A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Arts, humanities and social sciences
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illiterates. Further concerns are expressed in both new and old thinking that the speed of
developments in digital environments and the predominance and vigour of peer-to-peer
interactions in the virtual spaces of the new social software are transforming the
nature of literacy and understanding (see Brown and Duguid, 2002; Owen, 2004;
Prensky, 2001).
Such debate easily leads to the generation of an overanxious pedagogy in subjects in
the arts and humanities, primarily because these subjects have traditionally emphasised
learning as individual labour, a model which has not predominated to quite the same
extent in the social sciences, but which has had an enduring presence there also. In such
a model learning is hard work, academic research is commonly imagined via the emblem
of the lone scholar and the vast and intractable world of knowledge has to be mined or
discovered by lengthy and time-consuming efforts, resulting in a highly personalised
notion of intellectual property. In contrast, digital technologies render information in
wonderfully tractable forms which promote almost instantaneous interactions, and
the notion of individual intellectual property is rapidly weakening. Digital technologies
can transform areas of learning and research, rendering previously impossible tasks –
such as those now being undertaken in the field of corpus linguistics – entirely practical
(Carter, 2006).
Doubtless, the new electronic technologies are transforming our understanding of the
nature of learning, knowledge and the disciplines just as surely as did the previous
dominant technology – print. The context in which we currently work therefore has to be
understood as a time of practical adaptation, in which tutors will want to exploit the
opportunities that new technologies offer. The VLE is one such opportunity. In itself, and
as a form of organisation, it has no implicit pedagogic virtue. The VLE is a format (like
any other form of structuring learning such as a seminar or a book) that can be adapted
for pedagogic purposes. At the very least, it may be used as an effective and convenient
organising tool through which materials and information can be made available to
students at any time, but at its best, the VLE can exploit its capacity for flexibility and
access to develop new learning opportunities and environments, but it is not just VLEs
that can achieve this. Case study 3 exemplifies how an electronic tool such as the wiki can
present new and flexible opportunities for students.
Case study 3: Teaching history and international
relations with technology
I had always intended my final-year module on US Intervention and the
Collective Memory of Vietnam to include a web-based group project as part of
the assessment, but adopting a wiki to achieve this was the result of trial and
error. During the second half of the module we examine US interventions
overseas since the end of the Vietnam War, looking at the effects of the Vietnam
Syndrome on both policy-makers and the public. The group project would allow