ICT as an Enabler for Effective Learning Design: Its Evolving Promise

Abstract

ICT innovations bring to learning designers optimism and disappointment. This cyclical reaction to innovation follows designer evaluations of how the promise of better learning is fulfilled. This paper argues, through three observed periods of intertwined paradigm shifts in learning theory with the evolution of technology, that first, technological advances for learning were initially promising but failed because their affordances could not fully engage learners in a manner that matched the way learning actually occurs. Second, technology and learning theories were not wrong; they were just incomplete, and third, perhaps both may now be in harmony to enable effective learning design.