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Complexity and Interconnection 233 15 Complexity and Interconnection: Steering e-Learning Developments from Commodification towards ‘Co-modification’ Gráinne Conole and Martin Dyke Introduction Education has changed dramatically in the last thirty years as a result of a number of factors. This reflects a more general wider societal change and has been fuelled by national policy directives as well as technological changes. This chapter provides a critique of the context within which e-learning occurs and considers how this shapes and directs practice. The central argument of this chapter is that contextual factors have a significant impact on the directions of e-learning activities, and hence an understanding of these factors is important for both policy decisions and practice. The chapter highlights some of the key shifts which have occurred in society, such as the increased impact of technologies, changing norms and values, the shifting and contested nature of knowledge, and discusses their impact on education. It will reflect on the potential role of e-learning in addressing the needs of this complex, constantly changing society. It argues that there are three main shifts occurring in education which need to be taken into account: a shift from a focus on information to communication, a shift from a passive to more interactive engagement, and a shift from a focus on individual learners to more socially situative learning. It considers how new technologies can support these shifts. Oliver et al. argue that there have been a number of important changes in the way we view ‘knowledge’. They suggest that: Although the terms ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ (Drucker 1994) have become a kind of journalistic short-hand for a profoundly complex shift in world-view, they nevertheless serve to encapsulate this new ideological context. The new status of knowledge in society is related in complex ways to developments in the technologies of knowledge. (Oliver et al. 2007: 19) 234 Gráinne Conole and Martin Dyke This chapter aims to address the complex and interconnected relationship among knowledge, technology and society and the impact of this on educational practice, focusing in particular on e-learning in this context. The chapter begins with a critique of the current state of e-learning, touching on the key catalysts which have defined its emergence as an important aspect of educational practice in recent years. It considers some of the reasons cited for using e-learning. It then outlines the range of factors influencing education, highlighting their impact and demonstrating the complex interconnections among these. Finally, it outlines some of the mechanisms used to make sense of this complexity and some of the research issues that are currently being addressed, using a case study example from the eChina-UK Programme to illustrate this. A central issue explored in this chapter is the extent to which developments are seeking to package e-learning into discrete and fixed commodities. It is suggested that an alternative design would be to encourage a more organic approach to e-learning, in which the learning entities can be adapted by learners and teachers and can thereby be more responsive to individual and contextual needs. Such an approach would require flexible and open e-learning material and environments that enabled ongoing modification or ‘co-modification’ by teachers and learners; in other words, adaptations that met their specific situation. This approach is contrasted with proprietary closed e-learning materials and environments that are packaged as commodities or fixed programmes that cannot be adapted by teachers and learners, either in content or in learning approach. When e-learning is engineered and programmed at such a high level, adaptation by other stakeholders is also not a realistic prospect. So, should the emphasis in e-learning be on the front-loaded design and production of fixed materials and learning experiences, or on the provision of enabling frameworks of rich e-learning experience that people can adapt and co-modify to a particular niche and need? Whether such a ‘co-modified’ approach, through joint collaboration might be more appropriate, particularly in international developments, in which local, cultural variations need to be taken into account, remains to be seen. We argue that a production-driven approach to application of e-learning, one that could be termed ‘Fordist’ in nature (Brown and Lauder 1992), may produce e-learning that is inappropriate in other cultural settings. To use Raymond’s analogy, e-learning could be developed less as a ‘cathedral’ and more as a ‘bazaar’ (Raymond 1999); it could adopt the principles...

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