Editorial: Emerging technologies and changing learning/teaching practices

This special issue is being published at a time when emerging technologies (ETs) have become ubiquitous, and many educators in higher education are trialling different ways of using these technologies to respond to varying teaching and learning challenges (see Sharples et al, 2012 for some examples of this). These challenges include concerns about the quality and outcomes of teaching and learning in a climate of decreasing resources with a simultaneous increase in massification and diversity of the student population. The widening of participation to a diverse group of students thus brings with it contextual constraints and concerns about social inclusion that require addressing physical and epistemological access (Burke, 2012; Hassan & Nussbaum, 2012; Morrow, 2009). Higher educators are being pressurised to ensure success and throughput of students, while their classes are increasing in size and resources are diminishing, which may unwittingly reinforce exclusion and inequities (Bozalek & Boughey, 2012; Iverson, 2007). In addition to these issues that need addressing, it has to be borne in mind that access to technology, though ubiquitous, will not necessarily bring about transformative pedagogical practices (Veletsianos, 2011). Bates and Sangrà (2011, p 4) are of the opinion that radical change is needed in the design and delivery of teaching if higher education institutions (HEIs) are to be “fit for purpose” for the 21st century. Our thesis is that fitness for purpose is an outcome of a careful balance between educational goals, learning outcomes, design of learning activities and appropriation of technologies to mediate the accomplishment of the task. This requires imaginative and creative use of ETs by both students and educators in order to bridge the current pedagogical expectations sandwiched between contextual constraints and concerns. This, of course, also presumes that we understand the meaning of ETs.