ICTE and New Professional Degree Programs in Higher Education: Anthropological Approaches

Abstract

This paper is related to two empirical research projects: one was an investigation of users of a University Service of Distance Learning; the second was an ethnographic research which was aimed at identifying the pedagogical models underpinning new professional degree courses (2004-2006). Our methodology is essentially qualitative relying both on the direct observation of practice and on the analysis of the discourse of ICTE users to identify progressively the differing pedagogical models implicit in such practice. Our particular theoretical approach is to place Information and Communication Technologies in the wider context of knowledge relationships. In Education and Training, the relationship which users of ICTE have with such technologies can be studied in part as a relationship to specific knowledge which, when put into other contexts, opens up other, much wider, theoretical questions. And this led us to a range of questions at three differing levels: a generalized view of ICTE; the cultural experience of ICTE; and the systematization of ICTE. To each level, we have attributed three core concepts: 'gathering' butinage, 'poaching'-braconnage, and 'odd jobbing' -bricolage. In the generalized view of ICTE, 'gathering' relates to notions of navigation. Within the cultural experience of ICTE, 'poaching' relates to notions of programming, and in the systematizing of ICTE, 'odd-jobbing' relates to notions of systems development. It seems that this last dialectic is, as far as ICTE is concerned, the most productive.