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How technology is reinventing education.

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of  Stanford Graduate School of Education  (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the  Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately  worried  that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or  coach  students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the  AI + Education initiative  at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of  CRAFT  (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the  Digital Learning initiative  at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of  virtual field trips  to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Integrating Technology in the Classroom: Best Practices

Technology has been reshaping society throughout time. Long before ChatGPT came on the scene, digital technologies started changing the world of work and the skills required for success. As one proof point, the World Economic Forum says that new technologies will remain a key driver of business transformation through 2027. 1 The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides more proof in its projection of 23% job growth for computer and information research scientists from 2022-2032. 2 That's compared to 0.3% annual growth for jobs overall during the same time. 3

The Importance of Technology in Education

Because our society and economy are so dependent on technology, school leaders and teachers must prioritize creating technology literacy as part of making sure students are ready for life beyond high school. Getting the best results from technology integrations may require new operating methods and problem-solving techniques but still relies on proven principles and goals for education and enhancing student learning experiences. This blog explores best practices for effectively using technology to create engaging, interactive, and inclusive learning environments. Discover how embracing technological advancements can prepare students for a tech-savvy future while supporting their diverse learning needs.

Building Modern Skills for Success

Developing technical skills such as digital literacy, coding, and data analysis are essential to prepare students for tech-driven careers and beyond. Basic technical skills are important for navigating online platforms, understanding digital tools, and making data-informed decisions. 4

Soft skills like empathy and collaboration are equally vital because they help students communicate effectively, resolve conflicts, and work well in diverse, tech-rich environments. These skills ensure students can ethically and responsibly interact in digital spaces and contribute positively to online communities. 5

Enhancing Learning Experiences

Gamified learning tools like Zearn, Amira, and Duolingo provide personalized learning platforms that adapt to each student's pace and skill level. Interactive digital technology like this can make learning fun, keeping students actively engaged to achieve better outcomes. 4

While technology enhances learning, it's crucial to maintain balance. Over-reliance on tech can be counterproductive. Educators should integrate technology in moderation to ensure it complements traditional teaching methods, adding instructional value without overwhelming students. 6

Supporting Diverse Learners

Technology supports diverse learning needs by enabling differentiated instruction. Tools like interactive quizzes and multimedia resources cater to various learning styles, helping every student grasp complex concepts effectively. Technology tools can also foster collaboration among students. Features that support group work and peer interaction help students learn from each other, promoting a more inclusive and supportive learning environment.

Digital Literacy: Preparing Students for a Tech-Savvy Future

Digital literacy involves using technology to learn, create, and participate in the digital world. It is essential for students to develop these skills to navigate and leverage technology effectively both inside and outside the classroom. 7

Digital Citizenship

Teaching digital citizenship helps students understand the ethical use of technology and the responsibilities that come with interaction in virtual worlds.

Key areas to cover include: 5, 6, 7

• Misinformation and disinformation
• Balancing online and offline activities
• Mental health topics

A responsible use policy (RUP) is valuable for teaching digital citizenship. In addition to setting boundaries for acceptable behavior, it can help students focus on positive behaviors like giving credit to content creators, being kind online, and using technology to solve problems. An effective RUP includes clear purpose statements, desired behaviors, and plans for resolving issues. 8

Essential Digital Skills

Coding, data analysis, and online research are digital skills that will help students thrive. These foundational skills enable students to use technology effectively and prepare them for future academic and career opportunities.

Considerations for Implementing Educational Technology

While there are many technical aspects to choosing instructional technology, it’s important to begin with a clear understanding of your goals and to assess and plan for the human considerations surrounding technology use.

Start with Clear Objectives

To successfully integrate technology in the classroom, start by identifying specific instructional goals. Focus on the learning activity and explore how the chosen technology aligns with lesson objectives and enhances the learning experience. 9 Consider how class time will be spent and select learning technology tools that match the educational goals without requiring extensive time to learn. For young kindergarten and elementary school students, prioritize digital technologies that support fundamental skills without excessive screen time, ensuring that the time spent on devices is appropriate for their age and learning needs.

Foster a Growth Mindset

Teaching students to have a growth mindset, which holds that intelligence can be developed through effort and perseverance, is even more important than teaching students to use the tools. You can play a vital role as a teacher by emphasizing hard work and providing ample opportunities for practice and feedback. Supporting students through challenges and valuing learning over innate talent reinforces this mindset, creating a motivating classroom environment. 10

Because digital technology is always evolving, teachers must also embrace a growth mindset in their work. By learning alongside them, you can encourage students and model the habits of a lifelong learner. 11

Teacher Professional Development Is Essential

New educational technologies can provide a wealth of data about student progress, but teachers need to be trained to understand what the data is telling them. Being more data literate helps teachers understand student needs better and adapt their teaching methods accordingly, driving improved student outcomes. That is one of the reasons the University of Iowa’s Online Master of Arts in Teaching, Leadership, and Cultural Competency core curriculum includes a choice of courses on technology integration or participatory learning and media, along with several STEM electives.

However, only a fraction of teachers have learned to analyze data in their preparation programs, highlighting the need for ongoing professional development. School districts must support teachers in their efforts to become more adept at analyzing data, as well as helping them keep up with developments in educational technology. 7

Make the Technology Accessible

Ensuring accessibility in instructional technology involves both effective communication and thoughtful choice of technology. Teachers and school administrators should eliminate jargon and clearly explain the technology's use and data to make new technology non-threatening for students and their families. 7

Providing clear communication and resources to families helps them understand classroom technology and fosters trust and collaboration. Establishing a two-way communication channel with families through your school's learning management system or another digital platform can also extend the classroom, empowering caregivers to support and reinforce positive technology use at home. 6

Additionally, it's crucial to consider how students access lessons outside of school. Frequently, lower-income students have greater access to smartphones than high-speed internet, so being aware of which digital devices can support your educational content is essential. 7

Protect Student Privacy

Student privacy is an important and multifaceted issue. It includes protecting information about and from students, their families, and schools. Two major federal laws, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), outline protections for student data.

While there's a lot to understand, begin by consulting school and district policies for guidelines. Also, consider incorporating lessons into classwork that educate students on privacy risks and strategies to protect their own information. 6, 7

Choose the Right Tools

To effectively incorporate technology into the classroom, begin with how the tool(s) support achieving instructional goals and enhance learning experiences. Good reasons to use technology in education include encouraging engagement, differentiating and personalizing instruction, and increasing digital fluency. 4

Consider the following:

Purpose and Goals :

• Start by asking questions : Identify the specific learning activity and explore how assistive technology can help your students achieve the desired results
• Instructional alignment : Choose tools that match your instructional goals, such as screencasting software for making student presentations, or AI-assisted tutoring programs that allow students to progress at their own pace 12

Quality and Engagement :

• Interactive over passive : to increase student engagement, prioritize tools that offer interactive opportunities over passive consumption
• Task monitoring : Select platforms that allow you to track the students' learning process and provide timely feedback. Also consider whether there are integrations with other instructional technology such as your school's learning management system

Student Perspective :

• Ease of use : Evaluate the tool from a student's perspective to ensure it’s user-friendly
• Free vs. paid versions : Consider the impact of ads and age-appropriateness in free versions, and regularly check for updates 13  

Engagement Features :

• Motivational elements : Be mindful of features like streaks and rewards, which can encourage engagement but may also lead to compulsive behaviors

Monitor and Evaluate

Ensure the success of technology integrations by regularly monitoring the results and comparing them to desired learning outcomes. One approach is to use the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) framework. The PDSA model involves planning a change, implementing it, studying the results, and acting on what is learned. 14

Base the study phase on technology-generated data, combined with feedback from students and, if relevant, family members or other stakeholders. To borrow a phrase from the technology field, consider designing your program to "fail fast" to get to success. With this approach, you implement limited-scope pilot programs and short evaluation cycles, iterating quickly to refine your approach for the best results. 4, 5

Effective Use of Educational Technology

Research indicates you can achieve the best results by using digital technology in the classroom with a blended learning approach. A recent meta-study of higher education results published by the Brookings Institution also has implications for best practices in using technology in K-12 settings. Blended learning combines traditional in-class instruction with online and digital learning experiences. This approach allows students to engage with course material both inside and outside the classroom, enhancing their overall learning experience. In addition, using a blended learning approach can be easier for teachers, particularly those who are learning to use the technology, to implement. 15

What is a Flipped Classroom?

The flipped classroom is a popular method of implementing blended learning. In this model, students watch digitized or online classes as homework, freeing up face-to-face class time for active learning activities such as discussions, peer teaching, projects, and problem-solving. 15

Theoretical Benefits

According to constructivist theory, this active learning approach enables students to build upon their pre-existing knowledge, resulting in deeper understanding. It also reduces cognitive load during class, allowing students to form more complex ideas. 15

Effectiveness in Practice

Research has shown that students in flipped classrooms perform better academically compared to traditional lecture-based settings, particularly in language, technology, and health science courses. Smaller gains in student outcomes were found in math and engineering courses. The Brookings study also showed that "In addition to confirming that flipped learning has a positive impact on foundational knowledge (the most common outcome in prior reviews of the research), we found that flipped pedagogies had a modest positive effect on higher-order thinking. Flipped learning was particularly effective at helping students learn professional and academic skills." 15

Practical Considerations

Teachers can use various platforms, such as the school's learning management systems, class blogs, or shared documents, to help students access online courses, creating authentic learning experiences both at home and in school. 6

How Educational Technology Supports Student Engagement

Classroom technology and specific approaches to using assistive technology in lesson plans can support student engagement in several ways. Interactive learning through technologies ranging from interactive smartboards and online quizzes to educational apps can make the learning experience more dynamic and engaging. 16

In addition to the benefits mentioned above, the flipped classroom can provide meaningful opportunities for student interactions, and well-designed lessons can provide valuable support for developing students' intra- and interpersonal skills. 15

Project-based learning can be a powerful approach to technology-aided education. ISTE.org, an association of K-12 and university educators "dedicated to making teaching and learning more meaningful for educators and learners around the globe," 17 has suggested using project-based, creative assessments to supplement traditional assessments at least once a semester.

In these assessments, "The teacher poses a question, tells students what the standards are and asks them to demonstrate their knowledge through a creative project." The project could take many different forms, depending on your subject, grade level, available technology, and educational goals. Students build problem-solving skills along with deepening their mastery of the subject while working through the assessments. 18

What Tech Do You Need in the Classroom?

Instructional technology can be divided into four categories: learning management systems, content creation and presentation, application software, and collaborative tools.

The potential benefits of a learning management system (LMS) begin with making it easier to store and update lesson plans, but go much further. Depending on the specific system and its integrations, your LMS can store lesson resources, accept student assignments and administer assessments, help students and teachers monitor progress, record grades, and report aggregate performance data.

Content creation and presentation tools include interactive whiteboards (smartboards), laptop computers and tablets. In addition to offering many ways to "write" on the board, a smartboard can typically display rich media, offer interactive activities for students to engage with, and connect to the internet. Some can even save lessons and send them to students who have missed a class session. 19 Education technology is dynamic, with new apps and software being developed regularly. Online resources, including ISTE, Edutopia, and Commonsense, frequently publish roundups of popular apps and software. Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom are popular tools for collaboration and online education.

Embracing AI's Potential in Modern Education

AI is poised to change work and society in ways we can hardly begin to anticipate. By embracing its potential, schools help prepare students for future careers and societal roles. Additionally, AI is already providing educational benefits, including personalized learning and intelligent tutoring, through its integration with popular tools like Amira and Duolingo.

Critical Thinking and Responsibility

Teach students to think critically and act responsibly when working with AI. This includes understanding AI's capabilities and limitations and recognizing ethical considerations. 20

Process-Focused Learning

Design lesson plans that focus on the learning process. Use AI as a launching pad for students' creativity or critical thought rather than as an end in itself. Emphasize the importance of developing ideas and continual improvement. 21

Specific Tips for Teachers

Teachers can incorporate the following tips, cleverly developed around the acronym “ChatGPT” by Jack Dougall, a secondary school humanities and business teacher in Spain, into their project instructions to help students effectively use AI tools: 22

• Converse : Engage in dialogue with AI; it's not a simple search engine
• Hypothesize : Predict possible responses to identify errors
• Adapt : Reframe questions or dive deeper if initial responses aren't sufficient
• Think : Reflect on AI responses for accuracy and bias
• Gather : Cross-verify AI-generated information with other sources
• Probe : Ask follow-up questions for deeper understanding
• Train : Continually refine interactions with AI for effective use 

A Technology Case Study with Real-World Inspiration

You don’t need a hefty technology budget to start integrating technology tools into your classroom as long as you approach it creatively. Mary Howard, a sixth-grade teacher in Grand Island, New York, capitalized on the popularity of escape rooms to create an interactive digital exercise with built-in engagement mechanisms. 23 In Howard's escape room lesson, student teams created their own escape room activities by developing narratives, designing puzzles, and embedding clues using digital tools like QR codes. They then presented their challenges to their classmates. This process encouraged students to engage deeply with the material, apply problem-solving skills, and collaborate effectively.

The attraction for students is based on four principles: narrative-based challenges, a time element, solution or reward focus, and the inclusion of clues, riddles, or puzzles. Exercises like these can be adapted with tools like Klikaklu or GooseChase for various subjects and grade levels. 23

Embrace the Technology Integration Journey with the University of Iowa

Integrating technology in the classroom can enhance learning experiences, support diverse learners, and prepare students for a tech-driven future. Educators can create engaging and effective learning environments by focusing on digital literacy, fostering a growth mindset, and using innovative tools and methods like AI and flipped classrooms. Being open to new ideas and cultivating a growth mindset are keys to your professional development and providing a model for students to follow.

If you're ready to deepen your understanding of how technology can support student success, consider the University of Iowa's affordable, part-time Online MA in Teaching, Leadership, and Cultural Competency (MATLCC) . The program equips you with conceptual frameworks, strategies, and tactics that can empower students for 21st-century success and fuel your growth as an educational professional. You can keep teaching while you learn and immediately apply your new skills. Contact an admissions outreach advisor to learn more.

• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/digest/
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-and-information-research-scientists.htm
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.nr0.htm
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from  commonsense.org/education/articles/3-essential-questions-for-edtech-use
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from iste.org/blog/edtech-for-good-experts-weigh-in
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from commonsense.org/education/articles/teachers-essential-guide-to-teaching-with-technology
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from newleaders.org/blog/how-the-best-k-12-education-leaders-build-data-literacy
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from iste.org/blog/5-tips-for-creating-a-district-responsible-use-policy 
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from https://iste.org/blog/stop-talking-tech-3-tips-for-pedagogy-based-coaching
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from apa.org/ed/precollege/psychology-teacher-network/introductory-psychology/growth-mindset-classroom-cultures
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from iste.org/blog/iste-certified-educator-shares-4-tips-for-teaching-with-tech
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from iste.org/blog/stop-talking-tech-3-tips-for-pedagogy-based-coaching
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/evaluating-tech-tools-classroom
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/data-literacy-skills-teachers/
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from brookings.edu/articles/flipped-learning-what-is-it-and-when-is-it-effective
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from edutopia.org/video/flipped-class-which-tech-tools-are-right-you/
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from iste.org/our-story
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from iste.org/blog/with-imagination-and-the-right-apps-students-learn-and-can-prove-it
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from insights.samsung.com/2024/05/15/what-are-the-advantages-of-smart-boards-in-the-classroom-2/
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from https://iste.org/blog/what-educators-and-students-can-learn-from-chatgpt
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from https://iste.org/blog/chatgpt-ban-it-no-embrace-it-yes
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from https://iste.org/blog/help-students-think-more-deeply-with-chatgpt
• Retrieved on July 24, 2024, from iste.org/blog/use-escape-rooms-to-deepen-learning

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The future of educational technology

Dan Schwartz is a cognitive psychologist and dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

He says that artificial intelligence is a different beast, but he is optimistic about its future in education. “It’s going to change stuff. It’s really an exciting time,” he says. Schwartz imagines a world not where AI is the teacher, but where human students learn by teaching AI chatbots key concepts. It’s called the Protégé Effect, Schwartz says, providing host Russ Altman a glimpse of the future of education on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.

