Identity Matters: A Framework for Bridging Contemporary e-Learning Theory with Online Practice

We are increasingly realizing that technology and its use in learning contexts is not benign. With the advent of more powerful technology tools, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) ones, combined with the historically significant changes that have occurred in education over the last four years, there are more reasons than ever to examine their influence on human beings in the process of “being educated”. The aim of our 3-year longitudinal study was to understand how programs being offered at a fully online technical higher education (HE) institution in Chile influenced the identity development of students from socio-economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. A Participant Action Research (PAR) approach was adopted to the study that involved macro, meso and micro-driven changes being made to programs. These changes involved aligning the instructional design, pedagogical approaches, and technology tools of programs with contemporary e-learning theory and 21st century learning goals. Previously, we provided three in-depth reports of the evolving changes on learners’ identities - in the beginning, mid and end phases of their programs. We also reported on teachers’ perspectives of learners’ evolving identities and the transformation of their own roles and practices during the change period. In this paper, we add to those findings with the results of a recent inquiry into the perspectives of macro-level administrators who were instrumental in the collaborative effort to bring about change to the institution. In this latest study, we employed in-depth focus group and individual interviews to unpack what the change involved on the part of these decision makers in terms of their own epistemological and ontological perspectives, their roles in the institution and their future goals for the organization. The framework we have developed for schematizing the results of these previous inquiries and those of the overall longitudinal study could prove useful in other organizations that are awakening to the need to successfully put e-learning theory to practice in their institutions. The insight to be gained in this framework could add to their efforts to seek pragmatic ways to bring about systemic changes in their online programs and to graduate students with the kinds of identities and skills that will best equip them for the complex world in which they will work and live.