Technology‐enhanced learning: appraising the evidence

This issue reports research by Cook et al., performed because the authors had found that some educators and researchers think that web-based learning is a cluster of similar activities with relatively homogeneous effects. We do not know how widespread that belief is, but we join Cook et al. in distancing ourselves from it. In this commentary, we set out to supplement the empirical observations made by Cook et al. by explaining our own reasons for rejecting that belief. We suggest alternative ways of synthesising evidence about education technologies and appraising individual technologies. As we consider web-based learning, we are reminded of a cautionary tale told by Wayne Hodgins, chair of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee, at the 2002 Meeting of the Association for the Study of Medical Education in Europe. Icemen, Hodgins told us, stubbornly continued to deliver ice to people’s houses after domestic refrigeration had been invented. Had they not confused their commodity (ice) with their value proposition (keeping things cold), he said, they would have adapted and become wealthy purveyors of refrigeration rather than bankrupt hauliers. According to Hodgins’ analogy, learning is the value proposition and web-based methodology is the commodity. Today’s pace of change is so fast that talking about web-based learning will, we suggest, very quickly become as absurd as talking about printing press-based – as opposed to quillbased – learning.