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Related : Dan Schwartz , professor of educational technology

[00:00:00] Dan Schwartz: You know, the tough question for me is, should you let the kid use ChatGPT during the test? Right? And we had this argument over calculators, right? And finally they came up with ways to ask questions where it was okay if the kids had calculators. Because the calculator was doing the routine stuff and that's not really what you cared about. What you cared about was, could the kid be innovative? Could they take another, a second approach to solve a problem? Things like that.

[00:00:33] Russ Altman: This is Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman. If you're enjoying The Future of Everything podcast, please hit the follow button in the app that you're listening to now. This will guarantee that you never miss an episode. 

[00:00:46] Today, Dan Schwartz will tell us how AI is impacting education. He studies educational technology and he finds that there's a lot of promise and a lot of worries about how we're going to use AI in the classroom. It's the future of educational technology. Before we get started, please remember to follow the show in the app that you listen to. You'll be alerted to all of our episodes and it'll make sure that you never miss the future of anything.

[00:01:16] You know, the rise of AI has been on people's minds ever since the release of ChatGPT. Especially the powerful one that started to do things that were scary good. We've seen people using it in business, in sports, in entertainment, and definitely in education. When it comes to education, there are some fundamental questions, however, are we teaching students how to use AI? Or are we teaching students? How do we assess them? Can teachers grade papers with AI? Can students write papers with AI? Why is anybody doing anything? Why don't we just have the AI talk to itself all day? These are real questions that come up in AI. 

[00:01:55] Fortunately, we're going to be talking to Dan Schwartz, who's a professor of education and a dean of the School of Education at Stanford University about how AI is impacting education.

[00:02:06] Dan, the release of ChatGPT has had an impact all over the world, people are using it in all kinds of ways. And clearly one of the areas that AI, especially generative AI has made impact is in education. Students are clearly using it, teachers are thinking about using it or using it. You're the Dean of Education at Stanford. What's your take on the situation right now for AI in education? 

[00:02:33] Dan Schwartz: Okay, so lots of answers to that, but, but, you know, the thing I've enjoyed the most is, uh, showing it to people and watching their reaction. So I'm a cognitive psychologist. I study creativity, learning, what it means to understand. And you show this to people and you just see them go, oh my lord.

[00:02:53] And then the next thing you see is they begin to say, uh, what's left for humans? Like what's left? And then they sort of say, wait a minute, will there be any jobs? And then finally they sort of say. Oh my goodness, education needs to change. And as a dean who raises money for a school, this is the best thing to ever happen. No, whether it's good or bad, it doesn't matter. Everybody realizes it's going to change stuff. And so it's really an exciting time. 

[00:03:22] Russ Altman: So that is really good news. I have to say going into this and I have to reveal a bias. I have often wondered if technology has any place in a classroom. And I think it's because I was, uh, I was injured as a youth.

[00:03:37] This is in the 1970s when some teachers tried to put a computer program in front of me and I was a pretty motivated student and I worked with this computer for about six minutes, and I should say, I'm not an anti-computer person. I literally spent all my time writing algorithms and doing computation work. But I just felt as a youth that I wanted to have a teacher in front of me, a human telling me things. Uh, and so that is clearly not the direction, I hear you laughing. So talk to me about the appropriate way to think about computers. Because I really have a big negative reaction to the idea of anything standing between me and a teacher.

[00:04:18] Dan Schwartz: You must have had very good teachers. 

[00:04:19] Russ Altman: I might have. 

[00:04:19] Dan Schwartz: So Russ, you sound like someone who doesn't play video games. 

[00:04:23] Russ Altman: I do not play video games. 

[00:04:24] Dan Schwartz: So there's this world out there where people can experience things they could never experience, uh, directly. And no teacher can deliver this immersive experience of you in the Amazon searching for anthropological artifacts. There's also something called social media that people use. 

[00:04:43] Russ Altman: I've heard about this. 

[00:04:43] Dan Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:04:44] Russ Altman: I think we disseminate the show using it. 

[00:04:46] Dan Schwartz: So back in the day. 

[00:04:47] Russ Altman: Okay. So I'm a dinosaur. 

[00:04:49] Dan Schwartz: Uh, back in the day, you got the Apple 2 maybe, and it's about 64 K, maybe. It's got a big floppy drive and it takes all its CPU power to draw a picture of a two plus two on the screen. So I think things have changed a little bit Russ. But I appreciate your desire to be connected to teachers. I don't think we're replacing them. 

[00:05:14] Russ Altman: I'm not going to give you a lecture about teaching. But I will say this one sentence that was reverberating through my brain when I was getting ready for our interview, which was when I'm in a classroom, and this has been since I've been in third grade. I am watching the teacher trying to understand, how they think about the information and how they struggle with it to like understand it and then try to relay it to me.

[00:05:34] And so it is, that's where I'm learning. I'm, it's not even what they're saying. It's they're painting a picture for their cognitive model of what they're talking about. And that's what I'm trying to pull out to this day. And so that's why I have such a negative reaction to anything standing between me and this other human who has a model that is more advanced than mine about the material that we're struggling with and I just, I'm trying to download that model. 

[00:06:01] Dan Schwartz: Wow. You're, you are a cognitive psychologist, Russ? 

[00:06:03] Russ Altman: I don't know. 

[00:06:05] Dan Schwartz: Like I had a buddy who sort of became a Nobel laureate. And he talked about how he loved take apart cars, and I'd say I love to watch you take apart cars, just to figure out what you're doing. No, so I think, let's separate this. There's the part where you think the interaction with the teacher is important. I don't know that you need it eight hours a day. You know, that's an awful lot of interaction. I'm not sure I want to be with my mom and dad for eight hours a day trying to figure out their thinking. So you don't need it all the time.

[00:06:34] On the other side, you know, we can do creative things with the computers. So for example, I wrote a program where students learn by teaching a computer agent. And so they're trying to figure out how to get the agent to think the way it should in the domain. Turns out it's highly motivating. The kids learn a lot. The problem was the technology quickly became obsolete. Because after kids used it for a couple of days, they no longer needed it, 'cause they'd figured out sort of how to do the kind of reasoning that we wanted them to teach the agent to do for reasoning. 

[00:07:06] Russ Altman: That's exactly what I was talking about before, about my relationship with my teacher. And you just flipped it, but it's the same idea, which is that there's a cognitive model that you're trying to transfer. And by doing that transfer, you get in, you introspect on it and you understand what it is that you're thinking about. 

[00:07:22] Dan Schwartz: I think that's right. You know, so the concern is the computer does all the work, right? And so I'm just sitting there pressing a button that isn't relevant to the domain I'm trying to learn. But you know, uh, one of the things computers are really good at, like as good as casinos, is motivation. So some computer programs, they gamify it. I'm not sure that's a great use of it. Because you, you know, you try and you learn to just beat the game for the reward. 

[00:07:49] Russ Altman: Right.

[00:07:49] Dan Schwartz: As opposed to learn the content. But things like having, teaching an intelligent agent how to think. There's something called the protege effect, which is you'll try harder to learn the content to teach your agent than you will to prepare for a test. Right? So we can make the computer pretty social. 

[00:08:08] Russ Altman: Okay. So you are clearly a technology optimist in education. And in addition to the amazing fundraising and like, there's so many questions to be answered. What I think a lot of people are worried about is, are we at risk of losing a gen. We've already lost a few generations of students, some people argue, because of the pandemic and the terrible impact it had, especially on, uh, on people who weren't privileged in society and in their education.

[00:08:34] Are we about to enter yet another shock to the system where, because of the ease of having essays written and having, and grading papers, that we really don't serve a generation of students well? Or do you think that's a overhyped, unlikely to happen thing? 

[00:08:51] Dan Schwartz: No, it's a good question. You know, that part of this is people's view about cheating, you know? And so it's too easy for students to do certain things. But there's another response that I want to hang on to. I want to ask you, Russ, are you using, you teach. 

[00:09:07] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:09:07] Dan Schwartz: Are you like putting in all sorts of rules to prevent students from cheating, or are you saying, use it, do whatever you can. I'm going to outsmart your technique anyway.

[00:09:17] Russ Altman: It's a little bit more on the latter. So we, uh, I teach an ethics class, which is a writing class. And we allow ChatGPT because the, my fellow instructor and I decided, and this was the quote, we want to be part of the future, not part of the past. So we said to the students, 

[00:09:33] Dan Schwartz: Sorry, The Future of Everything, Russ.

[00:09:34] Russ Altman: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for the plug. So, uh, we allow it. We asked them to tell us what prompt they used and to show us the initial output that they got from that prompt. And then we, of course, have them hand in the final thing. And we instruct the TAs and ourselves, when we grade that we're grading the final product with or without a declaration of whether ChatGPT is used.

[00:09:56] We do have engineers as TAs, which means that they did a careful analysis. Students who used ChatGPT, and I don't think this is a surprise, got slightly lower grades, but spend substantially less time on the assignment. So if you're a busy student, you might say, I will make that trade off because the grades weren't a ton worse. It was like two points out of a hundred, like from a ninety to an eighty-eight, and they completed it in like half the time. 

[00:10:25] Dan Schwartz: Uh, do you think they learned less? 

[00:10:28] Russ Altman: So we don't know. We don't know. And, uh, the evaluation of learning is something that I'm looking to you, Dan. Uh, how do I tell? So, um, so we do try to use it. But we are stressed out. We have seen cases where people say they used ChatGPT, but tried to mislead us in how they use it. They said, I only used it for copy editing, but it was clear that they did more than copy editing with it. And so there's at the edges, there are some challenges. But in the end, we said motivated students who want to learn will use it as a tool and we'll learn. And the students who we have failed to motivate, and it is our failure, you could argue. They're just going to do whatever they do, and we're not going to be able to really impact that trajectory very much. 

[00:11:12] Dan Schwartz: Yeah, you know, you sort of see the same thing with video, video-based lectures. So I'm online. I've got this lecture. Do I really want to sit and listen to the whole thing? Not really. I'm going to skim forward to find the information. I skim back. I'm probably going to end up doing the minimum amount if it's not a great lecture. 

[00:11:29] Russ Altman: Yeah.

[00:11:29] Dan Schwartz: So I'm not sure this is a ChatGPT phenomenon. It's just, it's sort of an enabler. I think the challenge is thinking of the right assignment. So like, you can grade things on novel and appropriateness. So, are they novel? You know, if they use ChatGPT like everybody else, they won't be novel. They'll all produce the same thing. 

[00:11:48] Russ Altman: It's incredibly, yes. It, so it is, um, there's the most common type of, uh, moral theory is called common morality. And it turns out that ChatGPT does pretty well at that one because there's so many examples that it has seen. And it's terrible at Kant. Deontology, it really can't do. Okay, so let me. 

[00:12:07] Dan Schwartz: So let me get back to your question. 

[00:12:09] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:12:09] Dan Schwartz: So here's what I see going on right now. There, there are like, uh, big industry conferences. Because they're going to, they're producing the technology that schools can adopt. Right? And there's a lot of money there. And twenty years ago, there were zero unicorns, and about, uh, I think last year, fifty-four billion dollar valuation companies in ed tech. So this is a big change. So what are they doing? They're basically creating things to do stuff to students, right? 

[00:12:42] So maybe they're marketing to the teachers, but it's, you know, it's, I'll make a tutor that, uh, is more efficient at delivering information to the students. Or, I will make a program that can correct their math very quickly. And so what's happening is the industry is sort of using the AI in the way that nobody else uses it.

[00:13:04] Because everybody who's got this tool wants to create stuff, right? Like, uh, my brother. It's my birthday, what does he do? He has ChatGPT to write me a poem about Dan Schwartz at Stanford. What he doesn't know is that there's a lot of Dan Schwartz's and so evidently I wear colorful ties, but this is what everybody wants to do. They want to create with it. Meanwhile, the field is trying to push towards efficiency. Can we get the kids done faster? Can we get them through the curriculum faster? Can we correct them faster? In which case the kids are going to optimize for being really efficient, right? As opposed to just trying to be creative, innovative, use it for deeper kinds of things. So this is my big fear. 

[00:13:42] Russ Altman: And so you're watching these companies and I'm guessing that they don't always ask your opinion about what's, what would you tell, so let's say a, one of these unicorn billion dollar or more companies comes to you and says, we want to do this right. We want to use the best educational research to create AI that can bring education to people who might otherwise not have quality education. What would you tell them? 

[00:14:04] Dan Schwartz: So this is a challenge, right? This is something we're actively trying to solve. So we've created a Stanford accelerator for learning to kind of figure out how to do this. 'Cause I've been in this ed tech position for quite a while. And the companies come in and they say, we really want your opinion. And then they present what they're doing. And I go, uh, have you ever thought of, and they go, wait, let me finish. And this goes on for fifty-five minutes. Where they're telling me what they want to do. And I'm trying to say, you know, if you just did this. And the way it ends is I say to them, look, you, if you do these three things, I'll consider being an advisor.

[00:14:42] Russ Altman: Right.

[00:14:42] Dan Schwartz: They never come back. 

[00:14:45] Russ Altman: So the message you're sending them is just not in their worldview. 

[00:14:50] Dan Schwartz: It's because they have a vision. Everybody wants to start their own school. 

[00:14:53] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:14:53] Dan Schwartz: They have their vision of what it should be and they're urgent to get it done. And you know, it's a startup mentality. So trying to figure out how can we educate them? You know, I think we know a lot about how people learn that, uh, that we didn't know twenty years ago when they went to school. And the AI, you know, one of the things it can do is implement some of these theories of learning in ways that don't exist in textbooks and things like that.

[00:15:17] So that's the big hope. And the question is, how can you take advantage of industry? You know, education is a public good, but they still buy all their products. And so going through those companies is one way to sort of bring a positive revolution. But again, I'm a little worried that the companies are, and they're sort of optimizing for local minima.

[00:15:41] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:15:41] Dan Schwartz: You know, to accommodate the current schools and things like that. 

[00:15:44] Russ Altman: Should we take, so what, should we take solace in the teachers? So many of us are fans of teachers, grammar school teachers, middle school teachers, high school teachers, but many of these folks are incredibly dedicated. Will they be a final, um, uh, a final filter that looks at these, uh, educational technologies and says, absolutely not. Or yeah, we'll use that, but we're going to use that in a way that makes sense for my way of teaching. Or are they not in a position to make those kinds of, what you could call courageous decisions, about kind of modifying the use of these tools to make them as good as possible in, uh, on the ground? 

