https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3219 Associate Professor, Computing & Information Systems Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:10:05 GMT 2026-08-17T04:10:05Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3653 Educational technology: what it is and how it works Dron, Jon This is the submitted version of the paper, published with corrections in AI&Society. This theoretical paper elucidates the nature of educational technology and, in the process, sheds light on a number of phenomena in educational systems, from the no-significant-difference phenomenon to the singular lack of replication in studies of educational technologies. Its central thesis is that we are not just users of technologies but coparticipants in them. Our participant roles may range from pressing power switches to designing digital learning systems to performing calculations in our heads. Some technologies may demand our participation only in order to enact fixed, predesigned orchestrations correctly. Other technologies leave gaps that we can or must fill with novel orchestrations, that we may perform more or less well. Most are a mix of the two, and the mix varies according to context, participant, and use. This participative orchestration is highly distributed: in educational systems, coparticipants include the learner, the teacher, and many others, from textbook authors to LMS programmers, as well as the tools and methods they use and create. From this perspective, all learners and teachers are educational technologists. The technologies of education are seen to be deeply, fundamentally, and irreducibly human, complex, situated and social in their constitution, their form, and their purpose, and as ungeneralizable in their effects as the choice of paintbrush is to the production of great art. Sat, 03 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3653 2021-04-03T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3641 Distributed Teaching Dron, Jon The central phenomenon that this entry seeks to explore is that people with the job title of “teacher” are almost never the only teachers in a learning transaction, and autodidacts are almost never solely responsible for their own learning. As well as designated teachers and students, text book authors, editors, illustrators, exam boards, curriculum designers, governments, timetablers, classroom designers, architects, learning management system managers, counselors, career advisors, makers of YouTube videos, discussion forums, friends, family, and very many other individuals and groups can and do play an active and often highly significant teaching role in guiding, supporting, and managing the learning process. Online learning, especially when it involves a team of specialists working on a course, makes the distributed nature of the process very visible, and the relative autonomy of online learners makes it more likely that they will seek additional or alternative supports for learning, but virtually all conventional in-person teaching involves multiple teachers too, from peers to textbook authors and, most especially, the learners themselves. Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3641 2019-11-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3569 P-learning’s unwelcome legacy Dron, Jon Formal teaching of adults has evolved in a context de ned, initially, by the constraints of physical boundaries. Classroom walls directly entail timetables, norms and rules of behaviour, social segregation into organized groups and, notably, the course as a fundamental unit of instruction. Our adult education systems are well adapted to provide ef cient and cost-effective teaching within those boundaries. Digitally embodied boundaries are far more uid, open, permeable, scalable, metaphorical and fuzzy. This has helped to drive the increasing dominance of e-learning in intentional informal learning and yet methods that emerge from physical boundaries dominate institutional e-learning, though they are a poor t with the media. This paper is an exploration of the implications of the removal of physical boundaries to online pedagogies, many of which challenge our most cherished educational foundations and assumptions. Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3569 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3530 Lost in social space: Information retrieval issues in Web 1.5 Dron, Jon; Anderson, Terry This paper is concerned with the application of Web 2.0 technologies within a conventional institutional learning setting. After considering the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies vs Web 1.0 technologies and a framework for viewing social software in terms of groups, networks and collectives, we describe an instance of trying to use Elgg, a rich social application, to support a distance-taught course within a conventional face-to-face university. A number of issues are identified, some of which are related to Elgg’s interface but the biggest of which relate to the tensions between top-down and bottom-up control and the shifting contexts of personal, group, network and collective modes of engagement. These problems suggest that, in their current form, social technologies pose intractable difficulties in information organisation and retrieval when used for formal learning. We propose a range of solutions that make use of the wisdom of the crowd combined with human intervention. This paper addresses and extends themes explored in SIRTEL 07. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3530 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3514 Agoraphobia and the modern learner. Dron, Jon; Anderson, Terry Read/write social technologies enable rich pedagogies that centre on sharing and constructing content but have two notable weaknesses. Firstly, beyond the safe, nurturing environment of closed groups, students participating in more or less public network- or set-oriented communities may be insecure in their knowledge and skills, leading to resistance to disclosure. Secondly, it is hard to know who and what to trust in an open environment where others may be equally unskilled or, sometimes, malevolent. We present partial solutions to these problems through the use of collective intelligence, discretionary disclosure controls and mindful design. Sat, 01 Mar 2014 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3514 2014-03-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3512 On the Design of Social Media for Learning Dron, Jon; Anderson, Terry This paper presents two conceptual models that we have developed for understanding ways that social media can support learning. One model relates to the “social” aspect of social media, describing the different ways that people can learn with and from each other, in one or more of three social forms: groups, networks and sets. The other model relates to the ‘media’ side of social media, describing how technologies are constructed and the roles that people play in creating and enacting them, treating them in terms of softness and hardness. The two models are complementary: neither provides a complete picture but, in combination, they help to explain how and why different uses of social media may succeed or fail and, as importantly, are intended to help us design learning activities that make most effective use of the technologies. We offer some suggestions as to how media used to support different social forms can be softened and hardened for different kinds of learning applications. Fri, 08 Aug 2014 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3512 2014-08-08T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3511 The Distant Crowd: Transactional Distance And New Social Media Literacies. Dron, Jon; Anderson, Terry Sociality is not just a cultural phenomenon but is embedded in our genes as eusocial creatures (E. O.Wilson 2012). Learning is an innately social activity, and the processes of teaching, the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next, are well-adapted to our eusociality. The size and nature of the groups we have evolved to form has, so far, been codetermined by exigencies of our situated existence as, initially, bands of hunter-gatherers, evolving into agricultural thenindustrial societies. Dunbar (1996) suggests the size of such groups is naturally limited. Though his research has been challenged on multiple fronts (Russell, Shelley, and Killworth 1987; de Ruiter,Weston, and Lyon 2011), the vast majority of close social ties for any single individual are limited to a relatively small number of other individuals, and our learning generally occurs in relatively small groups. Larger organizational forms such as cities, nations, universities, or corporations are mainly constituted as hierarchies and networks that maintain close personal contact at a manageable number for any given person. The focus of this paper is on describing how, after countless millennia of gentle evolutionary change, the Internet is challenging us to discover new forms of sociality and, with it, new forms of social literacy to help us become more effective learners and citizens. Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3511 2014-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3510 Social Interaction in Self-paced Distance Education. Anderson, Terry; Upton, Lorne; Dron, Jon; Malone, Judi In this paper we present a case study of a self-paced university course that was originally designed to support independent, self-paced study at distance. We developed a social media intervention, in design-based research terms, that allows these ndependent students to contribute archived content to enhance the course, to engage in discussions with other students and to share as little or as much personal information with each other as they wished. We describe the learning design for the intervention and present survey data of student and tutor perception of value and content analysis of the archived contributions. The results indicate that the intervention was positively received by tutors and by the majority (but not all) students and that the archive created by the students’ contributions was adding value to the course. We conclude that the intervention was a modest, yet manageable example of a learning enhancement to a traditional cognitive-behavioral, course that has positive impact and potential with little negative impact on workload. Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3510 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3220 Self-paced and social Dron, Jon Traditionally, much institutional self-paced distance learning has been a largely individual activity, offering limited opportunities for teacher-student interaction and almost none for student-student interaction. This is because, when students are all learning different things at different times, unless enrolment is extremely high, it is difficult to engage in any form of meaningful social learning. This paper reports on a self-paced course at Athabasca University that is designed to provide both the freedom of self-paced learning and the pedagogical benefits of social learning. At the same time the approach deals effectively with issues of plagiarism and the different needs, skills and interests of diverse learners. Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:58:29 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3220 2012-11-14T16:58:29Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3212 "Open and Closed" Getting the mix right. Who gets to Decide?? Dron, Jon; Anderson, Terry; Siemens, George Despite the desirability of "Making Open the Default" as the theme of this year’s open access week, there are many reasons that can and should influence a person and an organization to restrict access to content. In this session we explore these reasons from theoretical, practical and pedagogical positions, noting that these decisions all revolve around issues of control. From a practical perspective, we note the need for more nuanced ways to control information than a simple choice of open or closed. We look two examples, the differentiated sharing allowed through permissions of networking systems such as Elgg, and the capacity to research rights as delineated in the various Creative Commons licences. From a theoretical perspective we note that capacity to make control decisions requires skill and authority, but helps build responsibility and ownership. From a pedagogical perspective we note value and challenges of opening works in computer forums, e-portfolios and resource sharing within and beyond the course. Fri, 26 Oct 2012 21:26:02 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3212 2012-10-26T21:26:02Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3204 Learning technology through three generations of technology enhanced distance education pedagogy Anderson, Terry; Dron, Jon This paper updates earlier work in which we defined three generations of distance education pedagogy. We then describe emerging technologies that are most conducive to instructional designs that evolve with each generation. Finally we discuss matching the pedagogies with learning outcomes. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3204 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3180 Virtual platforms at Athabasca University McGreal, Rory; Dron, Jon; Ellerman, Evelyn The Athabasca University environment includes a virtual media lab (the e-Lab) which is an integrated website platform for curriculum enhancement and development, social networking, and pedagogical and disciplinary research. The e-Lab consists of a Virtual Tool Cupboard, a Demonstration space featuring e-Portfolio (Mahara), a Workshop space that uses Adobe Connect for webconferencing, a Social Networking environment called the Landing (built in Elgg), and a space for Pedagogical Research whose current theme is mobile learning. .Although complementary, these initiatives are reasonably autonomous. The primary benefit of the e-Lab to the university community is in supporting experimental initiatives for online learning, networking, creativity, and communications. These can be tied directly to courses and applied coherently across entire programs in an online learning community. Paper presented at an IDRC workshop in Winnipeg in February, 2012. It was then updated with post-workshop reflections. Sun, 12 Aug 2012 20:29:27 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3180 2012-08-12T20:29:27Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3115 Fun and Fear in Open Spaces Anderson, Terry; Dron, Jon This presentation presents the theory and practice of Open Learning as implemented in Athabasca University’s Beyond the LMS social networking system. The presentation discusses the motivation , design and challenges encountered in the first two years of Athabasca Landing (an elgg-based social networking environment). Reference will be made to the disruptive nature of the technology in regard to the limits of openness, resistance to sharing, context-sensitivity, controllability, ownership, responsibility, soft security, distributed design, managing complexity and crossing the formal/informal divide etc. Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:30:20 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3115 2011-10-27T21:30:20Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3070 Three generations of distance education pedagogy Anderson, Terry; Dron, Jon This paper defines and examines three generations of distance education pedagogy. Unlike earlier classifications of distance education based on the technology used, this analysis focuses on the pedagogy that defines the learning experiences encapsulated in the learning design. The three generations of cognitive-behaviourist, social constructivist, and connectivist pedagogy are examined, using the familiar community of inquiry model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) with its focus on social, cognitive, and teaching presences. Although this typology of pedagogies could also be usefully applied to campus-based education, the need for and practice of openness and explicitness in distance education content and process makes the work especially relevant to distance education designers, teachers, and developers. The article concludes that high-quality distance education exploits all three generations as determined by the learning content, context, and learning expectations. Thu, 16 Jun 2011 20:48:59 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/3070 2011-06-16T20:48:59Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/2305 On the Design of Collective Applications Dron, Jon; Anderson, Terry In this paper we define collective applications as those that employ the aggregated distinct behaviours of individuals in a crowd to shape their environment and to provide structure and influence in that environment. Such behaviour can be seen in most systems that aggregate user-generated content, whether or not that is the intention of the designers or contributors. We identify the necessary features of such applications and observe that they pose a particularly wicked set of design problems, because important characteristics of the system, including processing and presentation, reside outside the program in the behaviour of the crowd itself. We suggest some approaches to dealing with these problems. Paper presented at SocialCom 2009 Vancouver, 2009 Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:59:41 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/2305 2009-09-09T15:59:41Z https://hdl.handle.net/2149/1521 Designing the Undesignable: Social Software and Control Dron, Jon In this presentation, Dr. Jon Dron will discuss his recently published article, “Designing the undesignable: Social Software and Control”. In this article, Dr Dron states that social software, such as blogs, wikis, tagging systems and collaborative filters, treats the group as a first-class object within the system. Drawing from theories of transactional distance and control, he proposes a model of e-learning that extends traditional concepts of learner-teacher-content interactions to include these emergent properties of the group. Some of the dangers and issues that need to be addressed in order for this new model to fulfill its promise will be explored, and a framework of principles to be used by designers of educationally-oriented social software will be discussed. Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:22:58 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2149/1521 2008-02-28T19:22:58Z