Skip to content

Diversity

Diversity in Educational Software
Quote: “The broad arguments for diversity in Education apply as readily in the choice of educational software. However, the interests of stakeholders - governments, suppliers, developers, institutions, faculty, students and employers - may not always coincide; in some instances, they find theselves in clear opposition.”
Comment: Lately, the concept of enterprise-wide hasn’t been sitting well with me…and a quick skim through this series of links clarifies it for me: when enterprise-wide solutions are adopted, it almost always means exclusion of potentially viable options/tools. Enterprise-wide is a diversity killer…and instead says: these are the approved tools…these are the approved processes. Not good.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with .

By gsiemens
February 17, 2003

One Response

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Guy said
    on February 18, 2003

    “How many times must a man look up
    Before he can see the sky?” Bob Dylan

    Well, George, I couldn’t agree with you more, but I couldn’t agree with you less. I’m afraid your struggles aren’t over. Lets not confuse centralized with standardized. The Internet as model is a good one, but one that is out of sync with your arguments. The Internet’s lynchpin is standards. Without a language (HTML), protocols (HTTP, TCP/IP, FTP), and browsers (IE, Netscape, Opera), that all conform to standards, you would not be blogging today. I’m with Plato. Conforming to laws is the road to true freedom. Without standards you have anarchy. The beauty of the Internet is that its founding standards are open, evolving, and democratic in the true sense. New Web standards continue to be developed (XML, WML, IMS, etc.), but new eLearning guidelines are also growing in acceptance in areas such as Instructional/Universal Design and accessibility. They are growing in response to real needs. I have yet to hear one of my students complain that any of my courses is too well organized or too accessible.

    There’s a difference between benevolent self-government and evil-empire. If we cannot foster broad communities that embrace common goals and standards, enterprising “providers” will quickly fill the void. We need to identify which values and standards are worthy of defending (or developing) for the common good. We can all slip into missionary mode when we stumble upon a tool that solves some of our problems and can too easily waste our energies championing a tool at the expense of an ideal, be it Blogging, SharePoint, WebCT, or whatever. These tools are in response to diverse needs that need not be competing.

    I am not leery of enterprise-wide, standardized elearning, largely because life does work that way. We accept driving on the same side of the road, basic rules of etiquette, and other proper ways of doing stuff. The Internet has given us unprecedented access because it is anchored in globally adopted standards. Why should we strive for anything less in learning? The centralized/enterprise-wide model may be well suited to management and control, but I would argue that it is anything but antithetical to learning. For one thing, the Internet has shown us that enterprise-wide need not be centralized. Adopting is not the same as imposing. The question is more, “How do we implement a model that will improve the community, not threaten it?” So far, I have to sing along with Dylan. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.