052013 (M) Revised - Diversity and Educational/Learning Technologies

Diversity and  Educational/Learning Technologies
- by Li-chin (Crystal) Huang 042912

William Sloane Coffin, Jr. once said that diversity might be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without. It cannot be more true than in the digital age.

From past history up to recent events, such as Slavery, Slavery Under Another Name, Mississippi Burning, Nazi Holocaust, Rwanda genocide, the Triangle Factory fire, the Arab Spring, Anders Behring Breivik’s mass murdering, Oak Creek Sheikh Temple tragedy, up to current campus/cyber bullying heart-wrenching stories tell us that the narrow and distorted view toward human diversity is against the best interests of humankind.

Naisbitt's MegaTrends (1982) provided a perspective that alludes to such an understanding. He wrote, “Whenever new technology is introduced into society, there must be a counterbalancing human response, that is, high touch, or the technology is rejected”. In short, the more high-tech development, the more high-touch is needed.

I would maintain that this high touch has to be reified through healthy human interactions and proper socialization processes via some of the effective and efficient affordance provided by the increasingly sophisticated information technologies.  For example, the omnipresent and constantly innovated social media have been playing a significant role connecting the whole world in any-time, any-where, any-what, and any-how manners.  Speedy mobile communicative devices captured events instantly to fasten problem solving, for instance, as events happening in the Boston marathon.  

Via the abundance of opportunities for interaction and connection, from there, understanding, tolerance, acceptance, embrace, and then to celebrate the value of uniqueness and differences would be possible. The individual’s needs for survival, love, respect, and self-actualization cannot not be achieved without human beings’ mutual relying on one another to create common good. 

The following sections are my points of view regarding the importance of enhancing diversity via awareness, understanding, and actions, and how educational/learning technologies might enable or enhance the possibilities.

First of all, from a broader perspective of diverse technological affordance, the dramatic change of information technology since 1960s with up to today’s Web 3.0/cloud computing capacities, and E/M-learning, provides myriad teaching and learning possibilities for more diverse facilitators and learners than ever before to access knowledge. With this constant advance in computer and communications technologies, research in educational technologies has undergone a paradigmatic shift toward a new horizon: enhancing the fluid mobility between theories and actions. This new horizon focuses on merging the study of learning in complete, complex, and interactive learning environments with the use of emerging technology to advance the integration of contents, pedagogy, and technology to meet the increasingly diverse students’ needs, such as the student-centered, personalized, and computer assisted learning modes available to different learning schedules and styles.

Secondly, relating to my first point, the demographic trends illustrate that the non-conventional education consumers and “prosumers” (the hybrid of consuming and producing)- be it the digital native or luddite , digital immigrants or aliens, digital savvies or connoisseurs, the different digital generations of learners have been occupying the main educational landscape. Students learn in different ways just like educators who facilitate with different teaching styles and pedagogy/andragogy as well as heutagogy .

In addition to the teaching-learning diversity, other significant social forces and circumstances, such as race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, languages, creeds, as well as the rest of human different conditions, according to the available research, provide evidence of the significant correlation to the teaching effectiveness and learning outcomes. This is what I consider to be the most challenging issue in the digital age- what to understand and how to be part of the solution. The key method is that we need to be more creative than ever to enhance the connectivity and to bridge the differences.

I am convinced that innovation and responsibility go hand in hand to usher to this transformative direction. From the local communities to the global markets, in order to successfully adapt to the fast changing societies with various cultures and sub-cultures, it is imperative that people develop an empathetic insight and a comprehensive cognitive capacity toward diversity issues.

Then, we heavily rely on those who can, teach – creatively and responsibly to be the catalysts to the systematic and systemic change of human societies. Educational/Learning technologies will be the hardest science that requires robust digital engagers to take on studies that are dynamic and contingent. In such a profession, only those stakeholders who tackle the diversity challenge as a way of conscious living to promote human understanding and collaboration will reshape the future. Thus, I envision an omnipresent and mobile environment for all learners to create the -world-is-flat phenomenon. The terms of Blog 2.0, semantic Web 3.0 encapsulate the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and interactivity of the e-effects. They open up sky-is-the-limit possibilities to transform learning to defy various digital divides as well as human divides in the domestic and global domains.

“Be the change you want to see”. The optimism and challenge are co-existent in this unprecedented epoch. Learning Technology is a gift as well as a social responsibility to the educators and relevant stakeholders. It is a golden opportunity to reach diverse learners to optimize human capitals and shorten the digital and human gaps. It is time to redirect such powerful capacity of learning technologies into the humanitarian engagement.

Finally, at a personal level, during my past 14 years' teaching, in several semesters, I was the only “minority” in the classroom ( in particular, at 2 universities in the Midwest that I taught), in terms of my race, gender, social class, faith, language, and socio-political understanding. I fully comprehend the urgency to expand the understanding of diversity issues confronting the contemporary society. We identify the resistance of change, but we also see people paving the way for a better society. As mentioned in the letter, I have been passionately educating and promoting race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, disability, and other relevant diversity understanding in the local, state and global levels in seminars, conferences and via social media.

It is a goal, an action, a commitment, and most importantly, a responsibility. We make the road of understanding and empathy by walking together!