TY - JOUR

T1 - The Collaborative Redesign of ‘Authentic’ Technology-Enhanced Learning

T2 - Analysis of a Change Laboratory Research-Intervention in Engineering Higher Education

AU - Moffitt, Philip

AU - Bligh, Brett

PY - 2024/12/17

Y1 - 2024/12/17

N2 - This paper contributes to international debates about ‘authenticity’ in higher education, especially where this is embroiled in technology-oriented aspects of educational policy and practice. It describes activity theoretical research in a setting of engineering higher education, in industrial attachments taking place at distance, during which students and lecturers experience problems with technology-mediated interactions. Prior to the research-intervention that we describe in the paper, these interactions had been implemented through top-down policy, with work-related practices being conducted in the name of authenticity—a notion used in framing education as preparing students for economic work, in which digital technologies are increasingly embroiled. We describe an activity theoretical approach, and an online Change Laboratory methodology, through which students and lecturers envision and enact change to these practices. Their activity is thus reconfigured through their confrontation and renegotiation of authenticity. Our core contribution is to illustrate, through exposing and aggravating contradictions in technology-mediated activity, how practice in higher education can be considered authentic in and of itself, as distinct from solely having authenticity in preparing students for economic work.

AB - This paper contributes to international debates about ‘authenticity’ in higher education, especially where this is embroiled in technology-oriented aspects of educational policy and practice. It describes activity theoretical research in a setting of engineering higher education, in industrial attachments taking place at distance, during which students and lecturers experience problems with technology-mediated interactions. Prior to the research-intervention that we describe in the paper, these interactions had been implemented through top-down policy, with work-related practices being conducted in the name of authenticity—a notion used in framing education as preparing students for economic work, in which digital technologies are increasingly embroiled. We describe an activity theoretical approach, and an online Change Laboratory methodology, through which students and lecturers envision and enact change to these practices. Their activity is thus reconfigured through their confrontation and renegotiation of authenticity. Our core contribution is to illustrate, through exposing and aggravating contradictions in technology-mediated activity, how practice in higher education can be considered authentic in and of itself, as distinct from solely having authenticity in preparing students for economic work.

KW - activity theory

KW - authenticity

KW - contradictions

KW - mediation

KW - expansive learning

KW - Technology-enhanced learning

U2 - 10.3390/higheredu3040068

DO - 10.3390/higheredu3040068

M3 - Journal article

VL - 3

SP - 1149

EP - 1174

JO - Trends in Higher Education

JF - Trends in Higher Education

SN - 2813-4346

IS - 4

ER -