"It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice," said Deng Xiaoping. Personally, in light of the globalization it simultaneously feeds on and accelerates, I would tend to think information and communications technology (currently) drives learning.

PS: Learning in a Flash, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266477068_Learning_in_a_Flash, may be of interest.

Article Learning in a Flash

Dear Tefera Tadesse,

As you say higher education has been a critical factor for the economic and social development of countries all over the world.

As for your question -- In the global higher education landscape, is technology driving learning, or learning driving technology?, I do not see it as an either/or question. There is not doubt that technology drives learning. E- learning, for instance, is just a telling example of technology driving learning. No doubt, E- learning  reaches an uncountless number of learners. This was not the case, say, of traditional teaching/learning. However, if technology drives learning, learning also drives technology. Learning in a complex and multifaceted issue. As such, it is a fertile domain for technological advancement. In this vein, we can also think that  in this global world, E-learning appeared as a technological answer and advancement to a educational challenge, to reach a greater number of students than those reached by traditional classrooms and teaching/learning.

This is a short answer to your question. Even so, it substantiates both alternatives, that technology drives learning and the other way around.

I hope that I has got your question, and that this helps.

Best regards,

Orlando

Dear Tefera,

I believe Technology (and by that I mean ICT, or computational technology) has affected learning and every aspect of human life and endevour. The use of a different technoology as happend with the use of tools changed the conception of work and effort thereby learning. The other issue is also trure, once learning became affected the circle got completed, learning, especially in children is demanding the use of technology and technologically-based means. So. in the end we have the two sides of the same coin. This all starded since the beginning of education with new education technolgy being introduced. Now, the important question is if this is for the better of the worse? and what is behind all this? who, in the end benefits from it?, etc.

My five cents

E-learning solves some problems relating to the economy of learning, but creates others such as need for new literacies and issues of access to internet and indeed the technology.

Before e-learning there were other instances of 'technology'. A good example is the basic calculator in the 1970s - purists (who would be spinning in their graves now) were wholly against them saying that it would take away users/learners theoretical grasp and make students lazy. This may have occurred, however, there is a more fundamental aspect, that things change anyway.

It certainly appears that in learning institutions, technology drives learning, but that comes back to the economy of learning mentioned before. Before institutions learned that, somebody realised that for some type of learning provided in the institution, e-learning or blended learning was more effective regarding particular outcomes. But this does not mean that nothing is lost.

Probably learning and technology are feeding off each other for quite different reasons.

An alternative question could be: which came first, the technology or the learning? Answer is, the learning - always was and always will be. 

Learning what? Well, even learning that technology should not distract from what is to be learned for one thing.

I wonder if this either/or dialectic is actually the wrong question. It seems to me that what is driving both technology and higher education/research & innovation is real world need. Increasingly, UK HEIs are encouraged to engage with partners in the local community, whether local government or enterprise, charities etc... in order to help solve real world problems, such as those related to healthcare, social care, education, medical science, engineering, architecture etc. Both technology and learning/research should be contributing to these needs in wider society, IMHO.

What a tough question in the sense that it has to be both to a certain degree, and I wonder if demographics and the program in question ought to be taken into account. I can say that when I got my first full-time appointment, I was asked point blank whether I would use PowerPoint, do my grades in MS Excel, whether I would use videos in class, etc. They were out to hire someone who was BOTH good at teaching AND highly technological for the sake of being technological. There was (and sometimes still is) among administrators, an assumption that because technology is growing and because students have been born into a technological culture that they must of necessity want high-tech teaching. I have found that that is far from the truth. Yet interest in meeting students at the level of their technology persists as if it is a panacea. Of course, this is no more revolutionary than any of the other many supposed panaceas that have been offered in the past. Trends in education are frequent. That said, we may be getting to the point where there will be a turn away from this fascination with devices and back to the student-teacher relationship. The interest in high-impact practices, intrinsic motivation, academic tenacity, etc. says to me that we are in a time of turning, a time where we stand to work through the fascination with technology to placing in its rightful place as a support system rather than a substitute for becoming an excellent mentor to developing persons.

My answer would be to " follow the money" consider the driver (technology  or education) from a perspective of geography...One more than the other may be the dominant driver in different parts of the world. Dissect the landscape into say  countries with high per capita income/ those with low,  developing/developed, countries with high standards of living/low standards of living ...the answer may vary 

Hi!

I agree with many answers; it is a complex question. Both and neither.

Perhaps we need a philosophical theory to reflect better on the question. The Oxford professor Luciano Floridi's Philosophy of Information is highly recommended. From the background of his theories, I would first say that ICTs we use today in education is mostly continuation of older documentation and communication ICTs, in a long history from the invention of writing. Documentation and communication has diminished "information friction" all the way, step by step, from a messenger slowly carrying information a cuneiform tablet to another village in Sumer 2000 B C but possibly damages it during transport, to the digitalised multimedial high-resolution documentation we have today, with ultrafast and exact digitalised communication wiht others all around the globe and instant access to information. ICTs "inscribe" themselves into the human world, they simplify some activities we earlier made in a more cumbersome way and that is why we incorporate them, and thereby change our world bit by bit.

However, he poses a very interesting question: What is the new and characteristic of DIGITAL ICTs? Not only the even faster communication and more exact documentation? No, here he follows Turing in saying that the really new is that digital ICTs that process information, something only humans (and biological life perhaps) could do earlier. Today my smartphone can beat any grand master in chess, but is besides that "stupid as a toaster". These true digital ICTs on the educational field are, I think, applications as learning analytics, adapted learning, calibrated peer review, etc. These applications process information to help the teacher, they are a next more true digital step. These ICTs are also inscribing themselves by being practical, and they communicate with one another as well, but only if we design them to do that. We should use ICTs stupidity to make us more human, to spare us for the more human tasks. Correcting tests all nights through the week may not be the best use of a teachers time, etc. Digital ICTs "envelop" the world, "re-ontologise" the world and "transdiegetize" the world. So Google Floridi or read his "Fourth Revolution - how the infosphere is transforming human reality". or look in chapter 8 of my dissertation thesis "From blended learning to leanring onlife - ICTs, time and access in higher education", accessible on my Researchgate account.

Dear all fellow researchers,

Thank you so much for your wonderful responses!

To be honest, I have learned a great deal from your responses,

Cheers,

Tefera