[00:16:21] Dan Schwartz: So it's pretty interesting. The surveys I've seen, uh, sort of over the last year, the different groups do different surveys. It, it sort of, if I take the average, about sixty percent of K 12 teachers are using GenAI, right? And about thirty percent of the kids. If I go to the college level, about thirty percent of the faculty are using GenAI in teaching and about eighty percent of the kids are using it. So I do think in the pre K to 12 space, the teachers are making decisions. They do a lot of curriculum. There are, so a great application is, um, project-based learning. So project-based learning is a lot of fun. Kids learn a lot. They sort of develop a passion, a certain depth. As opposed to just mastering sort of the requirements, but it's really hard to manage. You know, when I was a high school teacher, I had a hundred and thirty kids, right?

[00:17:11] If all of them have a separate project, I have to help plan them and make them goal, you know, learning goal appropriate. So the GenAI can help me do that. It can help me, uh, have the kids sort of help use it to help them design a successful project. Uh, it can help me with a dashboard that helps manage them, hitting their milestones, things like that.

[00:17:31] And there, you know, it's, it, the, teacher is like, I can do something I just couldn't do before. 

[00:17:35] Russ Altman: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:17:36] Dan Schwartz: It's different than the model where you put the kids in the back of the room who finished early and say, go use the computer. I think, you know, most schools, kids are carrying computers in classes. So it's a little different. It's more integrated than it used to be. 

[00:17:52] Russ Altman: This is the Future of Everything with Russ Altman. More with Dan Schwartz, next.

[00:18:06] Welcome back to The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman and I'm speaking with Dan Schwartz, professor of education at Stanford University. 

[00:18:12] In the last segment, Dan told us about AI, education, some of the promises and some of the pitfalls that he's looking at on the ground, thinking about how to educate the next generation.

[00:18:23] In this segment, I'm going to ask him about assessment, grading. How do we do that with AI and how do we make sure it goes well? Also going to ask him about physical activity, which turns out physical ness is an important part of learning. 

[00:18:39] I want to get a little bit more detailed, Dan, in this next segment, and I want to start off with assessment, grading. I know you've thought about this a lot. People are worried that um, AI is going to start to doing, be doing all the grading. Everybody knows that a high school teacher with a big, couple of big classes can spend their entire weekend grading essays. It is so tempting just to feed that into ChatGPT and say, hey, how good is this essay? How should we think about, maybe worry about, but maybe just think about, assessment in education in the future? 

[00:19:11] Dan Schwartz: Yeah, this was, uh, you remember the MOOCs? 

[00:19:14] Russ Altman: Yes. 

[00:19:14] Dan Schwartz: Massively online, open courses. And, uh, you're hoping you have ten thousand students, and then you gotta grade the papers for ten thousand students. So what do you do? You give a multiple-choice tests, which can be machine coded, right? So, so I think that's always there. I'm going to take it a slightly different direction, which is, uh, I'm interacting with a computer system and while I'm interacting with it, it's, it can be constantly assessing in real time, right?

[00:19:41] And so there's a field that's sometimes called educational data mining or learning analytics. And there's thousands of people who are working on, how do I get informative signal out of students interactions. Like, are they trying to game the system? Are they reflecting? And so forth. So this is something the computer can do pretty well, right?

[00:20:02] It can sort of track what students are doing, assess, and then ideally deliver the right piece of instruction at the moment. So yours, you could use the assessments to give people a grade, but really the more important thing is, can you use the assessments to make instructional decisions? So I think this is a big area of advancement, but here's my concern.

[00:20:25] We've gotten very good at assessing things that are objectively right and wrong. Like did you remember the right word? Did you get two plus two correctly? For most of the things we care about now, they're like strategic and heuristic, which means it's not a guaranteed right answer. And so what you really want to do is assess students choices for what to do. So for example, uh, creativity, it's just for the most part, it's a large set of strategies. Right? There's a bunch of strategies that help you be creative. The question is, do the students choose to do that or do they take the safe route? 'Cause creativity is a risk, right? 'Cause you're not sure.

[00:21:02] So I think this is where the field needs to go. Is being willing to say that certain kinds of choices about learning are better than others. Uh, and it's a, it becomes more of an ethical question now. Instead of saying two plus two equals four, there's no ethics to it. 

[00:21:16] Russ Altman: Are you going to be able to convince non educators who hold purse strings, let's call them the government, that these kinds of assessments are important and need to be included? Because my sense is that when it filters up to boards of education or elected leaders, a lot of that stuff goes out of the window. And they just want to know how good are they at reading comprehensive and can they do enough math to be competitive with, you know, country X? 

[00:21:43] Dan Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah. So different assessments serve different purposes. Like the big year end tests that kids take, those aren't to inform the instruction of that child. They're not even for that teacher. They're for school districts to decide are our policies working. And so it's really a different kind of assessment than me as a teacher trying to decide what should I give the kid next. So I think it's going to vary. You know, the tough question for me is should you let the kid use ChatGPT during the test? Right?

[00:22:14] And we had this argument over calculators, right? And finally they came up with ways to ask questions where it was okay if the kids had calculators. Because the calculator was doing the routine stuff. And that's not really what you cared about. What you cared about was, could the kid be innovative? Could they take a, another, a second approach to solve a problem? 

[00:22:34] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:22:34] Dan Schwartz: Things like that. 

[00:22:34] Russ Altman: We, so I teach another class where it's a programming class, the students write programs, and we have switched, um, and we've actually downgraded the value. So as you know, very well, just as background, there is now an amazing, ChatGPT can also write computer code essentially. And so a lot of coding now is kind of done for you and you don't need to do it. We are trying to make sure that they understand the algorithms that we ask them to code. And so what we're doing is we're downgrading the amount of points you get for working code.

[00:23:04] You still get some, but we're upgrading the quiz about how the algorithm works. Do you understand exactly why this happened the way it did? Why is this data structure a good choice or a bad choice? And so it's forcing us, and you could have argued that we should have done this twenty years ago in the same class, but this is making it a more urgent issue, because if we don't, people can just get an automatic piece of code. They can run it. It'll work. They have no understanding of what happened. And so it's really a positive. It's putting more of a burden on us to figure out why the heck did we have them write this code in the first place? 

[00:23:39] Dan Schwartz: No, this was my point. It makes you sort of rethink what is valuable to learn. And you stop doing what was easy to grade. So I have an interesting one. This is a little nerdy. 

[00:23:51] Russ Altman: Okay. I love it. I love it. 

[00:23:52] Dan Schwartz: I teach the intro PhD statistics course in education. And lots of students say, I took statistics, right? And I'm sort of like, well, that's great. Let me ask you one question. And I say, I'm going to email you a question and you'll have five minutes to respond. You let me know when you're ready for it. And I ask them, uh, this is just for you, Russ. But why is the tail of the T distribution fat in small sample sizes? And I, what I get back usually is because they're small sample sizes.

[00:24:24] Russ Altman: Right. Or because it's the T distribution. 

[00:24:27] Dan Schwartz: Or it's, yes, even better. And then I come back and I sort of say, well, have you ever heard of the standard error? And I begin to get at the conceptual stuff, right? And, uh, I suspect if I gave it, uh, so there are ways to get conceptual questions that are really important. But you know, being able to prompt or write R code, you know, that's a good thing. You want them to learn the skills as well. 

[00:24:50] Russ Altman: Exactly. 

[00:24:51] Dan Schwartz: So I don't know, you know, when the calculator showed up, there's a big debate, right? What should students learn? Can they use the calculator? The apocryphal solution was you had to learn the regular math and the calculator now. You just had to learn twice as much. And so maybe that's what it's going to be. 

[00:25:08] Russ Altman: And that's a very likely transitional strategy and then we'll see where we end up. Okay. In the final few minutes, I, this seems like it's unrelated to AI, but I bet it's not. You've done a lot of work on physical activity and learning. You've even been on a paper recently where you talk about having a walk during a teaching session and whether you get better outcomes than if you were just standing or sitting. So tell me about that interest and tell me if it has anything to do with today's topic. 

[00:25:37] Dan Schwartz: I can make the bridge. I can do it, Russ. Right. So we did some studies. Um, I've done a lot of it. It's called embodiment where, yeah, there was, I got clued into this where, uh, I was asking people about why, about gears. And I say, you know, you have three gears in a line, and you turn the gear on the left clockwise. What does the gear on the right do? Far right. And I'd watch them, and they'd go like this with their hands. They'd model with their hands. And then I was sort of like, well, what's the basis of this? And I'd say well why? And they say because this one's turning that way that one, I go but why. And in the end, they just bottom out. They just show me their hands. They didn't say things like one molecule displaces another. 

[00:26:20] Russ Altman: Right. 

[00:26:21] Dan Schwartz: So that sort of clued me in. 

[00:26:22] Russ Altman: This pinky is going up and this other pinky is going down. 

[00:26:26] Dan Schwartz: Yes. 

[00:26:26] Russ Altman: What don't you understand about that? 

[00:26:28] Dan Schwartz: Pretty much. Well, it was nonverbal. 

[00:26:31] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:26:31] Dan Schwartz: So we went on, you know, we discovered that the basis for negative numbers, right? Is actually perceptual symmetry. And we did some neuro stuff. And so the question is sort of how does this perceptual apparatus, which some people, we're just loaded with perception, right? The brain's just one giant perceiving. So how do you get that going? So part of the embodiment is my ability to take action, right? And so this is where we started, right? Right now, the AI feels very verbal, very abstract. Even the video generation, it's amazing, but it's pretty passive for me. So enter virtual worlds, they're still working on the form factor where I can move my hand in space. 

[00:27:16] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:27:17] Dan Schwartz: And something will happen in the environment in response to that. You know, I think medicine is, you know, really been working on haptics so surgeons can practice. Uh, there was a great guy who made a virtual world for different heart congenital defects, and you could go in and practice surgery and see what would happen to the blood flow. So I think, uh, that embodiment where you get to bring all your senses to bear, it's not just words, but it's everything, can really do a lot for learning, for engagement, uh, not just physical skills. 

[00:27:49] Russ Altman: So that's a challenge to, I'm hearing a challenge to AI, which is as an educator, you know that this physicality can be an critical part of learning. And by the way, would this be a surprise? I mean, we're, we've been on earth evolving for several hundred million years. And, uh, you would be surprised if our ability to manipulate and look at three dimensional situations wasn't critical to learning, and yet that's not what AI is doing right now. So this is a clear challenge to AI among other things. 

[00:28:17] Dan Schwartz: Right. So, uh, I have a colleague, Renate Fruchter. And, uh, she teaches architecture, and she has students make a blueprint for the building, right? And then she feeds the blueprint to a CAD system that creates the building. She then takes the building and puts it into a physics engine, it can basically render the building and make walls so you can't move through them, and it has gravity and things like that.

[00:28:42] She then puts the, uh, original student who designed the building in a wheelchair and has them try to navigate through that environment. At which point they sort of understand, oh this is why you need so much space so they can turn around, so they can navigate near the door. I am sure that is an incredibly compelling experience that allows them to be generative about all their future designs.

[00:29:03] So yeah, this is a challenge and part of the co-mingling of the AI and the virtual worlds, I think this is a big challenge. It's computationally very heavy, but it will open the door for lots of ways of teaching that you just couldn't do before. 

[00:29:17] Russ Altman: Thanks to Dan Schwartz. That was the future of educational technology.

[00:29:21] You've been listening to The Future of Everything and I'm Russ Altman. You know what? We have an archive with more than 250 back episodes of The Future of Everything. So you have instant access to a wide array of discussions that can keep you entertained and informed. Also, remember to rate, review, and follow. I care deeply about that request. 

[00:29:41] And also, if you want to follow me, you can follow me on X @ @RBAltman, and you can follow Stanford Engineering @ StanfordENG.

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AI for Teaching and Learning Video Series

Have questions about where to start with generative AI? The AI for Teaching and Learning video series is a great introduction.

Produced by Notre Dame Learning and the Office of Information Technology’s Teaching & Learning Technologies (TLT) team, these short videos aim to help faculty and the broader campus community get more familiar with generative AI in educational contexts.

The first two videos in the series are available now, and the rest will be published to this page early in the fall 2024 semester.

Opening the Dialogue on AI in Education

Ron Metoyer , Notre Dame’s vice president and associate provost for teaching and learning, introduces the AI for Teaching and Learning video series. He highlights how AI is changing education and encourages those who teach at Notre Dame to explore tools like ChatGPT, build their understanding of AI, and have open conversations with students about the technology’s pros and cons. Drawing a parallel between the current state of technological change and the experience of using web browsers for the first time in the 1990s, Metoyer expresses his confidence that educators can and will successfully navigate AI’s impact, now and in the future.

• AI for Teaching and Learning
• Establishing AI Policies for Your Course
• Building Critical AI Literacy

Intro to Generative AI

John Behrens , director of the Technology and Digital Studies Program in the College of Arts and Letters, provides an overview of generative AI, explaining its powerful capabilities in performing tasks once limited to humans, including text and image generation. He outlines five key concepts: AI’s extraordinary abilities, the variety of its outputs, associated challenges and risks, its impact on human tasks, and its evolving nature. Behrens emphasizes the importance of understanding AI’s limitations and the responsibility users must take when utilizing these systems.

• AI Overview and Definitions
• Five Things to Know About Generative AI & Technical Literacy

Intro to Text-to-Text Systems

This video will be added to this page in early September.

Generating Prompts

Navigating ai tools with integrity in academia, ai-assisted writing, best practices for assessment in the age of ai.

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The Evolution of Technology in K–12 Classrooms: 1659 to Today

Alexander Huls is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in  The New York Times ,  Popular Mechanics ,  Esquire ,  The Atlantic  and elsewhere.

In the 21st century, it can feel like advanced technology is changing the K–12 classroom in ways we’ve never seen before. But the truth is, technology and education have a long history of evolving together to dramatically change how students learn.

With more innovations surely headed our way, why not look back at how we got to where we are today, while looking forward to how educators can continue to integrate new technologies into their learning?

DISCOVER:  Special education departments explore advanced tech in their classrooms.

Using Technology in the K–12 Classroom: A History

1659: magic lantern.

• Inventor:  Christiaan Huygens
• A Brief History:  An ancestor of the slide projector, the magic lantern projected glass slides with light from oil lamps or candles. In the 1680s, the technology was brought to the education space to show detailed anatomical illustrations, which were difficult to sketch on a chalkboard.
• Interesting Fact:  Huygens initially regretted his creation, thinking it was too frivolous.

1795: Pencil

• Inventor:  Nicolas-Jacques Conté
• A Brief History : Versions of the pencil can be traced back hundreds of years, but what’s considered the modern pencil is credited to Conté, a scientist in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. It made its impact on the classroom, however, when it began to be mass produced in the 1900s.
• Interesting Fact:  The Aztecs used a form of graphite pencil in the 13th century.

1801: Chalkboard

• Inventor:  James Pillans
• A Brief History:  Pillans — a headmaster at a high school in Edinburgh, Scotland — created the first front-of-class chalkboard, or “blackboard,” to better teach his students geography with large maps. Prior to his creation, educators worked with students on smaller, individual pieces of wood or slate. In the 1960s, the creation was upgraded to a green board, which became a familiar fixture in every classroom.
• Interesting Fact:  Before chalkboards were commercially manufactured, some were made do-it-yourself-style with ingredients like pine board, egg whites and charred potatoes.

1888: Ballpoint Pen

• Inventory:  John L. Loud
• A Brief History:  John L. Loud invented and patented the first ballpoint pen after seeking to create a tool that could write on leather. It was not a commercial success. Fifty years later, following the lapse of Loud’s patent, Hungarian journalist László Bíró invented a pen with a quick-drying special ink that wouldn’t smear thanks to a rolling ball in its nib.
• Interesting Fact:  When ballpoint pens debuted in the U.S., they were so popular that Gimbels, the department store selling them, made $81 million in today’s money within six months.

