The concerning persistence of weird ideas about learning and educational technology and their influence on the future directions of higher education

Abstract

Many volumes have been devoted to intuitive but misguided ideas about how learning works. This is as true in the use of educational technologies in higher education as it is in other related fields of educational research. As we (hopefully) emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, educational technologies are poised to feature more heavily in post-secondary education into the future. There is a substantial incentive for bad actors to provide oversimplified solutions to complex problems. These neat solutions may seem attractive to sector and institutional leaders looking for solutions to the morass of wicked problems the pandemic has inflamed. The pages of this journal and others provide a venue for world-class research on the use of educational technologies in higher education. Despite this enormous volume of high-quality work, misconceptions and oversimplified notions of learning with technology persist. Much has been made of weird ideas about learning but, with higher education facing an increasingly uncertain digitally-mediated future, there is significant risk that these ideas could have a profound influence on the global higher education sector into the future.