Use of Technology in Higher Education Critical Analysis - Assignment Solution

Literature review

Role of Technology in Education

Today, learning with technology has become essential as developing students’ skills and knowledge related to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from early years in education provides an important basis for using technology later in life (Fu, 2013). The advances in technology influence the way people, share, create, use and develop information in society and young people need to be highly skilled in their use of information and communication technologies to be able to adapt to the work environments in their future life (Flanigan & Babchuk, 2015). Technology in education has gained significant importance as it is essential to keep pace with the society and prepare students for their future roles and responsibilities (Hung & Yuen, 2010). Educators and researchers highlight the potential of technology to increase engagement of learners and motivation, improve learning outcomes and cater to different learning styles. As technology has become a part of everyday lives, integrating technology in to pedagogy would enhance the teaching and learning process. 

Technology enables the educators and teachers an opportunity to design meaningful learning experiences that embed technology (Bauman, Marchal, Mclain, O’Conneil & Patterson, 2014). With the rapid development in technology and rapid changes in the society and business environment, students are required to be good communicators. Contemporary curriculum requires teachers to facilitate development of flexible and adaptable learners who can carry out new and challenging tasks and address problem situations easily and quickly (Cloete, 2017). As there is increased information available due to technological advancements, students are expected to competently discuss topics and latest developments in the topics with others, share their ideas effectively with others in different forms and for different reasons (Amory, 2012). The students need to learn good collaboration skills and be capable of working together with people from different cultural background and who have his/her own special disciplines and different ways of learning and working together (Karamat & Petrova, 2009). Technology enables teachers to support students in transforming skills and knowledge into solutions, products and new information, which they can apply in the real-life workplace situations (Amory, 2012). The rapid development in technology is increasing the scope of adopting technology in Higher Education, which would prepare the students to use technology efficiently in their future life. The technology is used in different forms in Higher education and the perspectives of teachers and students vary depending on their age, experience and frequency of use of technology in personal lives. 

Teacher’s Perspective about Use of Technology in Higher Education

Making technology available in the institutions is not enough to enhance the teaching and learning processes, it is also essential that teachers use the technology in an effective manner for teaching (Ertmer, Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Sadik, Sendurur & Sendurur, 2012). Teacher’s positive pedagogical thinking with respect to integrating technology in their teaching is essential. The teacher’s perspective or belief about teaching and learning are found to shape teachers’ practices (Fu, 2013). It is found through researches that teachers having a teacher-centered practice prefer traditional methods of teaching whereas teachers having learner-centered beliefs prefer use of technology, which supports learners in taking responsibility of their own learning and teachers support them further by teaching them how to use tools to construct knowledge and learn in a collaborative environment (Faruk & Cirak, 2017). Teachers are found to use same technological tools in different ways based on their beliefs about effective teaching approaches. A study carried out in University of Jyvaskyla, Finland aimed at analyzing teachers beliefs and perspectives about using technology in higher education and how it could be used to integrate technology in teaching and learning (Jaaskela, Hakkinen & Rasku-Puttonen, 2017). The research identified four valued pedagogical use of technology wherein some teachers considered technology as an additional tool for active and interactive learning, a tool for self-paced studying, tool for changing learning culture and a tool for integration and assessment of learning. The overall findings highlighted that teachers perceived technology as meaningful in their respective pedagogical approaches (Jaaskela et al., 2017). But they argued that poor identification of educational needs in technology intervention cannot allow effective use of technology in teaching and learning process.