LEARN MORE:  Logitech Pen works with Chromebooks to combine digital and physical learning.

1950s: Overhead Projector

• Inventor:  Roger Appeldorn
• A Brief History:  Overhead projects were used during World War II for mission briefings. However, 3M employee Appeldorn is credited with creating not only a projectable transparent film, but also the overhead projectors that would find a home in classrooms for decades.
• Interesting Fact:  Appeldorn’s creation is the predecessor to today’s  bright and efficient laser projectors .

1959: Photocopier

• Inventor:  Chester Carlson
• A Brief History:  Because of his arthritis, patent attorney and inventor Carlson wanted to create a less painful alternative to making carbon copies. Between 1938 and 1947, working with The Haloid Photographic Company, Carlson perfected the process of electrophotography, which led to development of the first photocopy machines.
• Interesting Fact:  Haloid and Carlson named their photocopying process xerography, which means “dry writing” in Greek. Eventually, Haloid renamed its company (and its flagship product line) Xerox .

1967: Handheld Calculator

• Inventor:   Texas Instruments
• A Brief History:  As recounted in our  history of the calculator , Texas Instruments made calculators portable with a device that weighed 45 ounces and featured a small keyboard with 18 keys and a visual display of 12 decimal digits.
• Interesting Fact:  The original 1967 prototype of the device can be found in the Smithsonian Institution’s  National Museum of American History .

1981: The Osborne 1 Laptop

• Inventor:  Adam Osborne, Lee Felsenstein
• A Brief History:  Osborne, a computer book author, teamed up with computer engineer Felsenstein to create a portable computer that would appeal to general consumers. In the process, they provided the technological foundation that made modern one-to-one devices — like Chromebooks — a classroom staple.
• Interesting Fact:  At 24.5 pounds, the Osborne 1 was about as big and heavy as a sewing machine, earning it the current classification of a “luggable” computer, rather than a laptop.

1990: World Wide Web

• Inventor:  Tim Berners-Lee
• A Brief History:  In the late 1980s, British scientist Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web to enable information sharing between scientists and academics. It wasn’t long before the Web could connect anyone, anywhere to a wealth of information, and it was soon on its way to powering the modern classroom.
• Interesting Fact:  The first web server Berners-Lee created was so new, he had to put a sign on the computer that read, “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!”

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What Technology Is Used in Today’s K–12 Classrooms?

Technology has come so far that modern classrooms are more technologically advanced than many science labs were two decades ago. Students have access to digital textbooks,  personal devices , collaborative  cloud-based tools , and  interactive whiteboards . Emerging technologies now being introduced to K–12 classrooms include voice assistants, virtual reality devices and 3D printers.

Perhaps the most important thing about ed tech in K–12 isn’t what the technology is, but how it’s used.

How to Integrate Technology into K–12 Classrooms

The first step to integrating technology into the K–12 classroom is  figuring out which solution to integrate , given the large variety of tools available to educators. That variety comes with benefits — like the ability to align tech with district objectives and grade level — but also brings challenges.

“It’s difficult to know how to choose the appropriate digital tool or resource,” says Judi Harris, professor and Pavey Family Chair in Educational Technology at the William & Mary School of Education. “Teachers need some familiarity with the tools so that they understand the potential advantages and disadvantages.”

Judi Harris Professor and Pavey Family Chair in Educational Technology, William and Mary School of Education

K–12 IT leaders should also be careful not to focus too much on technology implementation at the expense of curriculum-based learning needs. “What districts need to ask themselves is not only whether they’re going to adopt a technology, but how they’re going to adopt it,” says Royce Kimmons, associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University.

In other words, while emerging technologies may be exciting, acquiring them without proper consideration of their role in improving classroom learning will likely result in mixed student outcomes. For effective integration, educators should ask themselves, in what ways would the tech increase or support a student’s productivity and learning outcomes? How will it improve engagement?

Integrating ed tech also requires some practical know-how. “Teachers need to be comfortable and confident with the tools they ask students to use,” says Harris.

Professional development for new technologies is crucial, as are supportive IT teams, tech providers with generous onboarding programs and technology integration specialists. Harris also points to initiatives like YES: Youth and Educators Succeeding, a nonprofit organization that prepares students to act as resident experts and classroom IT support.

KEEP READING:  What is the continued importance of professional development in K–12 education?

But as educational technology is rolled out and integrated, it’s important to keep academic goals in sight. “We should never stop focusing on how to best understand and help the learner to achieve those learning objectives,” says Harris.

That should continue to be the case as the technology timeline unfolds, something Harris has witnessed firsthand during her four decades in the field. “It’s been an incredible thing to watch and to participate in,” she notes. “The great majority of teachers are extremely eager to learn and to do anything that will help their students learn better.”

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Digital learning and transformation of education

Digital technologies have evolved from stand-alone projects to networks of tools and programmes that connect people and things across the world, and help address personal and global challenges. Digital innovation has demonstrated powers to complement, enrich and transform education, and has the potential to speed up progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) for education and transform modes of provision of universal access to learning. It can enhance the quality and relevance of learning, strengthen inclusion, and improve education administration and governance. In times of crises, distance learning can mitigate the effects of education disruption and school closures.

What you need to know about digital learning and transformation of education

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The call for applications and nominations for the 2023 edition is open until 21 February 2024

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or 63%of the world’s population, were using the Internet in 2021

do not have a household computer and 43% of learners do not have household Internet.

to access information because they are not covered by mobile networks

in sub-Saharan Africa have received minimum training

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REALIZING THE PROMISE:

Leading up to the 75th anniversary of the UN General Assembly, this “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?” publication kicks off the Center for Universal Education’s first playbook in a series to help improve education around the world.

It is intended as an evidence-based tool for ministries of education, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, to adopt and more successfully invest in education technology.

While there is no single education initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere—as school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies—an important first step is understanding how technology is used given specific local contexts and needs.

The surveys in this playbook are designed to be adapted to collect this information from educators, learners, and school leaders and guide decisionmakers in expanding the use of technology.  

Introduction

While technology has disrupted most sectors of the economy and changed how we communicate, access information, work, and even play, its impact on schools, teaching, and learning has been much more limited. We believe that this limited impact is primarily due to technology being been used to replace analog tools, without much consideration given to playing to technology’s comparative advantages. These comparative advantages, relative to traditional “chalk-and-talk” classroom instruction, include helping to scale up standardized instruction, facilitate differentiated instruction, expand opportunities for practice, and increase student engagement. When schools use technology to enhance the work of educators and to improve the quality and quantity of educational content, learners will thrive.

Further, COVID-19 has laid bare that, in today’s environment where pandemics and the effects of climate change are likely to occur, schools cannot always provide in-person education—making the case for investing in education technology.

Here we argue for a simple yet surprisingly rare approach to education technology that seeks to:

• Understand the needs, infrastructure, and capacity of a school system—the diagnosis;
• Survey the best available evidence on interventions that match those conditions—the evidence; and
• Closely monitor the results of innovations before they are scaled up—the prognosis.

RELATED CONTENT

Podcast: How education technology can improve learning for all students

To make ed tech work, set clear goals, review the evidence, and pilot before you scale

The framework.

Our approach builds on a simple yet intuitive theoretical framework created two decades ago by two of the most prominent education researchers in the United States, David K. Cohen and Deborah Loewenberg Ball. They argue that what matters most to improve learning is the interactions among educators and learners around educational materials. We believe that the failed school-improvement efforts in the U.S. that motivated Cohen and Ball’s framework resemble the ed-tech reforms in much of the developing world to date in the lack of clarity improving the interactions between educators, learners, and the educational material. We build on their framework by adding parents as key agents that mediate the relationships between learners and educators and the material (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The instructional core

Adapted from Cohen and Ball (1999)

As the figure above suggests, ed-tech interventions can affect the instructional core in a myriad of ways. Yet, just because technology can do something, it does not mean it should. School systems in developing countries differ along many dimensions and each system is likely to have different needs for ed-tech interventions, as well as different infrastructure and capacity to enact such interventions.

The diagnosis:

How can school systems assess their needs and preparedness.

A useful first step for any school system to determine whether it should invest in education technology is to diagnose its:

• Specific needs to improve student learning (e.g., raising the average level of achievement, remediating gaps among low performers, and challenging high performers to develop higher-order skills);
• Infrastructure to adopt technology-enabled solutions (e.g., electricity connection, availability of space and outlets, stock of computers, and Internet connectivity at school and at learners’ homes); and
• Capacity to integrate technology in the instructional process (e.g., learners’ and educators’ level of familiarity and comfort with hardware and software, their beliefs about the level of usefulness of technology for learning purposes, and their current uses of such technology).

Before engaging in any new data collection exercise, school systems should take full advantage of existing administrative data that could shed light on these three main questions. This could be in the form of internal evaluations but also international learner assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and/or the Progress in International Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Teaching and Learning International Study (TALIS). But if school systems lack information on their preparedness for ed-tech reforms or if they seek to complement existing data with a richer set of indicators, we developed a set of surveys for learners, educators, and school leaders. Download the full report to see how we map out the main aspects covered by these surveys, in hopes of highlighting how they could be used to inform decisions around the adoption of ed-tech interventions.

The evidence:

How can school systems identify promising ed-tech interventions.

There is no single “ed-tech” initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere, simply because school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies. Instead, to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning, decisionmakers should focus on four potential uses of technology that play to its comparative advantages and complement the work of educators to accelerate student learning (Figure 2). These comparative advantages include:

• Scaling up quality instruction, such as through prerecorded quality lessons.
• Facilitating differentiated instruction, through, for example, computer-adaptive learning and live one-on-one tutoring.
• Expanding opportunities to practice.
• Increasing learner engagement through videos and games.

Figure 2: Comparative advantages of technology

Here we review the evidence on ed-tech interventions from 37 studies in 20 countries*, organizing them by comparative advantage. It’s important to note that ours is not the only way to classify these interventions (e.g., video tutorials could be considered as a strategy to scale up instruction or increase learner engagement), but we believe it may be useful to highlight the needs that they could address and why technology is well positioned to do so.

When discussing specific studies, we report the magnitude of the effects of interventions using standard deviations (SDs). SDs are a widely used metric in research to express the effect of a program or policy with respect to a business-as-usual condition (e.g., test scores). There are several ways to make sense of them. One is to categorize the magnitude of the effects based on the results of impact evaluations. In developing countries, effects below 0.1 SDs are considered to be small, effects between 0.1 and 0.2 SDs are medium, and those above 0.2 SDs are large (for reviews that estimate the average effect of groups of interventions, called “meta analyses,” see e.g., Conn, 2017; Kremer, Brannen, & Glennerster, 2013; McEwan, 2014; Snilstveit et al., 2015; Evans & Yuan, 2020.)

*In surveying the evidence, we began by compiling studies from prior general and ed-tech specific evidence reviews that some of us have written and from ed-tech reviews conducted by others. Then, we tracked the studies cited by the ones we had previously read and reviewed those, as well. In identifying studies for inclusion, we focused on experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of education technology interventions from pre-school to secondary school in low- and middle-income countries that were released between 2000 and 2020. We only included interventions that sought to improve student learning directly (i.e., students’ interaction with the material), as opposed to interventions that have impacted achievement indirectly, by reducing teacher absence or increasing parental engagement. This process yielded 37 studies in 20 countries (see the full list of studies in Appendix B).

Scaling up standardized instruction

One of the ways in which technology may improve the quality of education is through its capacity to deliver standardized quality content at scale. This feature of technology may be particularly useful in three types of settings: (a) those in “hard-to-staff” schools (i.e., schools that struggle to recruit educators with the requisite training and experience—typically, in rural and/or remote areas) (see, e.g., Urquiola & Vegas, 2005); (b) those in which many educators are frequently absent from school (e.g., Chaudhury, Hammer, Kremer, Muralidharan, & Rogers, 2006; Muralidharan, Das, Holla, & Mohpal, 2017); and/or (c) those in which educators have low levels of pedagogical and subject matter expertise (e.g., Bietenbeck, Piopiunik, & Wiederhold, 2018; Bold et al., 2017; Metzler & Woessmann, 2012; Santibañez, 2006) and do not have opportunities to observe and receive feedback (e.g., Bruns, Costa, & Cunha, 2018; Cilliers, Fleisch, Prinsloo, & Taylor, 2018). Technology could address this problem by: (a) disseminating lessons delivered by qualified educators to a large number of learners (e.g., through prerecorded or live lessons); (b) enabling distance education (e.g., for learners in remote areas and/or during periods of school closures); and (c) distributing hardware preloaded with educational materials.

Prerecorded lessons

Technology seems to be well placed to amplify the impact of effective educators by disseminating their lessons. Evidence on the impact of prerecorded lessons is encouraging, but not conclusive. Some initiatives that have used short instructional videos to complement regular instruction, in conjunction with other learning materials, have raised student learning on independent assessments. For example, Beg et al. (2020) evaluated an initiative in Punjab, Pakistan in which grade 8 classrooms received an intervention that included short videos to substitute live instruction, quizzes for learners to practice the material from every lesson, tablets for educators to learn the material and follow the lesson, and LED screens to project the videos onto a classroom screen. After six months, the intervention improved the performance of learners on independent tests of math and science by 0.19 and 0.24 SDs, respectively but had no discernible effect on the math and science section of Punjab’s high-stakes exams.

One study suggests that approaches that are far less technologically sophisticated can also improve learning outcomes—especially, if the business-as-usual instruction is of low quality. For example, Naslund-Hadley, Parker, and Hernandez-Agramonte (2014) evaluated a preschool math program in Cordillera, Paraguay that used audio segments and written materials four days per week for an hour per day during the school day. After five months, the intervention improved math scores by 0.16 SDs, narrowing gaps between low- and high-achieving learners, and between those with and without educators with formal training in early childhood education.

Yet, the integration of prerecorded material into regular instruction has not always been successful. For example, de Barros (2020) evaluated an intervention that combined instructional videos for math and science with infrastructure upgrades (e.g., two “smart” classrooms, two TVs, and two tablets), printed workbooks for students, and in-service training for educators of learners in grades 9 and 10 in Haryana, India (all materials were mapped onto the official curriculum). After 11 months, the intervention negatively impacted math achievement (by 0.08 SDs) and had no effect on science (with respect to business as usual classes). It reduced the share of lesson time that educators devoted to instruction and negatively impacted an index of instructional quality. Likewise, Seo (2017) evaluated several combinations of infrastructure (solar lights and TVs) and prerecorded videos (in English and/or bilingual) for grade 11 students in northern Tanzania and found that none of the variants improved student learning, even when the videos were used. The study reports effects from the infrastructure component across variants, but as others have noted (Muralidharan, Romero, & Wüthrich, 2019), this approach to estimating impact is problematic.

A very similar intervention delivered after school hours, however, had sizeable effects on learners’ basic skills. Chiplunkar, Dhar, and Nagesh (2020) evaluated an initiative in Chennai (the capital city of the state of Tamil Nadu, India) delivered by the same organization as above that combined short videos that explained key concepts in math and science with worksheets, facilitator-led instruction, small groups for peer-to-peer learning, and occasional career counseling and guidance for grade 9 students. These lessons took place after school for one hour, five times a week. After 10 months, it had large effects on learners’ achievement as measured by tests of basic skills in math and reading, but no effect on a standardized high-stakes test in grade 10 or socio-emotional skills (e.g., teamwork, decisionmaking, and communication).

