OII Position Paper
Return to Politics and Culture
Position Paper by Kevin Carey, Director, humanITy, for at The Next Level in e-Learning
Date: 23/01/2004
Venue: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK
Article
In a materialist society it is easy to cite the distribution of income and wealth, or the lack of it, as the main driver of social hierarchy but beneath that there is a more profound arbiter in the form of self-esteem. One of the most accurate measures of self-esteem is public curiosity; the socially excluded are bad askers.
It is therefore important, when looking at new technologies for learning, to ask how far these retard or advance self-esteem. Recent Forrester research for MicroSoft[1] indicates that 60% of its users think that they are not entirely competent with its products. What does that say about control and confidence, about self-esteem and the ability to act without public curiosity? This research says what we all know; that for a majority of the population PC-based technology is intimidating and widens the socio-economic divide. In spite of solid gains in all sectors, comparative disadvantage is widening.
In the field of e-Learning this analysis pressages a nightmare scenario; might not PC-based e-Learning widen the education gap instead of narrowing it? There may be a theoretical advantage to self-paced learning but if the user interface is intimidating or bewildering, bang goes the theory.
Recently a good and honest scientist at Fujitsu underwent a 'Damascene conversion' in looking at the needs of elderly potential PC users and in response he developed what he called a 'Radically simple' interface[2]. I wish he had read the research as the sudden conversion might never have come. We who live with contemporary computing have powerful, automatic occlusion mechanisms; we don't mind pressing "start" to switch something off! But what does this do for autonomy and self-esteem?
Except for those purposes where self expression is required, I would put the PC, the CD-ROM, the dancing portal, even Z39/50 and the Dublin Core, to one side and combine the best of broadcasting with the development, through broadband, of dialogue. In this country in particular, broadcasting is trusted and, as Adam Singer[3] once put it, every country has a hobby, for the French it is cinema, for us it is broadcasting. It is therefore an even more tragic irony than otherwise that broadcasting has profoundly affected every aspect of our lives except primary and secondary education. As for dialogue, it has, since Plato, formed the basis of our education; and it is the perfect way to build self-esteem and to teach the kind of public curiosity that can operate within a realm of trust.
So before we go any further we need to establish a sub discipline concerning the technologies of self-esteem based on research. We want users to be able to say at the end of a course, that they know more people, trust more people, ask more questions and are happier.
[1] Cited Madelyn Bryant McIntire, Microsoft at Techshare, Birmingham UK 20.xi.03. in press.
[2] Fujitsu Report to DfES, Uk on Cybrarian Project, unpublished
[3] Quoted by Richards, Ed in: Speech to Royal Television Society Dinner, 4.xii.03, www.ofcom.org.uk