Response to Flavin on Disruptive Innovation and Technology Enhanced Learning: Affordances for Disruption

Given the experiences of educators and learners through the COVID-19 pandemic, it is certainly timely to explore disruption in higher education. As Flavin rightly states, despite radical changes in technology over the last 20 years, technology has not disrupted higher education in any meaningful way. However, within the last 12 months, COVID-19 has, at least temporarily. In this response the author will explore both why the transformative power of technology has not been harnessed to its full potential in higher education and what the transformative potential could be in pedagogical terms. The final section examines the potential of COVID-19 as a catalyst for change in higher education, looking at the identified needs of learners and the potential for technology to respond to these.