Drawing general lessons from this body of research is challenging for at least two reasons. First, all of the studies above have evaluated the impact of prerecorded lessons combined with several other components (e.g., hardware, print materials, or other activities). Therefore, it is possible that the effects found are due to these additional components, rather than to the recordings themselves, or to the interaction between the two (see Muralidharan, 2017 for a discussion of the challenges of interpreting “bundled” interventions). Second, while these studies evaluate some type of prerecorded lessons, none examines the content of such lessons. Thus, it seems entirely plausible that the direction and magnitude of the effects depends largely on the quality of the recordings (e.g., the expertise of the educator recording it, the amount of preparation that went into planning the recording, and its alignment with best teaching practices).

These studies also raise three important questions worth exploring in future research. One of them is why none of the interventions discussed above had effects on high-stakes exams, even if their materials are typically mapped onto the official curriculum. It is possible that the official curricula are simply too challenging for learners in these settings, who are several grade levels behind expectations and who often need to reinforce basic skills (see Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Another question is whether these interventions have long-term effects on teaching practices. It seems plausible that, if these interventions are deployed in contexts with low teaching quality, educators may learn something from watching the videos or listening to the recordings with learners. Yet another question is whether these interventions make it easier for schools to deliver instruction to learners whose native language is other than the official medium of instruction.

Distance education

Technology can also allow learners living in remote areas to access education. The evidence on these initiatives is encouraging. For example, Johnston and Ksoll (2017) evaluated a program that broadcasted live instruction via satellite to rural primary school students in the Volta and Greater Accra regions of Ghana. For this purpose, the program also equipped classrooms with the technology needed to connect to a studio in Accra, including solar panels, a satellite modem, a projector, a webcam, microphones, and a computer with interactive software. After two years, the intervention improved the numeracy scores of students in grades 2 through 4, and some foundational literacy tasks, but it had no effect on attendance or classroom time devoted to instruction, as captured by school visits. The authors interpreted these results as suggesting that the gains in achievement may be due to improving the quality of instruction that children received (as opposed to increased instructional time). Naik, Chitre, Bhalla, and Rajan (2019) evaluated a similar program in the Indian state of Karnataka and also found positive effects on learning outcomes, but it is not clear whether those effects are due to the program or due to differences in the groups of students they compared to estimate the impact of the initiative.

In one context (Mexico), this type of distance education had positive long-term effects. Navarro-Sola (2019) took advantage of the staggered rollout of the telesecundarias (i.e., middle schools with lessons broadcasted through satellite TV) in 1968 to estimate its impact. The policy had short-term effects on students’ enrollment in school: For every telesecundaria per 50 children, 10 students enrolled in middle school and two pursued further education. It also had a long-term influence on the educational and employment trajectory of its graduates. Each additional year of education induced by the policy increased average income by nearly 18 percent. This effect was attributable to more graduates entering the labor force and shifting from agriculture and the informal sector. Similarly, Fabregas (2019) leveraged a later expansion of this policy in 1993 and found that each additional telesecundaria per 1,000 adolescents led to an average increase of 0.2 years of education, and a decline in fertility for women, but no conclusive evidence of long-term effects on labor market outcomes.

It is crucial to interpret these results keeping in mind the settings where the interventions were implemented. As we mention above, part of the reason why they have proven effective is that the “counterfactual” conditions for learning (i.e., what would have happened to learners in the absence of such programs) was either to not have access to schooling or to be exposed to low-quality instruction. School systems interested in taking up similar interventions should assess the extent to which their learners (or parts of their learner population) find themselves in similar conditions to the subjects of the studies above. This illustrates the importance of assessing the needs of a system before reviewing the evidence.

Preloaded hardware

Technology also seems well positioned to disseminate educational materials. Specifically, hardware (e.g., desktop computers, laptops, or tablets) could also help deliver educational software (e.g., word processing, reference texts, and/or games). In theory, these materials could not only undergo a quality assurance review (e.g., by curriculum specialists and educators), but also draw on the interactions with learners for adjustments (e.g., identifying areas needing reinforcement) and enable interactions between learners and educators.

In practice, however, most initiatives that have provided learners with free computers, laptops, and netbooks do not leverage any of the opportunities mentioned above. Instead, they install a standard set of educational materials and hope that learners find them helpful enough to take them up on their own. Students rarely do so, and instead use the laptops for recreational purposes—often, to the detriment of their learning (see, e.g., Malamud & Pop-Eleches, 2011). In fact, free netbook initiatives have not only consistently failed to improve academic achievement in math or language (e.g., Cristia et al., 2017), but they have had no impact on learners’ general computer skills (e.g., Beuermann et al., 2015). Some of these initiatives have had small impacts on cognitive skills, but the mechanisms through which those effects occurred remains unclear.

To our knowledge, the only successful deployment of a free laptop initiative was one in which a team of researchers equipped the computers with remedial software. Mo et al. (2013) evaluated a version of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program for grade 3 students in migrant schools in Beijing, China in which the laptops were loaded with a remedial software mapped onto the national curriculum for math (similar to the software products that we discuss under “practice exercises” below). After nine months, the program improved math achievement by 0.17 SDs and computer skills by 0.33 SDs. If a school system decides to invest in free laptops, this study suggests that the quality of the software on the laptops is crucial.

To date, however, the evidence suggests that children do not learn more from interacting with laptops than they do from textbooks. For example, Bando, Gallego, Gertler, and Romero (2016) compared the effect of free laptop and textbook provision in 271 elementary schools in disadvantaged areas of Honduras. After seven months, students in grades 3 and 6 who had received the laptops performed on par with those who had received the textbooks in math and language. Further, even if textbooks essentially become obsolete at the end of each school year, whereas laptops can be reloaded with new materials for each year, the costs of laptop provision (not just the hardware, but also the technical assistance, Internet, and training associated with it) are not yet low enough to make them a more cost-effective way of delivering content to learners.

Evidence on the provision of tablets equipped with software is encouraging but limited. For example, de Hoop et al. (2020) evaluated a composite intervention for first grade students in Zambia’s Eastern Province that combined infrastructure (electricity via solar power), hardware (projectors and tablets), and educational materials (lesson plans for educators and interactive lessons for learners, both loaded onto the tablets and mapped onto the official Zambian curriculum). After 14 months, the intervention had improved student early-grade reading by 0.4 SDs, oral vocabulary scores by 0.25 SDs, and early-grade math by 0.22 SDs. It also improved students’ achievement by 0.16 on a locally developed assessment. The multifaceted nature of the program, however, makes it challenging to identify the components that are driving the positive effects. Pitchford (2015) evaluated an intervention that provided tablets equipped with educational “apps,” to be used for 30 minutes per day for two months to develop early math skills among students in grades 1 through 3 in Lilongwe, Malawi. The evaluation found positive impacts in math achievement, but the main study limitation is that it was conducted in a single school.

Facilitating differentiated instruction

Another way in which technology may improve educational outcomes is by facilitating the delivery of differentiated or individualized instruction. Most developing countries massively expanded access to schooling in recent decades by building new schools and making education more affordable, both by defraying direct costs, as well as compensating for opportunity costs (Duflo, 2001; World Bank, 2018). These initiatives have not only rapidly increased the number of learners enrolled in school, but have also increased the variability in learner’ preparation for schooling. Consequently, a large number of learners perform well below grade-based curricular expectations (see, e.g., Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2011; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). These learners are unlikely to get much from “one-size-fits-all” instruction, in which a single educator delivers instruction deemed appropriate for the middle (or top) of the achievement distribution (Banerjee & Duflo, 2011). Technology could potentially help these learners by providing them with: (a) instruction and opportunities for practice that adjust to the level and pace of preparation of each individual (known as “computer-adaptive learning” (CAL)); or (b) live, one-on-one tutoring.

Computer-adaptive learning

One of the main comparative advantages of technology is its ability to diagnose students’ initial learning levels and assign students to instruction and exercises of appropriate difficulty. No individual educator—no matter how talented—can be expected to provide individualized instruction to all learners in his/her class simultaneously . In this respect, technology is uniquely positioned to complement traditional teaching. This use of technology could help learners master basic skills and help them get more out of schooling.

Although many software products evaluated in recent years have been categorized as CAL, many rely on a relatively coarse level of differentiation at an initial stage (e.g., a diagnostic test) without further differentiation. We discuss these initiatives under the category of “increasing opportunities for practice” below. CAL initiatives complement an initial diagnostic with dynamic adaptation (i.e., at each response or set of responses from learners) to adjust both the initial level of difficulty and rate at which it increases or decreases, depending on whether learners’ responses are correct or incorrect.

Existing evidence on this specific type of programs is highly promising. Most famously, Banerjee et al. (2007) evaluated CAL software in Vadodara, in the Indian state of Gujarat, in which grade 4 students were offered two hours of shared computer time per week before and after school, during which they played games that involved solving math problems. The level of difficulty of such problems adjusted based on students’ answers. This program improved math achievement by 0.35 and 0.47 SDs after one and two years of implementation, respectively. Consistent with the promise of personalized learning, the software improved achievement for all students. In fact, one year after the end of the program, students assigned to the program still performed 0.1 SDs better than those assigned to a business as usual condition. More recently, Muralidharan, et al. (2019) evaluated a “blended learning” initiative in which students in grades 4 through 9 in Delhi, India received 45 minutes of interaction with CAL software for math and language, and 45 minutes of small group instruction before or after going to school. After only 4.5 months, the program improved achievement by 0.37 SDs in math and 0.23 SDs in Hindi. While all learners benefited from the program in absolute terms, the lowest performing learners benefited the most in relative terms, since they were learning very little in school.

We see two important limitations from this body of research. First, to our knowledge, none of these initiatives has been evaluated when implemented during the school day. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish the effect of the adaptive software from that of additional instructional time. Second, given that most of these programs were facilitated by local instructors, attempts to distinguish the effect of the software from that of the instructors has been mostly based on noncausal evidence. A frontier challenge in this body of research is to understand whether CAL software can increase the effectiveness of school-based instruction by substituting part of the regularly scheduled time for math and language instruction.

Live one-on-one tutoring

Recent improvements in the speed and quality of videoconferencing, as well as in the connectivity of remote areas, have enabled yet another way in which technology can help personalization: live (i.e., real-time) one-on-one tutoring. While the evidence on in-person tutoring is scarce in developing countries, existing studies suggest that this approach works best when it is used to personalize instruction (see, e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Banerji, Berry, & Shotland, 2015; Cabezas, Cuesta, & Gallego, 2011).

There are almost no studies on the impact of online tutoring—possibly, due to the lack of hardware and Internet connectivity in low- and middle-income countries. One exception is Chemin and Oledan (2020)’s recent evaluation of an online tutoring program for grade 6 students in Kianyaga, Kenya to learn English from volunteers from a Canadian university via Skype ( videoconferencing software) for one hour per week after school. After 10 months, program beneficiaries performed 0.22 SDs better in a test of oral comprehension, improved their comfort using technology for learning, and became more willing to engage in cross-cultural communication. Importantly, while the tutoring sessions used the official English textbooks and sought in part to help learners with their homework, tutors were trained on several strategies to teach to each learner’s individual level of preparation, focusing on basic skills if necessary. To our knowledge, similar initiatives within a country have not yet been rigorously evaluated.

Expanding opportunities for practice

A third way in which technology may improve the quality of education is by providing learners with additional opportunities for practice. In many developing countries, lesson time is primarily devoted to lectures, in which the educator explains the topic and the learners passively copy explanations from the blackboard. This setup leaves little time for in-class practice. Consequently, learners who did not understand the explanation of the material during lecture struggle when they have to solve homework assignments on their own. Technology could potentially address this problem by allowing learners to review topics at their own pace.

Practice exercises

Technology can help learners get more out of traditional instruction by providing them with opportunities to implement what they learn in class. This approach could, in theory, allow some learners to anchor their understanding of the material through trial and error (i.e., by realizing what they may not have understood correctly during lecture and by getting better acquainted with special cases not covered in-depth in class).

Existing evidence on practice exercises reflects both the promise and the limitations of this use of technology in developing countries. For example, Lai et al. (2013) evaluated a program in Shaanxi, China where students in grades 3 and 5 were required to attend two 40-minute remedial sessions per week in which they first watched videos that reviewed the material that had been introduced in their math lessons that week and then played games to practice the skills introduced in the video. After four months, the intervention improved math achievement by 0.12 SDs. Many other evaluations of comparable interventions have found similar small-to-moderate results (see, e.g., Lai, Luo, Zhang, Huang, & Rozelle, 2015; Lai et al., 2012; Mo et al., 2015; Pitchford, 2015). These effects, however, have been consistently smaller than those of initiatives that adjust the difficulty of the material based on students’ performance (e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Muralidharan, et al., 2019). We hypothesize that these programs do little for learners who perform several grade levels behind curricular expectations, and who would benefit more from a review of foundational concepts from earlier grades.

We see two important limitations from this research. First, most initiatives that have been evaluated thus far combine instructional videos with practice exercises, so it is hard to know whether their effects are driven by the former or the latter. In fact, the program in China described above allowed learners to ask their peers whenever they did not understand a difficult concept, so it potentially also captured the effect of peer-to-peer collaboration. To our knowledge, no studies have addressed this gap in the evidence.

Second, most of these programs are implemented before or after school, so we cannot distinguish the effect of additional instructional time from that of the actual opportunity for practice. The importance of this question was first highlighted by Linden (2008), who compared two delivery mechanisms for game-based remedial math software for students in grades 2 and 3 in a network of schools run by a nonprofit organization in Gujarat, India: one in which students interacted with the software during the school day and another one in which students interacted with the software before or after school (in both cases, for three hours per day). After a year, the first version of the program had negatively impacted students’ math achievement by 0.57 SDs and the second one had a null effect. This study suggested that computer-assisted learning is a poor substitute for regular instruction when it is of high quality, as was the case in this well-functioning private network of schools.

In recent years, several studies have sought to remedy this shortcoming. Mo et al. (2014) were among the first to evaluate practice exercises delivered during the school day. They evaluated an initiative in Shaanxi, China in which students in grades 3 and 5 were required to interact with the software similar to the one in Lai et al. (2013) for two 40-minute sessions per week. The main limitation of this study, however, is that the program was delivered during regularly scheduled computer lessons, so it could not determine the impact of substituting regular math instruction. Similarly, Mo et al. (2020) evaluated a self-paced and a teacher-directed version of a similar program for English for grade 5 students in Qinghai, China. Yet, the key shortcoming of this study is that the teacher-directed version added several components that may also influence achievement, such as increased opportunities for teachers to provide students with personalized assistance when they struggled with the material. Ma, Fairlie, Loyalka, and Rozelle (2020) compared the effectiveness of additional time-delivered remedial instruction for students in grades 4 to 6 in Shaanxi, China through either computer-assisted software or using workbooks. This study indicates whether additional instructional time is more effective when using technology, but it does not address the question of whether school systems may improve the productivity of instructional time during the school day by substituting educator-led with computer-assisted instruction.

