Seventeen years in the evolution of an online instructor’s views about ICT innovation

Abstract

This paper is a narrative account of the author’s online learning first as a student then as an instructor from 1992 to the present with specific attention to the years from 1999 to 2009. During this time frame the author was constantly teaching/researching his own online courses in New Zealand and Canada with colleagues from New Zealand, Canada and the United States to draw out some of the meanings of online learning and teaching. In this narrative inquiry (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998), he argues that the cycle of innovation, development, and standardization, although rational, produces a negative affect for early adopters due to the strains that develop as a new technology is adopted and used throughout mainstream education. He also proposes a model called DRAGS to account for his experiences.