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Nicholas Carr's (2008) article ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ struck a chord with many people. Carr's (2010) argument, which he fleshes out in his book The Shallows, is that our continual use of the net induces a superficiality to our behaviour. He says this is felt particularly when trying to read a complex piece:

The issue of quality is perhaps more keenly felt when we consider teaching. I raised the idea of pedagogy of abundance in Chapter 8, and in such a pedagogy the content will vary greatly in terms of quality.

the question is not whether some people produce poor quality content, obviously they do and the majority in fact, but whether as a whole this system can produce high-quality content.

George Siemens (2010) has argued that academia should take ownership of the open education debate before it is hijacked, and given the above history, I would agree.

The loss of ownership of some of these core academic functions occurred not because of the technology but rather because the scholarly community failed to engage with it

commercialisation of education did indeed occur, but not because academics went along with it unwittingly but because insufficient numbers engaged with the technology itself.

the use of digital, networked open tools and approaches will have an impact on some areas of scholarly practice, which in turn will affect all scholars, regardless of whether they themselves use the technologies or not.

Search: Not Worth Printing open source, elearning trends, ethics in technology and education About

In terms of formal learning, Tony Bates believes that changes can occur within the existing education institutes

Martin Weller points to the importance of academic institutes recognizing digital scholarship, moving away from the inefficient and costly publishing model and moving towards online publications that better promotes interdisciplinary endeavours

One of the areas ripest for innovation is alternative certification of informal learning. Hence, the recent excitement about badges. Badges have incredible potential for providing a viable alternative to the traditional system of credits most universities are tied to by accreditors. It seems to me that there is a critical need for someone to demonstrate that badges are a viable alternative to the traditional accreditation process.

However, because the gold standard for learning credentials is acceptability by employers, any meaningful badges demonstration project will have to operate in this space.

We want to create a collection of badges that a top employer, like Google, will publicly recognize as “equivalent experience.” This goes straight for the jugular, demonstrating that badges are a viable alternative to formal university education.

Colleges are filled with students who could give a damn about learning but desperately need that credential.

Then it's all about the badges. My kids can just give up on ever having a single moment of joy in their lives. Even if they were going to enjoy something, how can they when they've already committed to this transactional experience instead?

The commodification of learning was already quite clear in the Reagan era when we stopped thinking of higher education as a social good and instead defined it as an individual's investment in his/her human capital. 

When control over information shifts from organizations to individuals, considerations of new models in universities is required, as evidenced by historical transitions of information-based institutions. As an industry fundamentally concerned with “creating and communicating information” (Carey, 2009,

Recognition of only formal learning is a needlessly limiting mindset currently held by higher education.

Many of the assumptions that inform higher education today – such as classrooms, textbooks, physical space, co-location of educators and learners, pairing of research and teaching, bounded curriculum – are called into question by emerging learning theories and technologies.

If we use this perspective to examine education we can consider how education may shift as a result of abundance. Traditionally in education expertise is analogous to talent in the music industry – it is the core element of scarcity in the model. In any one subject there are relatively few experts (compared with the level of knowledge in the general population). Learners represent the ‘demand’ in this model, so when access to the experts is via physical interaction, for example, by means of a lecture, then the model of supply and demand necessitates that the learners come to the place where the experts are located. It also makes sense to group these experts together, around other costly resources such as books and laboratories. The modern university is in this sense a solution to the economics of scarcity.

As a result, a ‘pedagogy of scarcity’ developed, which is based around a one-to- many model to make the best use of the scarce resource (the expert). This is embodied in the lecture, which despite its detractors is still a very efficient means of conveying certain types of learning content. An instructivist pedagogy then can be seen as a direct consequence of the demands of scarcity.

It may be that we do not require new pedagogies to accommodate these assumptions as Conole (2008) points out: Recent thinking in learning theory has shifted to emphasise the benefit of social and situated learning as opposed to behaviourist, outcomes-based, individual learning. What is striking is that a mapping to the technologies shows that recent trends in the use of technologies, the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 echoes this; Web 2.0 tools very much emphasise the collective and the network.