The shortcomings of these approaches rest in their lack of integration and the control required by many universities. The experience of many educators parallels my own—learners are very active with technology, but once in an LMS space, they seldom do more than the minimum required (a particular concern in courses where dialogue and theory are important to explore). This may be a function of students taking on “the student role”—defaulting to passive behaviour—once in an academic environment. It may also be due to the change in behaviour expected by educators—where learners must leave their tools behind and adopt tools with limited functionality. For an individual used to Skyping, blogging, tagging, creating podcasts, or collaboratively writing an online document, the transition to a learning management system is a step back in time (by several years).
Lisa Johnson, Ph.D. on 03 Jun 08As colleague Rhonda Epper described, "There is also an excellent article in this month's issue of Educause Review on Ebooks in Higher Education. The author speculates more widespread adoption in the next several years, but he says there needs to be an "iPod equivalent" for the e-reader, which has not yet arrived. He also talks about the cultural shift that is happening from print to digital. "
