Journal of Interactive Media in Education

From the Editorial: "In 1959, C. P. Snow in his study The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, outlined a polarisation of the 'intellectual life' into two extremes -- literature at the one end, and science at the other. Snow's arguments and conclusions seem to many to reflect the growing chasm of attitudes, understanding, and funding which we witness also in education when it comes to the differences in the disciplines. E-learning, and the development and application of tools for use in teaching and learning, has highlighted this even further. The Teaching and Learning Technologies Programme of the 1990s concentrated most of its funding on the sciences and social sciences, leaving the arts and humanities in a poor third position; whereas the digitization programmes launched by the major research libraries around the globe have concentrated on rare and unique collections, which seem targeted predominantly at the historian. Even when it comes to the use of off-the-shelf packages, or generic approaches to e-learning it appears that there are noticeable differences in what the disciplines seem to use.

But is this true, or are we simply perpetuating a myth? The ubiquitous nature of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) (or Learning Management System in the US) seems to imply that some applications have a universal appeal, and one would be hard-pushed to notice any discernable differences between the disciplines and their use of such blunt student support systems. In 2003, therefore, the Learning Technologies Group at the University of Oxford attempted to look at these issues head-on in the third of its annual conferences entitled 'The Shock of the Old'.

[...] As a group then the papers raise a number of issues. From the developer's perspective they raise the problems of trying to streamline the process of creating material across disciplines, and how to build-in flexibility to allow for reuse. They confront the problem of the specific requirements of individual disciplines and how they can restrain flexibility. We also come across the 'not invented here' syndrome, and the all-too human resistance to reuse. And finally we are presented with the learners' perspective drawing from a range of disciplines."