New technologies are often used to replicate current systems, without much thought given to how the affordances of the technology can help design a better system. Higher education has been particularly guilty of this lack of imagination. Since the days of "distance education" delivered over closed-circuit television, we have too often sought to use technology simply to replicate the traditional lecture-based classroom model. Technology has brought about significant change in many sectors of our economy, yet the primary delivery system for knowledge in our country has largely remained unchanged.

Why is this? Is it that the traditional lecture-based model works so well that we have no need to look for anything better, and that we are best served by using technology merely to replicate and augment this system that has been in place for hundreds of years? Our process for higher education worked well in the context for which it was constructed—when we could safely assume that we were teaching small classes of students with fairly homogeneous background knowledge, relevant skills, and future goals. However, that context has changed. We now teach vastly larger numbers of students who have a much greater diversity of background knowledge, relevant skills, and future goals.

Technology has clearly provided us with some benefits. Students today do not always have to be physically present in the classroom—instead, we use technology to provide them with "anytime, anywhere" access to video-recorded lectures, electronic textbooks, or audio-based podcasts. We set up online discussion forums so that our students can communicate and collaborate more easily and efficiently. Because of technology, we now have the ability to create elaborate computer simulations of phenomena that are too large or too small to physically observe. However, at the core of all of these uses of technology is still the same underlying model: the primary mode of knowledge transfer is that of a student sitting and listening to an instructor giving a lecture.

Keywords

higher learning · OLI · open learning initiative