Commodication and the shaping of e-learning (in German)
02-July-2006
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In january this year I posted an excerpt from a forthcoming publication entitled 'Commodication and the shaping of e-learning'.
You can find a short summary below. I have still not finished the English language version of the paper. But thanks to the sterling effort of Konrad Jocksch, Christiane Koeth and Lars Heinemann, I do now have a final German version (attached). would love any feedback form German language readers.
The hypothesis on which the paper was based is that the forms and uses of technologies are shaped by political and social processes. If learning is a social process, then any consideration of the development and impact of e-learning and e-learning technologies needs to examine the wider social, economic and cultural processes and discourses involved in the development and implementation of new technologies in education.
The paper suggests that three dominant policy discourses in education have shaped the development and implementation of e-learning: commodification, privatization and a restricted discourse of lifelong learning, which in turn are based on broader discourses around globalization and the privatization of knowledge. These discourses are explained below followed by examples of how they have effected the development and application of e-learning technologies. However, the development of capitalism and capitalist societies is contradictory based on dialectical development and struggle. Whilst the discourses may be dominant within the present period of capitalism and have thus shaped the development of e-learning, there are alternative and contradictory trends. Some commentators have pointed to e-learning as a disruptive technology. Furthermore, there is emerging evidence that learners themselves may be shaping technologies in different ways and for different purposes than was intended.
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