Education

Education for a Digital World

Commonwealth of Learning (COL)

Enlisting the practice-based knowledge of educators to address the aspirations and goals of today’s information savvy students is surely a key to providing enriching experiences using learning technologies.

Faculty, instructors, staff, administrators, policy makers and governance bodies have their own unique perspectives on the role of learning technologies within higher education and each has a sense of what would constitute an enriching experience. That experience might include highly flexible and engaging course offerings, convivial tools for instructors, more learners for
academic departments, increased recognition and reputation for an institution, more mobility for learners between programs and across institutions—items with specific success indicators, depending on viewpoint.

But despite the proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within the higher education sector, ICT use in higher education may not
yet have made as significant an impact on the fundamentals of teaching and learning nor revolutionized classroom practice as predicted, according to a report on tertiary education from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2005).1 Instead, the report pointed to administrative services such as admissions, registration, fee payment, and purchasing as
areas of measurable ICT impact. ICT use may have changed the nature of the learning experience for many learners, providing convenient access to information resources from libraries and online databases, and it may
have relaxed the time, space, and distance constraints of education. But the fundamentals of how higher education institutions teach or the ways that learners learn has remained largely unchanged—until now.

How do we currently approach the enrichment of teaching and learning using ICTs? Are there emergent models of practice arising from educator experiences that may apply broadly to ICT applications for teaching
and learning? Are there best practices with learning technologies emerging from particular institutions or jurisdictions that could have wider application across the higher education sector? How has the proliferation of ICTs, and particularly mobile technologies, been incorporated by educators into their practice in diverse communities around the globe?

This book addresses these questions. It was collaboratively developed and edited by experienced practitioners in the higher education sector. It is the output of ongoing discussions among practitioners who participated in an online community of interest that stimulated dialog among and between interest groups that shared a common vision of providing best practice knowledge for
the benefit of their peers. This is a book that had its roots in the organic discussions of practitioners and became a larger work through their collective intention to disseminate their knowledge more broadly.

The book addresses issues of learning technology use in five sections that deal with:

• The impact of instructional technologies
• Creating online course 
• Implementing technology 
• E-learning in action 
• Engagement and communication

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