Summary

An examination of technology-based education initiatives--from MOOCs to virtual worlds--that argues against treating education as a product rather than a process.

Behind the lectern stands the professor, deploying course management systems, online quizzes, wireless clickers, PowerPoint slides, podcasts, and plagiarism-detection software. In the seats are the students, armed with smartphones, laptops, tablets, music players, and social networking. Although these two forces seem poised to do battle with each other, they are really both taking part in a war on learning itself. In this book, Elizabeth Losh examines current efforts to "reform" higher education by applying technological solutions to problems in teaching and learning. She finds that many of these initiatives fail because they treat education as a product rather than a process. Highly touted schemes--video games for the classroom, for example, or the distribution of iPads--let students down because they promote consumption rather than intellectual development.

Losh analyzes recent trends in postsecondary education and the rhetoric around them, often drawing on first-person accounts. In an effort to identify educational technologies that might actually work, she looks at strategies including MOOCs (massive open online courses), the gamification of subject matter, remix pedagogy, video lectures (from Randy Pausch to "the Baked Professor"), and educational virtual worlds. Finally, Losh outlines six basic principles of digital learning and describes several successful university-based initiatives. Her book will be essential reading for campus decision makers--and for anyone who cares about education and technology.

Choice Review

Losh (culture, art, and technology, Univ. of California, San Diego) applies a rhetorical, feminist perspective to analyze contemporary pushes for technology over traditional instructional approaches in higher education. She targets well-known technologies that were intended to render the learning process more cooperative, interactive, inclusive, and effective than traditional instructional methodologies. Citing failed higher education experiments with specific technologies (sometimes her own), Losh challenges unquestioned privileging of technology over other instructional methods; raises awareness of potential abuse with some technologies; and prompts readers to identify, promote, and select positive uses of instructional technologies to make the learning process more effective for more learners. Along with its nine chapters, this book also contains a rich and varied array of references: text-based, online, video, and television resources; explanatory comments; and sources for additional exploration. Losh's writing is scholarly and can seem conceptually abstract to readers uninitiated in instructional technologies and/or rhetorical analysis. However, Losh's use of narrative, case studies, and direct quotations enhances reader comprehension. Those interested in learning about the pros and cons of currently discussed instructional technologies will find this book particularly informative. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students through professionals and practitioners. --Daniela Truty, Northeastern Illinois University