I’ve been thinking “big thoughts” lately, a problem brought on by several recent conversations with David Wiley. I realize I’m repeating something I’ve written before, but the idea is so core to the way I see things that I think it bears repeating–the purpose of institutions of higher education (and all of their associated functions and personnel) is student learning. Learners and the knowledge and skills they acquire are the raison d’etre of colleges & universities. Sure there are folks who might argue that university-based research is just as important, but the number of institutions that could send their students home and still make a case for their continued existence is very small.   So why does this matter to an academic technologist? Because at the end of the day, my purpose is to ensure that our investments in technology promote better, more effective and even more efficient learning. While institutional and instructor efficiency and convenience are laudable goals, however, I’m increasingly of the mind that these goals, by themselves, are not very good justifications for technology expenditures. Unless these efficiencies and conveniences have a direct impact on student learning effectiveness and efficiency, I think we’re missing the mark.  For example, if we relieve some of the administrivia for an instructor in an introductory course, we should ask ourselves what the instructor is doing with the saved time. If he or she simply has more discretionary time, that’s a nice thing, but not necessarily worth significant institutional investment. If, on the other hand, that extra time is dedicated to more one-on-one time mentoring and coaching students, working on mentored research projects with students, or teaching smaller sections of upper-division courses, methinks that is a more justifiable use of institutional teaching & learning improvement resources. Some not-so-random observations that have been bouncing around my noggin related to learners, goals & technologies:

1. We should focus on technologies that support LEARNING activities more than we do on technologies that support TEACHING activities.
2. If we can’t readily explain how we expect a particular technology to improve learning, we should rethink what we’re doing.
3. If a technology yields significant institutional or instructor efficiency, we should ask how learners will benefit from that efficiency, i.e. how will learning be improved?

Perhaps these observations are obvious to most readers, but, again, I believe their important enough that they need to be repeated, again and again, so we don’t forget them. Maybe a teaching & learning with technology mantra is in order: “Teaching & learning technology should always improve learning. Teaching & learning technology should always improve learning. Teaching & learning technology . . .” You get the idea. So, how can we tell if technology has actually improved learning? That’s the subject of a presentation I’m making this Friday at Educause 2008. I’ll post about in a couple of days.