Lee, Kyungmee (2016) Smart learning… a paradigm shift again?:A critical analysis of a paradigm shift discourse in online education. In: International Conference on Educational Technology 2016, 2016-04-20.
Abstract
This paper will discuss the limitations of the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of the increasingly popular educational discourse of smart learning by analysing previously popular educational discourse about online education as a new learning paradigm in higher education. As often promoted in the literature or social documents, for smart learning to be an alternative to online learning—which is considered to be unsuccessful in improving current higher educational practices and shifting the learning paradigm to the one based on social constructivism—it is necessary to learn from the unsuccessful history of online education. In addition to conducting an analytic literature review of online education, the author conducted interviews with a group of learning designers (n=12) working at two online institutions (one in North America and one in the Asian Pacific region) to more closely investigate the discrepancies between the rhetorical paradigm shift discourse and the actual pedagogical practices of online education in higher education context.