Blackboxed technology

Sian Bayne tackles her critique on an unreflected  approach to technology for education through the TEL acronym: T stands for ‘technology’, E for ‘enhanced’, and L for ‘learning’, Technology enhanced learning’. The term implicates that learning is better, easier with technology, as if the brain profited from technology. But what technology is meant exactly, what does enhance really mean and how should we understand the link to learning? Bayne’s criticism is directed primarily at the uncritical use of these terms, without ever questioning them. Like the acronym TEL, they are simply repeated everywhere without anyone asking what exactly technology is, what supports it, and how exactly learning influences or should influence it. In her article she opens the door behind every letter of TEL and a whole new complex realm is laid out before us. With Hamilton and Friesen, she shows what is hidden behind the T, what is not visible in the Black Box.

T: Technology in itself

Technology is often valued for itself. The essentialist approach does not ask why use technology, but use it for it’s own sake. “What we mean by technology, in the context of TEL is rarely made explicit in the documents which make use of the term: there appears to be a sense in which it is seen as needing no further qualification”,  Bayne writes (p. 8), and toghether with Kirkwood and Price (2013)  she argues further:

“Where definitions are given, the overhelming emphasis is on the role of technology as a ‘supportive’ mechanism for the already existing educational activities of teaching and learning.” (ibid.)

But how? Supportive in which way?

Bayne’s review goes even further. It calls the essentialist and instrumentalist view of technology “two simplistic, ‘common-sense’ understandings of the nature of technology (p. 9), the essentialist view attributing to technology “‘inalienable qualities’ immanent to the technological artefact”, and instrumentalism sees technology as “a set of neutral entities by which pre-existing goals like “better” learning can be achieved.” (ibid.) Both approaches turn out to be short-sighted and undifferentiated in that they completely separate the process of creation and use of technology from any social implication. As a consequence I can only ask how it is possible to design  meaningful and useful didactic concepts if the social component of didactics is not considered. When creating an online learning environment I would at first who shall learn what, why, from whom, with whom, where, when, and at last: by which means. If ‘means’ are technology  If ‘means’ can be equated with ‘technology’, then technology alone cannot make learning in a learning environment.

Questions: Are those human beings not taken into consideration in an essentialist and instrumentalist environment? Does the equation ‘means’ = technology make sense? Is technology more than medium or means?

E – Enhanced – Overcoming the human condition?

According to Bayne, ‘enhanced’ has a transhumanist touch. Transhumanism wants to overcome fundamental human limitations by technology. Transhumanism is based on the conviction that man is not enough in his contitio humana, that he is weak and can surpass himself (only) through technology. Thus, transhumanists speak of memory up- and download, they work on overcoming age and even death. The word ‘enhance’ in TEL according to Beans means “improve”:

“I argue here that in the echoes which sound between “enhanced learning’ and ‘enhanced cognition’ , the terminology of TEL creates a discursive link with transhumanism and the project of human enhancement, areas of thought with which TEL has more in common than may at first be obvious.” (p.11)

Instead of taking the transhumanist position uncritically, Bayne proposes to question one’s own values in a posthumanistic and critical way (p. 12). In the posthumanist view we are no longer able to see the human subject outside of history, social conditions and other discursive aspects, but as placed in a discursive environment. The critical posthumanism places man in his context. It moves away from essentialism and instrumentalism, it wouldn’t “see the human neither as dominating technology nor as being dominated by it. ” Further, Baynes’ concern with context leads her to state that “a critical posthumanist position would be committed to detailed account of the social and political ecologies and networks through which technological innovation is performed.”

L – Learning

When we speak of learning, we forget that learning is only one side of the coin. Learning is an inner process in a person that changes him or her. In contrast, education is more than only learning. There can be teaching, there can be an environment in which education is possible and so on. There are several diverse roles among the actors in the process. I understand education as a process that takes place in a certain context, in an environment of family, society, history, values, philosophy, politics, etc., as prerequisites for the way, education is provided. Learning is only a small part in it. Speaking of learners reduces human beings to clients, receiving something defined and pre-designed, like customers. They don’t have a say in what they get, a pre-designed learning experience is a product.

Bayne criticises especially the marketing aspect of the industry of learning. She speaks of the “industrialisation of learning” (p.16) as constructed as instrumental. She concludes that

“to reduce ‘education’ to ‘learning’ prevents us from asking critical questions about how educational goals are negotiated and how its power relations are constituted. In discursively out the social and material complications of a broader understanding of ‘education’ learning becomes an ideology, a mask for the underlying tensions and stresses around how we define the purpose and function of education.” (ibid.)

Thus, the instrumentalisation and reduction of ‘education’ in the term of ‘learning’ is enacted via the rhetoric of the language of learning”. Whit this statement Baynes emphasises that education should be about something else – and more than only learning.

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Literature

Bayne, S. (2015) What is the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’?, Learning Media and Technology, Vol, 40, No. 1, p. 5-20).

Kirkwood, A., Price, L. (2013) Technology-Enhanced Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: What is ‘Enhanced and How Do We Know? A Critical Literature Review. Learning, Media and Technology.