Find out more about my Technology Enhanced Learning research and practice. You will find preprints of my publications, video tutorials, and free downloads of my awarded book The Digital Turn, which analyses how the ever-growing flood of digital media affects our understanding of the world.
Westera, W. (2015). Reframing the Role of Educational Media Technologies.
Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 16(2), 19-32
This is one of my favourite articles and still highly relevant. It discusses the critical factors for adopting and implementing today's information and communication technologies in education. In particular it focuses on hidden conceptual barriers that are the result of misconceptions about the role and function that technology has and that seem to foster education’s intrinsic conservatism. Particularly, the notion of technology instrumentalism, which emphasises the one-sided subservient role of technology, is a widely popular, but at the same time a naive, greatly outdated and fallacious view of technology that confuses the discussions and hampers educational innovation.
I have been working as a full professor of digital media at the Open University of the Netherlands. Here I had to opportunity to combine my knowledge from diverse domains:
• Science: a PhD in physics and mathematics from Utrecht University
• Teaching: highest teaching qualification level in physics, mathematics and astronomy; I have worked as a teacher/lecturer in high school, at college level and at university level
• Media creation: trained by the BBC in 1984; creator of dozens of TV programs, documentaries, trainingprogrammes, educational simulations and serious games
• Writing: a variety of books, blogs and scientific publications
• Presenting: numerous keynote presentations
• Programming: in particular computational models for scientific simulation
• Management: I have been leading projects, research programmes, innovation units, and research consortia (e.g. the RAGE project, which is the serious gaming H-2020 flagship project on serious gaming)
• Governance: board member of various national and international forums/bodies (Dutch Games Association, CAWO, CRWO, RAGE Foundation, Cycling HB)
• Social science research: both qualitative and quantitative methods, in particular research into education, teaching and learning (and a lot of criticism on verification-oriented research and common sloppiness in methodologies).