Quality and Equality of Teaching and Learning

Educational perspectives that regard learning as a process of human growth rather than as a production system provide the framework for this section. Connectedness is an important value in feminist pedagogy, adult education and distance education, and includes both the social aspect of interaction with other learners and educators, and the ability to link new learning to one's context, prior knowledge and life experience.

Instructors and facilitators play a significant role in establishing the context and climate for connectedness. This principle serves as a point of reference when examining the potential of new technologies to support social learning and integration of knowledge, especially in comparison with using other approaches and technologies to achieve these goals. On the positive side, technologies have the potential to support interaction among learners and instructors or facilitators, in turn developing contact and connectedness. On the other hand technology-related factors that can threaten the climate for learning include disruption of a sense of safety among learners and instructors lack of appropriate technical support for instructors and learners, and an emphasis on perceived economies that denies the essential human aspect of teaching and learning.

The direct experience of learners, instructors and facilitators in using new learning technologies is an important touchstone in exploring issues of quality and equality of learning.

Opportunities for Learning

Examples of the use of technologies for women's learning demonstrate their potential in a variety of contexts and applications. Commentators have observed that women have tended to adapt technologies and use them in ways that were not originally anticipated, and this observation holds true for women's use of learning technologies. The area of non- formal learning provides examples of women using technologies to share information and experience and to develop action strategies based on this cooperatively developed knowledge. As well, there are examples of programs that use women friendly approaches, such as mentoring, to help women learn about the technology itself.

In the field of formal education, e-mail and computer conferencing have been used for cooperative learning. There are also examples of databases in topics as diverse as local oral history or whale behavior that are built up over time by learners' individual and collective contributions, using a variety of technologies.

In the area of non formal learning. there are examples that demonstrate the potential of new technologies for communication among women with shared interests across great distances, nationally and internationally.

These examples demonstrate what can be achieved if the context and conditions are right, and also provide some guidelines for ensuring that proposed uses of technology do represent a genuine improvement over what was previously available.

Tools and Strategies

Any innovation can seem intimidating. The advent of new learning technologies, an innovation that seems so far reaching yet so closely connected with many aspects of our lives can be immobilizing if people feel they are not equipped to understand it, much less deal with its implications. But the development and use of technologies is simply the outcome of human decisions, which we are all equipped to understand and question. The tools and strategies for understanding and questioning the decisions underlying technology use were developed from suggestions offered in the course of the study. This compendium is based on feminist approaches to learning about social issues, on grass roots community based education, and on traditions of citizen participation in decision making. It is hoped these ideas will serve as a starting point for further discussion and consideration of new technologies.

It is also hoped that the Janus project's process of research and discussion will stimulate thoughtful approaches to examining new technologies, enable greater understanding of technology related issues and enhance confidence in continuing creative questioning in order to promote the wise use of these tools.