Increasing learner engagement

Another way in which technology may improve education is by increasing learners’ engagement with the material. In many school systems, regular “chalk and talk” instruction prioritizes time for educators’ exposition over opportunities for learners to ask clarifying questions and/or contribute to class discussions. This, combined with the fact that many developing-country classrooms include a very large number of learners (see, e.g., Angrist & Lavy, 1999; Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2015), may partially explain why the majority of those students are several grade levels behind curricular expectations (e.g., Muralidharan, et al., 2019; Muralidharan & Zieleniak, 2014; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Technology could potentially address these challenges by: (a) using video tutorials for self-paced learning and (b) presenting exercises as games and/or gamifying practice.

Video tutorials

Technology can potentially increase learner effort and understanding of the material by finding new and more engaging ways to deliver it. Video tutorials designed for self-paced learning—as opposed to videos for whole class instruction, which we discuss under the category of “prerecorded lessons” above—can increase learner effort in multiple ways, including: allowing learners to focus on topics with which they need more help, letting them correct errors and misconceptions on their own, and making the material appealing through visual aids. They can increase understanding by breaking the material into smaller units and tackling common misconceptions.

In spite of the popularity of instructional videos, there is relatively little evidence on their effectiveness. Yet, two recent evaluations of different versions of the Khan Academy portal, which mainly relies on instructional videos, offer some insight into their impact. First, Ferman, Finamor, and Lima (2019) evaluated an initiative in 157 public primary and middle schools in five cities in Brazil in which the teachers of students in grades 5 and 9 were taken to the computer lab to learn math from the platform for 50 minutes per week. The authors found that, while the intervention slightly improved learners’ attitudes toward math, these changes did not translate into better performance in this subject. The authors hypothesized that this could be due to the reduction of teacher-led math instruction.

More recently, Büchel, Jakob, Kühnhanss, Steffen, and Brunetti (2020) evaluated an after-school, offline delivery of the Khan Academy portal in grades 3 through 6 in 302 primary schools in Morazán, El Salvador. Students in this study received 90 minutes per week of additional math instruction (effectively nearly doubling total math instruction per week) through teacher-led regular lessons, teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons, or similar lessons assisted by technical supervisors with no content expertise. (Importantly, the first group provided differentiated instruction, which is not the norm in Salvadorian schools). All three groups outperformed both schools without any additional lessons and classrooms without additional lessons in the same schools as the program. The teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons performed 0.24 SDs better, the supervisor-led lessons 0.22 SDs better, and the teacher-led regular lessons 0.15 SDs better, but the authors could not determine whether the effects across versions were different.

Together, these studies suggest that instructional videos work best when provided as a complement to, rather than as a substitute for, regular instruction. Yet, the main limitation of these studies is the multifaceted nature of the Khan Academy portal, which also includes other components found to positively improve learner achievement, such as differentiated instruction by students’ learning levels. While the software does not provide the type of personalization discussed above, learners are asked to take a placement test and, based on their score, educators assign them different work. Therefore, it is not clear from these studies whether the effects from Khan Academy are driven by its instructional videos or to the software’s ability to provide differentiated activities when combined with placement tests.

Games and gamification

Technology can also increase learner engagement by presenting exercises as games and/or by encouraging learner to play and compete with others (e.g., using leaderboards and rewards)—an approach known as “gamification.” Both approaches can increase learner motivation and effort by presenting learners with entertaining opportunities for practice and by leveraging peers as commitment devices.

There are very few studies on the effects of games and gamification in low- and middle-income countries. Recently, Araya, Arias Ortiz, Bottan, and Cristia (2019) evaluated an initiative in which grade 4 students in Santiago, Chile were required to participate in two 90-minute sessions per week during the school day with instructional math software featuring individual and group competitions (e.g., tracking each learner’s standing in his/her class and tournaments between sections). After nine months, the program led to improvements of 0.27 SDs in the national student assessment in math (it had no spillover effects on reading). However, it had mixed effects on non-academic outcomes. Specifically, the program increased learners’ willingness to use computers to learn math, but, at the same time, increased their anxiety toward math and negatively impacted learners’ willingness to collaborate with peers. Finally, given that one of the weekly sessions replaced regular math instruction and the other one represented additional math instructional time, it is not clear whether the academic effects of the program are driven by the software or the additional time devoted to learning math.

The prognosis:

How can school systems adopt interventions that match their needs.

Here are five specific and sequential guidelines for decisionmakers to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning.

1. Take stock of how your current schools, educators, and learners are engaging with technology .

Carry out a short in-school survey to understand the current practices and potential barriers to adoption of technology (we have included suggested survey instruments in the Appendices); use this information in your decisionmaking process. For example, we learned from conversations with current and former ministers of education from various developing regions that a common limitation to technology use is regulations that hold school leaders accountable for damages to or losses of devices. Another common barrier is lack of access to electricity and Internet, or even the availability of sufficient outlets for charging devices in classrooms. Understanding basic infrastructure and regulatory limitations to the use of education technology is a first necessary step. But addressing these limitations will not guarantee that introducing or expanding technology use will accelerate learning. The next steps are thus necessary.

“In Africa, the biggest limit is connectivity. Fiber is expensive, and we don’t have it everywhere. The continent is creating a digital divide between cities, where there is fiber, and the rural areas.  The [Ghanaian] administration put in schools offline/online technologies with books, assessment tools, and open source materials. In deploying this, we are finding that again, teachers are unfamiliar with it. And existing policies prohibit students to bring their own tablets or cell phones. The easiest way to do it would have been to let everyone bring their own device. But policies are against it.” H.E. Matthew Prempeh, Minister of Education of Ghana, on the need to understand the local context.

2. Consider how the introduction of technology may affect the interactions among learners, educators, and content .

Our review of the evidence indicates that technology may accelerate student learning when it is used to scale up access to quality content, facilitate differentiated instruction, increase opportunities for practice, or when it increases learner engagement. For example, will adding electronic whiteboards to classrooms facilitate access to more quality content or differentiated instruction? Or will these expensive boards be used in the same way as the old chalkboards? Will providing one device (laptop or tablet) to each learner facilitate access to more and better content, or offer students more opportunities to practice and learn? Solely introducing technology in classrooms without additional changes is unlikely to lead to improved learning and may be quite costly. If you cannot clearly identify how the interactions among the three key components of the instructional core (educators, learners, and content) may change after the introduction of technology, then it is probably not a good idea to make the investment. See Appendix A for guidance on the types of questions to ask.

3. Once decisionmakers have a clear idea of how education technology can help accelerate student learning in a specific context, it is important to define clear objectives and goals and establish ways to regularly assess progress and make course corrections in a timely manner .

For instance, is the education technology expected to ensure that learners in early grades excel in foundational skills—basic literacy and numeracy—by age 10? If so, will the technology provide quality reading and math materials, ample opportunities to practice, and engaging materials such as videos or games? Will educators be empowered to use these materials in new ways? And how will progress be measured and adjusted?

4. How this kind of reform is approached can matter immensely for its success.

It is easy to nod to issues of “implementation,” but that needs to be more than rhetorical. Keep in mind that good use of education technology requires thinking about how it will affect learners, educators, and parents. After all, giving learners digital devices will make no difference if they get broken, are stolen, or go unused. Classroom technologies only matter if educators feel comfortable putting them to work. Since good technology is generally about complementing or amplifying what educators and learners already do, it is almost always a mistake to mandate programs from on high. It is vital that technology be adopted with the input of educators and families and with attention to how it will be used. If technology goes unused or if educators use it ineffectually, the results will disappoint—no matter the virtuosity of the technology. Indeed, unused education technology can be an unnecessary expenditure for cash-strapped education systems. This is why surveying context, listening to voices in the field, examining how technology is used, and planning for course correction is essential.

5. It is essential to communicate with a range of stakeholders, including educators, school leaders, parents, and learners .

Technology can feel alien in schools, confuse parents and (especially) older educators, or become an alluring distraction. Good communication can help address all of these risks. Taking care to listen to educators and families can help ensure that programs are informed by their needs and concerns. At the same time, deliberately and consistently explaining what technology is and is not supposed to do, how it can be most effectively used, and the ways in which it can make it more likely that programs work as intended. For instance, if teachers fear that technology is intended to reduce the need for educators, they will tend to be hostile; if they believe that it is intended to assist them in their work, they will be more receptive. Absent effective communication, it is easy for programs to “fail” not because of the technology but because of how it was used. In short, past experience in rolling out education programs indicates that it is as important to have a strong intervention design as it is to have a solid plan to socialize it among stakeholders.

Beyond reopening: A leapfrog moment to transform education?

On September 14, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) will host a webinar to discuss strategies, including around the effective use of education technology, for ensuring resilient schools in the long term and to launch a new education technology playbook “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?”

file-pdf Full Playbook – Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all? file-pdf References file-pdf Appendix A – Instruments to assess availability and use of technology file-pdf Appendix B – List of reviewed studies file-pdf Appendix C – How may technology affect interactions among students, teachers, and content?

About the Authors

Alejandro j. ganimian, emiliana vegas, frederick m. hess.

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Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom: A Guide for Educators

By andy minshew.

• January 23, 2020

Technology has done more to change school curriculum and practices than nearly anything else—and in such a short amount of time! While it can be hard to keep up with every trend in educational technology, the mindset you have when it comes to classroom tech matters just as much as which ones you use. By learning to view it as a means of enhancing your lessons and resources, you can provide your students with tools and opportunities they may not otherwise access.

So, why and how should you use technology in your classroom? Read on to discover the impact of technology in education and how to get the most from its unique benefits.

What Is the Proper Role of Technology in the Classroom?

If you struggle to use technology in your classroom, you’re not alone. Many educators aren’t motivated to use digital resources in class, often because they’re unsure how to use them effectively or are unaware of the benefits.[1] In such cases, it’s easy to question not only how to make technology useful, but also whether technology should be used in schools at all.

Even with the latest and best digital technology, classrooms will not benefit unless the students and faculty understand how to use it.[15] In fact, educational technology should never be viewed as a perfect resource to teach your students everything they need to know to succeed. Instead, view it as a tool that can inform and supplement lessons, and even then, only if teachers and administrators are well trained in its use.

While technology can be an excellent resource in a classroom, it’s important to set limitations. Technology—no matter how good—should never be a substitute for face-to-face interaction with a teacher or classmates.[4] Technology is best used to augment non-digital lessons rather than the other way around. The goal when using technology should be to enhance your teaching rather than replace it.[6]

Benefits of Using Tech and Digital Media in Education

With the help of technology, you can introduce your classroom to opportunities and resources they may not otherwise be able to access.[5] In fact, this is one of the greatest ways technology has changed education. You may not be able to take your students to one of NASA’s space centers to witness a rocket launch, for example, but you can teach them all about rockets using resources on NASA’s website . Video clips, educational games, and virtual simulations are just a few examples of technology resources you can use to engage and educate in the classroom.

Plus, the vast majority of today’s careers require at least some digital skills (which include anything from complex skills like coding to simpler ones like composing and sending emails). Using tech in class can prepare students to successfully enter the workforce after graduation.[4] Even though the technology is likely to change from their early school years to the time they start their first career, teaching digital literacy in elementary school is a great way to get students started.

Why else is understanding how to use technology in the classroom important? Using technology alongside non-digital lessons can have many academic and behavioral benefits for your students, including:[2,7,11,12]

• Longer attention span
• Increased intrinsic motivation to learn
• Higher classroom participation and student engagement
• Greater academic achievement
• Stronger digital literacy

And finally, the benefits of classroom technology can expand far beyond the classroom and right into your students’ homes.[4] Rather than handing out paper worksheets, you can send your students online lessons or activities to complete at their own convenience. This practice provides better flexibility, plus the opportunity for you to provide audio or video clips alongside homework assignments. Additionally, if you have under-resourced students in your classroom, you may be able to supplement the resources available to their families by providing take-home technology.

How to Get the Most from Technology in Schools

One of the major concerns parents and educators have with classroom technology is how to limit excessive screen time. The American Association of Pediatrics suggests the following screen time recommendations by age. Keep these guidelines in mind when you teach lessons that involve screen time in your classroom:[17]

• 2–5 years old : No more than one hour of high-quality digital activities or programming
• 6 or older : Consistent limits to prevent screen time getting in the way of sleep, physical activity, or other healthy behaviors

Whenever possible, prioritize active digital screen time over passive.[16] Active screen time, like playing an educational game or learning a new digital skill, engages a student’s mind or body in a way that involves more than observation. Passive screen time—think watching a video or listening to an online lecture—involves limited interaction or engagement with the technology. Active digital activities are more likely to help your students experience new concepts, and they encourage your class to work together during the lesson.

Although teachers at under-resourced and rural schools are less likely to use technology, any tech you have available can greatly add to the opportunities you provide your students.[13, 18] Technology can remove some of the physical or financial barriers to educational resources and experiences.[17] If you’re unable to go on a field trip, for example, you can access plenty of virtual field trips at no cost.[16] Use the technology you do have to supplement your lessons and provide students with information you may not otherwise be able to access.

And finally, use school technology to teach your students digital citizenship .[14] Broadly defined, digital citizenship is the safe, ethical, informed, and responsible use of technology.[16] It encompasses skills like internet safety, setting healthy screen time habits, and communicating with others online. Lessons that involve digital citizenship can help a student use technology responsibly well beyond their elementary school years.

6 Quick Tips for Using Technology in the Classroom

The benefits of technology in education can revolutionize your classroom, but only when used intentionally. All it takes is a little time and personal training to help you understand the ins and outs of useful classroom tech.

Keep these six strategies and ideas in mind to help you get the most out of your classroom technology:

• Always use technology or learning programs yourself before trying it with your students so you can troubleshoot any issues in advance.[9]
• Most of today’s students are digital natives and have grown up around technology for their entire life. Listen to what your students know about technology and ask them for tip. They may just teach you something new![8]
• Use digital resources (like apps, texts, or social media groups) to keep parents informed about class activities and upcoming assignments.[5]
• Prioritize active digital activities, like online learning games or interactive lessons, over passive activities (like watching a video).
• If you’re an administrator, schedule a faculty training session on how to use your school’s technology and answer any questions.[10]
• Focus your technology-based lessons on teaching your students digital citizenship , or skills that will help them thoughtfully and effectively navigate digital media.[14]
• Groff, J., and Mouza, C. A Framework for Addressing Challenges to Classroom Technology Use. AACE Journal, January 2008, 16(1), pp. 21-46.
• Levy, L.A. 7 Reasons Why Digital Literacy is Important for Teachers. Retrieved from usc.edu: https://www.rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/teacher-digital-literacy/.
• Van Dusen, L.M., and Worthen, B.R. Can Integrated Instructional Technology Transform the Classroom? Educational Leadership, October 1995, 53(2), pp. 28-33.
• Rosenberg, J. Technology in the classroom: Friend or Foe? Retrieved from huffpost.com: hhttps://www.huffpost.com/entry/technology-in-the-classro_2_b_2018558..
• Venezky, R.L. Technology in the classroom: steps toward a new vision. Education, Communication & Information, 2004, 4(1), pp. 3-21.
• Buckenmeyer, J.A. Beyond Computers In The Classroom: Factors Related To Technology Adoption To Enhance Teaching And Learning. Contemporary Issues in Education Research. April 2010, 3(4), pp. 27-36.
• Bester, G., and Brand, L. The effect of technology on learner attention and achievement in the classroom. South African Journal of Education, 2013, 33(2), pp. 1-15.
• Reissman, H. 7 smart ways to use technology in classrooms. Retrieved from ted.com: https://ideas.ted.com/7-smart-ways-to-use-technology-in-classrooms/.
• Edutopia Staff. How to Integrate Technology. Retrieved from edutopia.org: https://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-guide-implementation. Winters-Robinson, E. How Tech Can Engage Students, Simplify the School Day and Save Time for Teachers. Retrieved from edsurge.com: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-10-15-how-tech-can-engage-students-simplify-the-school-day-and-save-time-for-teachers.
• Couse, L.J., and Chen, D.W. A Tablet Computer for Young Children? Exploring its Viability for Early Childhood Education. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 2010, 43(1), pp. 75-96.
• Filer, D. Everyone’s Answering: Using Technology to Increase Classroom Participation. Nursing Education Perspectives, 2010, 31(4), pp. 247-250.
• Friedman, S. How Teachers Use Technology in the Classroom. Retrieved from thejournal.com: https://thejournal.com/articles/2019/04/15/how-teachers-use-technology-in-the-classroom.aspx.
• Mace, N. 8 Strategies to Manage the 21st Century Classroom . Retrieved from education.cu-portland.edu: https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/using-classroom-technology/.
• Keswani, B., Patni, P., and Banerjee, D. Role Of Technology In Education: A 21st Century Approach. Journal of Commerce and Instructional Technology, 2008, 8, pp.54-59.
• The Office of Educational Technology. Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education: 2017 National Education Technology Plan Update . Retrieved from tech.ed.gov: tech.ed.gov/files/2017/01/NETP17.pdf.
• Courville, K. Technology and its use in Education: Present Roles and Future Prospects. 2011 Recovery School District Technology Summit, 2011, pp. 1-19.
• Klopfer, E., Osterweil, S., Groff, J., and Haas, J. Using the technology of today, in the classroom today: the instructional power of digital games, social networking, simulations, and how teachers can leverage them . The Education Arcade, 2009, pp. 1-20.
• American Academy of Pediatrics. American Academy of Pediatrics Announces New Recommendations for Children’s Media Use. Retrieved from aap.org: https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/American-Academy-of-Pediatrics-Announces-New-Recommendations-for-Childrens-Media-Use.aspx.

