As I am running a session at the SEDA conference to explore people’s conceptions of whether e-learning can help to promote good pedagogy I thought I would ask the question on an educational mail list to which I belong.
There have not been a lot of reponses as yet but it seems that I have not explained my question very well as it has been interpreted as asking whether e-learning promotes effective learning. Responses have then gone on to say things like “there is no evidence that e-learning improves learning” or “learning depends on how the tutor uses the technology not on the technology itself”.
I do not necessarily disagree with either of these statements but they have missed the intended thrust of my question. What I was asking was whether there was any possibility that the use of technology could actually encourage better pedagogy in the sense that tutors might do things that helped students to learn as a consequence of using technology.
For example if learning is enhanced by dialogue between the tutor (expert?) and the student, as Vygotsky would suggest, then does the use of such things as asynchronous discussion boards encourage more dialogue and therefore more learning?
Of course the availability of technology does not mean that it will be used at all, let alone effectively but I was interested in a discussion of the possibility that technology might make effective pedagogy easier to use and therefore give the student more opportunity to learn.
Perhaps more on this if, and when, I get more responses to my message.
