Pedagogy, technology and curriculum, the challenges that academic face to become the main designer of eLearning Curriculum?

Abstract

With the biggest curriculum reform in the history of Hong Kong education underway (EMB Education and Manpower Bureau, 2005; University Grants Committee of Hong Kong, 2005), every university in Hong Kong is taking the opportunity to renew all minor and major elements from its higher education infrastructure to policy to curriculum in order to better equip the students in this globalisation age (Knight, 2006). The growing popularity of eLearning is naturally one of the agendas on the reform list. This new form of instructional delivery poses a number of questions and challenges for academics and policy makers. In Zemsky and Massy (2004)’s report entitled ‘Thwarted innovation. What happened to eLearning and why’, presented a picture of how eLearning is often not as successful as it claimed to be, with many areas needed to be appropriately address such as quality assurance on the e-curriculum development (Baker, 2006), funding models and learning support in technology (Mansvelt et al, 2009; McNaught et al, 2006). The teaching and learning process is often technologically driven as opposed to pedagogically led (Lehtonen et al, 2007; Rossiter D and Crock, 2006). If e-Learning is to have widespread adoption and higher education institutions are to accrue the benefits of eLearning technologies, the cultural characteristics of the university including the diversity of academic motivation, orientation among students, diversity of learning contexts, teachers’ beliefs and approaches in teaching and learning (Qureshi and Vogel, 2000; McNaught and Vogel, 2006) need to all play an influenced role. In this presentation showcase, we report findings from research exploring how academics are and are not designing e-learning courses in line with pedagogy, technology and curriculum through qualitative interviews and case studies across ten different disciplines at a university in Hong Kong. The data are analyzed to obtain information on how they are balancing between the subject matter, the pedagogy and the technology. Issues that Hong Kong academics are facing as they try to create an appropriate learning environment for the learners are also explored.