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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Incorporating digital tools into the classroom can greatly enhance education. Technology can offer personalized learning, interactive lessons, and access to vast amounts of information. 

Knowing where to start to put in place these tools can be challenging. Technology integration in the classroom begins with assessing current skills. Developing technology skills in a Master of Education (MEd) program can help teachers set the foundation for adding technology to daily lessons and delivering long-term benefits to students.

Benefits of Technology in Classrooms

Technology in classrooms has proven to be a game changer for many educators. According to an EdWeek Research Center survey, 30% of teachers said it has greatly affected their focus on students’ academic needs; 26% noted significant benefits. 

Another survey by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) found that 77% of teachers used technology daily in communication and 71% in planning and preparation. The survey also revealed that 66% of teachers believed that students benefited from educational technology. 

Some have concerns about using technology. However, technology integration in the classroom, when done correctly, has proven to create dynamic classroom environments. For students, this translates into richer learning experiences. It can also foster better relationships between teachers and students.

6 Steps to Integrate Technology into the Classroom

Educators can effectively incorporate technology into their classrooms to enhance the educational journey for their students and themselves. Here are six strategies for technology integration in the classroom.

1. Assess Your Current Technological Skills

Educators need to know how skilled they are in the use of technology in the classroom. Self-assessment tools help gauge this skill. For example, questionnaires can help them assess their competencies. It can provide detailed insights and tailored recommendations for improvement. 

Peer reviews also help teachers with technology integration in education. Helpful feedback from colleagues can foster growth, and it encourages sharing among educators. After understanding their skill level, they can access various types of training resources that can help them improve their technology skills.

2. Set Clear Learning Objectives and Goals

Teachers can integrate technology into the classroom by setting clear goals. They should align technology with standards and define measurable outcomes. For example, measurable learning outcomes can state what students should know, do, and value. 

Teachers must also ensure that the technology supports curriculum standards and objectives. They need to see how technology can help achieve educational objectives. Objectives can include improving instruction, streamlining administration, and boosting student engagement. Regular assessments are crucial to ensure that technology remains aligned with objectives and goals.

3. Choose the Right Technology Tools

Enhancing the learning experience and meeting educational objectives requires the right tools. Feedback from colleagues and students is crucial in selecting and implementing technology tools. Teachers can refer to peer reviews and student feedback to help assess the effectiveness of technology in the classroom. 

Using technology is often trial and error, so educators should expect a learning curve with new tools. They should also assess their engagement and new learning opportunities. Continuous testing and assessment help refine strategies for technology integration in the classroom.

4. Implement Technology in Daily Lessons

Using technology in daily lessons can change the learning experience, but teachers must find the right mix. They must balance traditional teaching and technology. 

Complementing traditional methods with technology can boost student engagement and teach valuable skills. Interactive elements can cater to diverse learning styles. Tools, such as quizzes, and multimedia elements, such as videos and interactive presentations., can make lessons dynamic and fun.

5. Manage Classroom Technology

Managing technology well can enhance learning, and it can help keep classrooms safe for all students. Creating a supportive environment for technology use involves careful planning and organization. 

Managing and integrating technology in the classroom requires troubleshooting issues when they arise. For example, a teacher may have to address connectivity issues or hardware malfunctions. Protecting student data and online safety is key. Teachers as well as students must be aware of cybersecurity best practices and online safety.

6. Evaluate and Adapt

Ongoing evaluation and adaptation are crucial for effective technology use in education. Educators use real-time data to track resources, ensure instruction meets diverse needs, and make timely decisions.

Collecting feedback refines technology tools and materials, enhancing learning experiences. Monitoring performance metrics allows educators to make necessary changes and promote continuous learning and improvement.

Key Technology Skills for Teachers

Technology integration in the classroom requires several essential skills. Digital literacy is fundamental. It includes understanding and using digital tools and platforms, along with basic troubleshooting.

Familiarity with learning management systems, educational software, and apps that support interactive learning and student engagement is also important. Teachers must be able to collect, interpret, and use data from these tools to assess student progress and adapt instruction. 

Additionally, ensuring digital safety requires cybersecurity awareness. This includes using strong passwords and maintaining secure networks. It also includes educating students on safe online practices. 

Multimedia skills enable teachers to make and add engaging content, such as videos and interactive presentations. Adaptability is key—teachers must keep learning, adjusting their teaching methods and embracing new technologies and opportunities, such as artificial intelligence (AI) in special education . 

Put Technology into Practice to Enhance Learning

Well-integrated technology can profoundly impact education by enhancing digital literacy and career readiness. Educators have an incredible opportunity to make a meaningful impact on the lives of students with technology. They can improve their skills and credentials by earning a MEd degree from Wilson College Online . 

Learn how enrolling in the MEd program, taught by real practitioners and educators, can help you prepare with cutting-edge skills to integrate technology into the classroom.

Recommended Readings

How to Become a School Principal

How to Become a Kindergarten Teacher

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American Federation of Teachers, Nation’s Teachers and Parents Overwhelmingly Embrace Education Technology in Classrooms but Want Guardrails in Place  

EdTech, “Technology in the Classroom & the Benefits for K-12 Schools”

Education Week, “A Majority of New Teachers Aren’t Prepared to Teach With Technology. What’s the Fix?”

Education Week, “How Educators Feel About the Impact of Technology, in Charts”

Edutopia, “Managing Tech Integration in Your Classroom”

ELearning Industry, “Using Technology in the Classroom: Benefits and Top Tips”

GoGuardian, Benefits and Challenges of Technology in the Classroom

Lesson Bud, Integrating Technology in the Classroom: Best Practices

PowerGistics, Technology Plans for Schools

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Center for Teaching

Effective educational videos.

Video has become an important part of higher education. It is integrated as part of traditional courses, serves as a cornerstone of many blended courses, and is often the main information delivery mechanism in MOOCs. Several meta-analyses have shown that technology can enhance learning (e.g., Schmid et al., 2014), and multiple studies have shown that video, specifically, can be a highly effective educational tool (e.g., Kay, 2012; Allen and Smith, 2012; Lloyd and Robertson, 2012; Rackaway, 2012; Hsin and Cigas, 2013). In order for video to serve as a productive part of a learning experience, however, it is important for the instructor to consider three elements for video design and implementation:

Together, these considerations provide a solid base for the development and use of video as an effective educational tool.

Cognitive load

These definitions have implications for design of educational materials and experiences. Specifically, instructors should seek to minimize extraneous cognitive load and should consider the intrinsic cognitive load of the subject when constructing learning experiences, carefully structuring them when the material has high intrinsic load. Because working memory has a limited capacity, and information must be processed by working memory to be encoded in long term memory, it’s important to prompt working memory to accept, process, and send to long-term memory only the most crucial information (Ibrahim et al., 2012).

Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning

The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning builds on the Cognitive Load Theory, noting that working memory has two channels for information acquisition and processing: a visual/pictorial channel and an auditory/verbal processing channel (Mayer and Moreno, 2003). Although each channel has limited capacity, the use of the two channels can facilitate the integration of new information into existing cognitive structures. By using both channels, working memory’s capacity is maximized—but either channel can be overwhelmed by high cognitive load. Thus design strategies that manage the cognitive load for both channels in multimedia learning materials promise to enhance learning. In addition to the two key assumptions of dual-channel processing and limited working memory capacity, the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning also articulates the goal of any learning as “meaningful learning,” which requires cognitive processing that includes paying attention to the presented material, mentally organizing the presented material into a coherent structure, and integrating the presented material with existing knowledge (Mayer and Moreno 2003) 1 .

Recommendations

These theories give rise to several recommendations about educational videos. Based on the premise that effective learning experiences minimize extraneous cognitive load, optimize germane cognitive load, and manage intrinsic cognitive lead, four effective practices emerge:

Signaling Segmenting Weeding Matching modality

• Signaling , which is also known as cueing (deKoning et al., 2009), is the use of on-screen text or symbols to highlight important information. For example, signaling may be provided by the appearance of two or three key words (e.g., Mayer and Johnson, 2008; Ibrahim et al., 2012), a change in color or contrast (e.g., deKoning et al., 2009), or a symbol that draws attention to a region of a screen (e.g., an arrow; deKoning et al., 2009). By highlighting the key information, it helps direct learner attention, thus targeting particular elements of the video for processing in the working memory. This can reduce  extraneous load by helping novice learners with the task of determining which elements within a complex tool are important, and it can also increase germane load by emphasizing the organization of and connections within the information. Mayer and Moreno (2003) and deKoning et al. (2009) have shown that this approach improves students ability to retain and transfer new knowledge from animations, and Ibrahim et al. (2012) have shown that these effects extend to video.
• Segmenting  is the chunking of information to allow learners to engage with small pieces of new information as well as to give them control over the flow of new information. As such, it manages intrinsic load and can also increase germane load by emphasizing the structure of the information. Segmenting can be accomplished both by making shorter videos and by including “click forward” pauses within a video, such as using YouTube Annotate or HapYak to provide students with a question and prompting them to click forward after completion. Both types of segmenting have been shown to be important for student engagement with videos (Guo et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2005), and learning from video (Ibrahim 2012; Zhang et al., 2006).
• Weeding  is the elimination of interesting but extraneous information from the video, that is, information that does not contribute to the learning goal. For example, music, complex backgrounds, or extra features within an animation require the learner to judge whether he should be paying attention to them, which increases extraneous load and can reduce learning. Importantly, information that increases extraneous load changes as the learner moves from novice toward expert status. That is, information that may be extraneous for a novice learner may actually be helpful for a more expert-like learner, while information that is essential for a novice may serve as an already-known distraction for an expert. Thus, it’s important that the instructor consider her learners when weeding educational videos, including information that is necessary for their processing but eliminating information that they don’t need to reach the learning goal and that may overload their working memory. Ibrahim (2012) has shown that this treatment can improve retention and transfer of new information from video.
• Matching modality  is the process of using both the audio/verbal channel and the visual/pictorial channel to convey new information, fitting the particular type of information to the most appropriate channel. For example, showing an animation of a process on screen while narrating it uses both channels to elucidate the process, thus giving the learner dual and complementary streams of information to highlight features that should be processed in working memory. In contrast, showing the animation while also showing printed text uses only the visual channel and thus overloads this channel and impedes learning (Mayer and Moreno, 2003). In another example, using a “talking head” video to explain a complex process makes productive use only of the verbal channel (because watching the speaker does not convey additional information), whereas a Khan-style tutorial that provides symbolic sketches to illustrate the verbal explanation uses both channels to give complementary information. Using both channels to convey appropriate and complementary information has been shown to increase students’ retention and ability to transfer information (Mayer and Moreno, 2003) and to increase student engagement with videos (Thomson et al., 2014; Guo et al., 2014).

The table below gives a brief summary of how and why to use these practices.

Student engagement

One of the most important aspects of creating educational videos is to include elements that help promote student engagement. If students don’t watch the videos, they can’t learn from them.  Lessons on promoting student engagement derive from earlier research on multimedia instruction as well as more recent work on videos used within MOOCs.

• Use a conversational style .  Called the  personalization principle by Richard Meyer, the use of conversational rather than formal language during multimedia instruction has been shown to have a large effect on students’ learning, perhaps because a conversational style encourages students to develop sense of social partnership with the narrator that leads to greater engagement and effort (Meyer, 2008).
• Speak relatively quickly and with enthusiasm .   In their study examining student engagement with MOOC videos, Guo and colleagues observed that student engagement was dependent on the narrator’s speaking rate, with student engagement increasing as speaking rate increased (2014). It can be tempting for video narrators to speak slowly to help ensure that students grasp important ideas, but including in-video questions , “chapters”, and speed control can give students control over this feature—and increasing narrator speed appears to promote student interest.
• Make sure the material feels like it is for these students in this class.  One of the benefits for instructors in creating educational videos is the ability to reuse them for other classes and other semesters. When reusing videos, it’s important to package them with text outside the video to contextualize them for the particular class for which they are being used. Further, it’s important to create them for the type of environment in which they will be used. Guo and colleagues examined student engagement with MOOC videos that were created by chopping up videotaped lectures that had been presented in a face-to-face class (Guo et al., 2014). Student engagement was significantly less than when lectures were created with the MOOC environment in mind.
• Match modality.   While this consideration is important for managing cognitive load, it is also relevant to promoting student engagement. When telling a story, it can be very effective to show the storyteller’s face or to show an animation of the story (see Jay Clayton example).   When solving a problem, Khan academy-style videos are particularly helpful, showing students step-by-step with narration how to work through the problem (Guo et al., 2014). When teaching about an invisible phenomenon, it can be helpful to provide an illustration. In each case, providing visual elements that add to the lesson can not only promote student understanding but also engagement with the lesson.

Active learning

To help students get the most out of an educational video, it’s important to provide tools to help them process the information and to monitor their own understanding. There are multiple ways to do this effectively.

• Use guiding questions .  Lawson and colleagues examined the impact of guiding questions on students’ learning from a video about social psychology in an introductory psychology class (2006). Building on work from Kreiner (1997), they had students in some sections of the course watch the video with no special instructions, while students in other sections of the course were provided with eight guiding questions to consider while watching. The students who answered the guiding questions while watching the video scored significantly higher on a later test.

