"If You're Not Mark Mullen, Click Here": Web-Based Course-Ware and the Pedagogy of Suspicion

Abstract

Part of the problem is that new technological developments fit seamlessly with traditional, and largely bankrupt, pedagogical ideas.  So whatever changes we are able to achieve in the design of educational technology will be for nothing if the majority of our colleagues remain fixated upon an idea of education as content delivery and absorption, with students designated as recipients and clients rather than partners in an exploratory enterprise.  In the larger cultural arena, the idea of new forms of information technology in general, and the Internet and Web in particular, as presenting an opportunity for developing new notions of community and agency has been pushed to the margins by online shopping, pimply-faced cyber-vandals, and the cooperation of government and business in undermining a communal notion of intellectual property.  The dream that these new technological forms could be used for something other than business-as-usual (or, indeed, for something other than business-of-any-sort) is still alive in education, but it is on life-support.