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Perspectives on the Role of Educational Technologies
Author(s) -
Flori Ralph E.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of engineering education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.896
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 2168-9830
pISSN - 1069-4730
DOI - 10.1002/j.2168-9830.1997.tb00294.x
Subject(s) - task (project management) , process (computing) , knowledge management , emerging technologies , order (exchange) , computer science , facet (psychology) , information and communications technology , engineering ethics , engineering , psychology , systems engineering , business , world wide web , artificial intelligence , social psychology , finance , personality , big five personality traits , operating system
Educational technologies and software hold tremendous potential for improving the process of teaching and learning through, for example, delivering information, facilitating communication, and promoting certain aspects of cognition. While this paper discusses these, its overall aim is to view the larger picture of what educational technologies can and cannot do. It begins by noting the overall aims of higher education and posing the question: What part can educational technologies play in achieving these goals? The paper summarizes Perkins' five facets of any learning environment in order to provide a framework for evaluating educational technologies and to reveal that most technologies provide only part of the total learning environment. Specifically, the “task manager” facet plays the most important role in achieving the aims of education, but it is difficult to create software with meaningful task management capability.