Sustaining innovations in educational technology

Views of innovators at the University of Cape Town

Abstract

Educational technology is increasingly being used to enhance teaching and learning activities in higher education. One of the persistent challenges has been how to encourage, support and sustain these innovative practices which rest largely on the individual lecturer. At the University of Cape Town, the Centre for Educational Technology (CET) has endeavoured to encourage and support pedagogic innovation through various mechanisms including the allocation of teaching with technology innovation grants. Findings of a recent survey of these grant recipients reveal how lecturers are sustaining these innovations over time. Using Archer's (2003) social realist approach this study is showing that lecturers' ultimate concerns, expressed in their reasons for changing the way they teach, have resulted in “projects” that have been successful and which have led to established practices. These projects have been sustained because they were created as a result of a specific pedagogical need and have been embedded in the courses for which they were created. Lecturers' practices have been supported by working in teams, sharing their teaching practice with others and receiving both financial and technical support from CET. This suggests that the key to maintaining innovative use of educational technology for teaching and learning in higher education should be centred on the notion of pedagogical sustainability.

Keywords: pedagogical sustainability, innovation in teaching with technology, active agents, grants, Archer