EdTech Abuse: When is the use of educational technology too much?

"Pivoting” is by far the most popular business buzzword since Covid-19 descended upon all of us, no matter which corner of the world you‘ve been holding up. And in case you haven’t been around in the last 2 years, ‘pivot’ as used in today’s contemporary world refers to fundamentally changing the way business is done as the current ways (or products) aren’t effective anymore. In today’s context, pivoting is almost synonymous with digitalisation. According to a report by McKinsey, digitisation across businesses has seen the largest acceleration. Within Asia-Pacific, the average share of products and/or services that are partially or fully digitized is 10+ years ahead of the average rate of adoption from 2017 to 2019.

In the space of education, education providers aren’t spared. Educators had to pivot relentlessly to embrace the use of digital educational tools (or EdTech) to engage with our students in home-based learning. This seismic shift affects more than 1 billion learners worldwide as national schools have been opening and closing intermittently even as we speak. Tuition and enrichment centres too have been forced to go fully online or offer hybrid alternatives where some students attend classes physically while others attend virtually. Overnight, educational, productivity and video conferencing tools such as PollEV, Kahoot, Zoom, Webex, Google Classroom and Microsoft teams have replaced the red pen that teachers couldn’t do without during pre-Covid days.

Now that the initial scramble to put together an online class has settled, it’s probably timely to ask ourselves this question: When is the use of EdTech too much? What have we sacrificed in a hurry to adopt EdTech in our teaching? Of course, there’s the whole dimension of mental wellbeing or the lack of adequate socialisation as a result of home-based learning, which is worthy of an entire blog post on its own. For today, let’s address the issue of EdTech Abuse. Think: Overwhelmed, Inundating, Too Much!

Educational research has established that the “networked” generation of learners are accustomed to multitasking, they process information more fleetingly and respond favourably to instant gratification and frequent rewards (Prensky, 2001). So in response to connecting with our youths, educators could’ve inserted poll (after polls), gamified activities (when it could have been easier to do without), elicited responses through Kahoots, Quizizz, Quizlet, Mentimeter, Sli.do (when it’s easy just to unmute and speak up) and used more than one collaborative tools (Telegram chat group, Teams chat, Google Doc) at one go to satiate the perceived demands that the young learners seem to ask of us.

Through these incessant endeavours to connect, we might have missed the point: coherence in processing learning. We may forget that while the youngsters do process information differently, they seek a sense of “orderedness” (which is networked) in seeing the connection between fragments of activities, video resources and lecture series that we have carefully amassed for their consumption. So there could be a mismatch: We thought they want things organically, but really they need to process things more in a networked manner. So, how do we move forward in this? Here’s some advice to keep in mind before we embark on our next EdTech project.

• Active Interaction. Digital platforms or tools are but a means to facilitate active interaction. Ultimately, good content triumphs technology and this needs to be delivered effectively through careful organisation of ideas and clear delivery. Even a simple voiceover powerpoint video with meaningful content and stimulating questions can compel the learner to think actively and engage with the content systematically. We do not always need videos with fancy animations or a professional finish to sustain their attention nor do we need the latest tech tool to encourage participation.

• Learning Outcomes. It is not the number of times that we have a quiz or launch a poll that is important, it is the learning outcomes that we achieve through each activity. If that is the case, perhaps it may be simpler and equally effective if we ask our students to write down their answers in the chat or just “show us their fingers” (i.e. 1, 2, 3) as a means to choose an option. If the activity was meant for brainstorming to activate background schema, or if it was meant to assess learning in the middle of a lesson, we can use the feedback immediately to adjust how we facilitate learning.

• Discussion Spaces. Think about using apps that create opportunities to socialise. When it comes to opportunities for peer interaction, Zoom has afforded us with breakout rooms which allow learners to discuss in pairs and groups. This coupled with the use of shared documents allow teachers to monitor discussions and give feedback to stimulate higher-order thinking. Real-time chats like gather.town or spatialchat provide enticing virtual spaces for communication. Again, these novel platforms add an element of excitement and surprise to the user but if our end goal is to encourage meaningful learning through collaboration, then perhaps it is the quality of the discussion and the facilitation that is more important.

• Let’s Hang Out After Class! Online learners often lack opportunities for social interaction after the lesson. We could leave breakout rooms open for learners who wish to have chats with others after class and encourage them to invite others to join them in rooms. We’ve done this in our classes and have found this highly effective yet simple in building a social environment where learners could still ‘hang out’ and/or network.

In a nutshell, beyond the bells and whistles of EdTech lies simpler yet effective ways in using technology to encourage active learning and to help our learners make sense of information. In this sense, perhaps less is more?

The 1st writer, Ms. Aileen Lam, is a university lecturer. If you'd like to converse with her further in the area of EdTech, do reach out to her at aileenlam@nus.edu.sg

The 2nd writer, Dr. Katy Kan, wears many hats and is a partner with AGILIT Consultancy LLP. If you’d like to find out more about educational consultancy, do drop her a line at katykan@agilitconsultancy.com.sg