EPSY 560: Technology and Educational Change

Course Description

Today's wave of educational technologies foreshadow what may be a second great education revolution, after the rise of mass-institutional education in the nineteenth century. This has the potential to transform the characteristic communication artifacts of classrooms, teacher lecture, classroom discourse and textbooks. This course explores the possibilities for educational technologies to influence educational change. However, with a critical eye, we also raise the concerns - we can use digital media to prolong the life of old ways of learning, for instance, where the video-lecturing teacher, the monovocal e-textbook or the bullet-pointed PowerPoint presentation transmit facts and concepts. How can we use the affordances of networked digital media to do something different? Can we imagine learning where the knowledge that learners bring to the table is valued, where learners' knowledge repertoires are extended as they actively make new knowledge, and which build collaborative knowledge cultures? 4 graduate hours. No professional credit.