
Director of the Academic Technologies for Learning (ATL) unit at the University of
Alberta. This 20 person unit is charged with providing instructional design, multi-media
production and distance education support for teaching faculty at a large, research-based
university. Terry is co-author of 1998 text Networked Learning: Pedagogy of the Internet. He organized the first "virtual conference" ever held on the Internet in 1992 and maintains research interests related to the development and measurement of critical thinking and knowledge construction in networked learning environments. |
|