Symposium Themes

The Evolution of Learning and Web Technologies: Survival of the Fittest?

The 2004 Colston Research Symposium will bring together researchers from a number of disciplines such as computer science, education and other social sciences to bring their perspectives to bear on both evolving technologies and modes of learning. The symposium themes emerge from notions of an information ecology and the possibilities of achieving a 'right mix', a 'right balance' of technologies and modes of learning that help users to respond appropriately to environmental context. Some new technologies and ways of using them may wither and die, whilst some approaches and solutions will prove successful and survive to develop further over time, much like the evolution of species.

One area where ICT (and in particular the World Wide Web) has already made a significant impact is in the development of tools to support distance learning and the promotion of ‘eLearning’ (with its perceived anytime, anywhere benefits) and to communicate and collaborate ‘virtually’ across national boundaries. Technical, organisational, strategic and pedagogical issues relating to the integration of online learning courses and information portals with mainstream provision within Universities have yet to be resolved and there is so far little evidence of shared knowledge creation.

Meanwhile, technology continues to develop: the ‘next generation’ Semantic Web will allow machines to communicate with each other not only to exchange text, pictures and sound but also information about the quality, “meaning”, provenance, authenticity, subject coverage and cost of such information. Tools are available (eg weblogs) that make publication and the sharing of knowledge amongst distributed communities much easier. We will be able to enlist technology through the creation of shared, distributed knowledge systems to help us make judgements about content. The potential for coupling the human creation and sharing of knowledge with complex algorithms for machine learning has yet to be fully explored. Controversial questions such as “can technology learn for you …?” as well as “does technology give rise to impoverished or enhanced learning?” will come to the fore.

Yet the human and technical strands of research are still largely undertaken within separate disciplinary ‘silos’. Technical researchers may develop technologies which could have huge impact but without a clear idea of potential application, whilst education researchers may encounter problems that, without an understanding or interest in the technology, fall short of solution. Researchers in the field of knowledge creation, organisation and distribution have some overlaps with both fields. In order to harness the knowledge from these various cultures and perspectives and begin to develop shared understandings, we need to provide opportunities for researchers to come together for discussion and debate. Even the development of the theme for this Symposium has proved to be complex because of the lack of a shared language between the groups. Nardi and O’Day (1999[[i]) suggest that the use of the ecology metaphor “…provides a distinctive, powerful set of organizing properties” that foster thought, discussion and stimulate conversations for action.

The 2004 Colston Symposium aims to provide a forum for such conversations between researchers from a variety of disciplines to identify and exploit their different perspectives and problems, common themes and inter-relationships and potential for shared development of solutions.