Information and communications technologies (ICT) in Higher Education teaching – a tale of gradualism rather than revolution

The widespread adoption of information and communications technologies (ICT) in higher education (HE) since the mid 1990s has failed to produce the radical changes in learning and teaching than many anticipated. Activity theory and Rogers’ model of the adoption of innovations provide analytic frameworks that help develop our understanding of the actual impact of ICT upon teaching practices. This paper draws on a series of large-scale surveys carried out over a 10 year period with distance education tutors at the UK Open University to explore the changing role of ICT in the work of teachers. It investigates how HE teachers in one large distance learning university have, over time, appropriated ICT applications as teaching tools, and the gradual rather than revolutionary changes that have resulted. Introduction Despite the widespread adoption of information and communications technologies (ICT) in higher education (HE), recent research suggests that the impact of ICT has fallen short of the rhetoric that it would produce radical change in learning and teaching (Collis & Wende, 2002; Zemsky & Massy, 2004). This has led to a sense of disappointment that the transformatory potential of the technology is being missed (Garrison and Anderson, 2000), or worse resisted. However, if what is happening in the sector is examined in an analytical fashion, and without prejudging against what enthusiasts said should be happening, ICT can be seen as being appropriated by HE teachers to support their core teaching activities. While most HE institutions now possess abundant computers and technological infrastructure, there is considerable variability in adoption patterns when it comes to the activities and purposes for which ICT is being used. The differing adoption patterns are better understood if HE is seen being made up of many institutional activity systems. ICT is only one of the tools and sub-systems that make up the whole and teaching is only one of the many activities that take place there. In this paper we use two analytical frameworks to make sense of examples of variable adoption patterns in one institution. Central to the first of these frameworks – Activity Theory – is the principle of tool mediation, i.e. that human activity is oriented towards an overall goal (object) and mediated by the use of tools, either conceptual (e.g. language) or physical (e.g. instruments or devices) (Leont’ev, 1978). The tool mediation model has been extended by Engeström (1987) to provide a representation of the wider socio-cultural (community) context that both enables and constrains activity through rules and the division of labour. The activity system model accentuates aspects of the context that must be taken into account when examining tool use within a specific setting, for example how ICT tools are used in particular HE settings. Thus it is useful for identifying potential contradictions within a particular system, for example between Final Handover Version 2 the ‘tool in use’ (teacher behaviour) and ‘tool as intended’ (policy maker’s or manager’s intention) The other analytical framework we draw on is the staged adoption of innovations proposed by Rogers (1995) and used effectively by Zemsky and Massey (2004) to explain what has happened to e-learning in the US HE institutions they were observing. The innovation adoption curve (Figure 1), developed from Rogers (1995), suggests that innovators and early adopters who are the first to use any innovation, behave differently from later adopters. They are driven by intrinsic interest in the innovation and are willing to take risks and invest time and energy working with the innovation. The early majority are also interested in the innovations, but are more attracted to what the innovation can do for other areas of their lives rather than the innovation per se. Diehards (sometimes referred to as confirmed traditionalists or resisters) may never adopt the innovation willingly. This framework is useful both to explain and predict a general cycle of technology adoption, but it cannot explain why some tools and technologies are adopted in the way intended and others are not. But, combined with an explanatory theory that focuses on the particular relationships between the components of any technological system or tool use in this case Activity Theory the reasons for specific adoption trajectory of any technology can be better understood.