• Make video part of a larger homework assignment .  Faizan Zubair and Mary Keithly are each part of theBOLD Fellows program at Vanderbilt University, in which graduate students develop online learning materials for incorporation into a faculty mentor’s course. Faizan developed videos on that were embedded in a larger homework assignment in Paul Laibinis’ Chemical Engineering class, and found that students valued the videos and that the videos improved students’ understanding of difficult concepts when compared to a semester when the videos were not used in conjunction with the homework. Mary worked with Kathy Friedman to develop videos and follow-up questions to serve as pre-class preparation in a genetics class . Although there was no apparent change to learning outcomes in the class, students valued the videos and post-video questions as learning tools and thought that they were effective for promoting student understanding.

The important thing to keep in mind is that watching a video can be a passive experience, much as reading can be. To make the most of our educational videos, we need to help students do the processing and self-evaluation that will lead to the learning we want to see. The particular way you do this should be guided by goals of the course and the norms of your discipline.

Videos can be an effective tool in your teaching tool kit. When incorporating videos into a lesson, it’s important to keep in mind the three key components of cognitive load, elements that impact engagement, and elements that promote active learning. Luckily, consideration of these elements converges on a few recommendations:

• Keep videos brief and targeted on learning goals.
• Use audio and visual elements to convey appropriate parts of an explanation; make them complementary rather than redundant.
• Use signaling to highlight important ideas or concepts.
• Use a conversational, enthusiastic style to enhance engagement.
• Embed videos in a context of active learning by using guiding questions, interactive elements, or associated homework assignments.

Allen WA and Smith AR (2012). Effects of video podcasting on psychomotor and cognitive performance, attitudes and study behavior of student physical therapists. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 49, 401-414.

deKoning B, Tabbers H, Rikers R, and Paas F (2009). Towards a framework for attention cueing in instructional animations: Guidelines for research and design. Educational Psychology Review 21, 113-140.

deJong  T (2010). Cognitive load theory, educational research, and instructional design: Some food for thought. Instructional Science 38, 105-134.

Guo PJ, Kim J, and Robin R (2014). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of MOOC videos. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale (L@S 2014) ; found at http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/other-pubs/las2014-pguo-engagement.pdf .

Hsin WJ and Cigas J (2013). Short videos improve student learning in online education. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 28, 253-259.

Ibrahim M, Antonenko PD, Greenwood CM, and Wheeler D (2012). Effects of segmenting, signaling, and weeding on learning from educational video. Learning, Media and Technology 37, 220-235.

Kay RH (2012). Exploring the use of video podcasts in education: A comprehensive review of the literature. Computers in Human Behavior 28, 820-831.

Kreiner DS (1997). Guided notes and interactive methods for teaching with videotapes. Teaching of Psychology 24, 183-185.

Lawson TJ, Bodle JH, Houlette MA, and Haubner RR (2006). Guiding questions enhance student learning from educational videos. Teaching of Psychology 33, 31-33.

Lloyd SA and Robertson CL (2012). Screencast tutorials enhance student learning of statistics. Teaching of Psychology 39, 67-71.

Mayer RE (2001). Multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mayer RE (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. Cognition and Instruction 19, 177-213.

Mayer RE and Johnson CI (2008). Revising the redundancy principle in multimedia learning. Journal of Educational Psychology 100, 380-386.

Mayer RE and Moreno R (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist 38, 43-52.

Rackaway C (2012). Video killed the textbook star? Use of multimedia supplements to enhance student learning. Journal of Political Science Education 8, 189-200.

Schmid RF, Bernard RM, Borokhovski E, Tamim RM, Abrami PC, Surkes MA, Wade CA, and Woods J. (2014). The effects of technology use in postsecondary education: A meta-analysis of classroom applications. Computers & Education, 72, 271-291.

Sweller  J (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science 12, 257-285.

Sweller J (1989). Cognitive technology: Some procedures for facilitating learning and problem-solving in mathematics and science. Journal of Educational Psychology 81, 457-466.

Sweller J (1994). Cognitive load theory, learning difficulty, and instructional design. Learning and Instruction 4, 295-312.

Thomsen A, Bridgstock R, and Willems C (2014). ‘Teachers flipping out’ beyond the online lecture: Maximising the educational potential of video. Journal of Learning Design 7, 67-78.

Vural OF (2013). The impact of a question-embedded video-based learning tool on e-learning. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice 13, 1315-1323.

Zhang D, Zhou L, Briggs RO, and Nunamaker JF Jr. (2006). Instructional video in e-learning: Assessing the impact of interactive video on learning effectiveness. Information & Management 43, 15-27.

1 Mayer and Moreno talk about essential processing, incidental processing, and representational holding as rough equivalents of germane load, extraneous load, and intrinsic load.

Cite this guide:

Brame, C.J. (2015). Effective educational videos. Retrieved [todaysdate] from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/effective-educational-videos/.

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Earn a Learning and Technology, MAEd, and Single Subject Teaching Credential

Learn how to effectively design and infuse technology-embedded curriculum for today’s digital learner. Graduate with the tools you’ll need to design and implement instructional experiences that integrate technology throughout the curriculum. Gain essential skills and knowledge in a variety of areas, including instructional video, web tools for enhanced interactive learning, digital communications, and emerging trends in the field. Additionally, you will earn the Single Subject Teaching Credential and gain access to teaching students in a departmentalized classroom. You’ll be well prepared through rigorous coursework and hands-on fieldwork experiences.

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Start times are available throughout the year—fall, spring, and summer. The upcoming application deadlines are:

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• Gain the skills needed to meet the learning needs of students in today’s classrooms.
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Azusa Pacific University’s Master of Arts in Education: Learning and Technology and Single Subject Teaching Credential program prepares candidates to earn a Master of Arts in Education: Learning and Technology degree along with an embedded California Single Subject Preliminary Teaching Credential. This program includes comprehensive foundation courses emphasizing teaching and educational methods, as well as specialization courses providing content required for the single subject credential. Practical classroom and fieldwork experiences provide application to theory, preparing candidates to teach in diverse settings. Advanced coursework in the emphasis area of learning and technology provides candidates with the knowledge to effectively design and infuse technology-embedded curriculum into departmentalized teaching and learning environments. The mode of delivery includes face-to-face instruction, campus-based classes, online courses, and clinical experiences.

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Prospective students may attend an informational meeting prior to submitting an application. Complete details regarding admission and specific program requirements, advising, and general information are discussed at information meetings. For details on upcoming dates, meeting locations, or registration, check the School of Education's  information meeting calendar  or call (626) 815-5376.

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The  university graduate  and program admission requirements below must be met before an application is considered complete.

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• Two recommendations that assess competence and character. Appropriate recommendations include those who have supervised the applicant’s leadership or teaching experience with children/youth in public or private settings, an employer who directly supervised the applicant, or one faculty/academic reference. References from neighbors, friends, and relatives are not appropriate, unless they have served as supervisors. Additional letters are optional.
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View a complete list of   university fees .

All stated financial information is subject to change. Contact the Student Services Center at (626) 815-2020 for more information.

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Military members—and in some cases their spouses and dependents—qualify for   financial assistance   covering tuition, housing, and books. Azusa Pacific is a Yellow Ribbon University and Military Friendly School, so you can be confident that you’ll receive the benefits and flexibility you need to complete your education.

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Students must be in good academic standing and maintain satisfactory academic progress with a minimum cumulative grade-point average (GPA) of 3.0. Students must be enrolled at least half-time. If qualifications are met, the discount may be renewed each term. APU will pay $500 per term (up to $2,000 over the course of the program). This discount cannot be combined with other institutional aid. Contact   Student Financial Services   for complete eligibility details.

Notes on Eligibility: The School of Education’s doctoral program (Ed.D. in Educational Leadership) and the Clear Administrative Services Credential (CASC) program are not eligible for the alumni tuition discount. APU doctoral alumni are also not eligible for the School of Education alumni discount. Additionally, the alumni discount cannot be combined with other institutional aid, such as School of Education scholarships. Students who are eligible for both may choose to receive either the alumni discount or an APU scholarship. Contact   Student Financial Services   for complete eligibility details.

Note: Award and eligibility are applicable for the 2022-23 academic year and apply to students admitted beginning fall 2020. The discount is subject to change.

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• Azusa Pacific University is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC).
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• Further, our credential programs are accredited by California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC). 

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The Golden State Teacher Grant: An Overview and APU’s Connection

APU is proud to receive an allocation of Golden State Teacher Grant funds, funding education for prospective teachers to prepare them to make a difference in the schools that need them the most.

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After Record-Setting Year for Student Outcomes, WGU to Celebrate 100th Commencement in Salt Lake City

Healthcare Innovator Dr. Charles W. Sorenson to Receive Honorary Degree, ‘A La Latina’ podcast host Claudia Romo Edelman to Keynote

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SALT LAKE CITY, AUGUST 16, 2024 – Western Governors University (WGU) will celebrate its 100th commencement ceremony at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, at 9:30 a.m. MT Aug. 17.  More than 2,000 graduates from the record-breaking class of 2024 will be recognized. 

In academic year 2024, WGU conferred 50,168 degrees to 49,564 individuals , a historic milestone for the national online, competency-based, nonprofit university.   

“As we celebrate our 100th commencement and the extraordinary milestone of awarding more than 50,000 degrees in a single academic year, I can’t help but think back to our founding governors and I’m certain they couldn’t have anticipated the incredible impact WGU would have in transforming so many lives,” said WGU President Scott Pulsipher. “This achievement is a testament to the vision they set in motion just 27 years ago and the hard work of our staff, faculty, and of course, our students. As we move forward, we will honor that legacy by continuing to activate talent and expand opportunity for America’s diversity of learners.”

Honorary Degree to Celebrate a Visionary Leader

Dr. Charles W. Sorenson, founding director of the Intermountain Healthcare Leadership Institute, president and CEO emeritus of Intermountain Healthcare, and former Chair of WGU’s Board of Trustees, will be awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in recognition of his profound impacts within healthcare and education. Dr. Sorenson’s career exemplifies selfless service to improving individual’s lives, having led significant transformations in patient care practices and healthcare management, and being a strong advocate for equity in higher education. 

“I really love opportunities to help good people and good organizations that are changing the world for the better for others,” Dr. Sorenson said. “Western Governors University is that kind of a place, and the people at WGU are that kind of people because I'm convinced that they've got a model that is making higher education better for the future.”

WGU bestows honorary degrees on select individuals who exemplify the values and principles espoused by WGU and their achievements serve as inspiration for our graduating class and the broader community. 

Inspirational Keynote from a Global Advocate

Claudia Romo Edelman, a celebrated advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, will deliver the keynote address. As the founder and CEO of the We Are All Human Foundation and host of the "A La Latina" podcast, Romo Edelman brings a wealth of experience in promoting social change and empowering diverse communities.

A former diplomat and journalist, Romo Edelman is an expert on environmental, social and governance, particularly in mobilizing corporations to advance the Social Agenda with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. Her career includes three decades working for the United Nations, UNICEF, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She has participated in the creation and launch of global frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals and Product (RED). 

WGU is committed to expanding access to higher education for working adults and traditionally underserved student populations. Research indicates that many adults enroll or re-enroll in postsecondary education to improve their socioeconomic circumstances, seeking career changes, advancements, skill updates or personal growth opportunities.  

A look at the graduates at the Salt Lake City commencement:

37 percent are first-generation college graduates. 

37 percent identify as students of color. 

The average age is 37 years old. The youngest is 17 and the oldest is 75.

The average time to earn a degree was 2 years and 9 months. 

43 states will be represented. 

Ready to Start Your Journey?

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After Record-Setting Year for Student Outcomes, WGU to Celebrate 100th Commencement in Salt Lake City  

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NPO (Health System Policy & Evaluation) - (2406299)

IMPORTANT NOTICE:  Please note that the deadline for receipt of applications indicated above reflects your personal device's system settings.

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAMME

The objectives of the programme include: 1) conducting evidence syntheses on policy interventions to maximize efficiency, access and quality of essential health services and identifying suitable policy options for health system reforms; 2) strengthening national capacities to develop health policies, strategies and plans within the context of UHC and SDG which reflect the country's unique epidemiological and demographic profile, the level of economic and social development, status of health system, population's demands and expectations and partnership environment;3) improving the service delivery to ensure PHC-oriented health system delivers integrated, equitable, high-impact and people-centered health services with financial protection and resilience to address people's needs; and 4) conducting regular evaluation and analysis of national and subnational health systems and trends using comparable methods

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES

Under the overall guidance of WHO Representative and direct supervision of Public Health Administrator the incumbent will have the following responsibilities:

1. Provide assistance to Ministry of Health on the development, implementation, and evaluation of national health policies, strategies and plans and assist in technical consultations and policy dialogues.

2. Facilitate the organization of regular participatory mechanisms for assessing the health situation, evaluating of health system areas, and formulating strategic recommendations related to the health system components.

3. Coordinate conducting of evidence syntheses on policy interventions to maximize efficiency, access and quality of essential health services and identifying suitable policy options for health system reforms.

4. Provide technical assistance related to the Integrated Health System matters mainly focusing on health services development, integrated health care delivery networks, quality of care and inter-programmatic initiatives on NCDs, family, gender and life course approaches.

5. Assist in developing tools, guidelines and innovative approaches related to evidence-informed policies on primary health care -shared care cluster system to strengthen the national health care system by expanding access to primary health care for tackling inequities and addressing broader determinants of health.

6. Support in developing and designing of performance measurement and evaluation framework, including resources needed for analyzing and interpreting data and implementing corrective actions for quality assurance, and management and improvement of the shared care cluster system for primary care.

7. Provide technical assistance in developing and implementing of human resources for health policies, strategies and plans to ensure equitable access to health services including primary health care and organize capacity building of the health care workers to meet the healthcare challenges.

8. Provide technical support to conduct health technology assessments, and develop health financing strategies.

9. Provide technical advice and support to national health authorities in innovative service delivery models which can address changing health needs including NCDs and needs of ageing populations.

10. Support in development and implementation of strategies for improving patient safety and quality of health services at the national level within the context of universal health coverage.

11. Collaborate in the preparation of the Biennial Work Plan (BWP) and the execution of national technical cooperation, including the analysis of political, technical and socioeconomic realities.

12. Draft necessary technical reports and documents as per requirements of the Organization, and to assist in preparation, organization and following-up of WHO-organized meetings.

13. Undertake any other related duties as assigned by the supervisors.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Essential : Bachelor's degree in public health or medicine from a recognized university. Desirable : Professional training in evaluation, policy analysis, health system analysis, epidemiology, information management systems, and/or health programme management.

Essential : At least 5 years of relevant working experience at the national or sub-national level in monitoring and evaluation of programmes, policy analysis, planning/programming, research and health system analysis. Desirable : Experience in establishing harmonious relationships with partners, within and outside of government. Familiarity with UN system in general and WHO in particular. Proven track record in managing primary care projects, developing evidence and operational research projects.

Good knowledge and experience in health policy and strategies, Health system evaluation and analysis, advance research methodologies, statistics, Health surveys and mapping. Skills in programme planning/development, health workforce training, monitoring/evaluation of interventions and in development of locally-adapted tools and instruments. Familiarity with functioning of government and its institutions. Good communication skills with proven aptitude for effective verbal and written communication. Ability to interact with health professionals at various levels. Ability to think strategically and work under tight deadlines on a results-oriented basis. Ability to develop innovative approaches and solutions. Ability to motivate and manage colleagues to engage in broader aspects of work as part of a team beyond individual areas of work. Ability to demonstrate effective interpersonal skills by working harmoniously as a member of a team, adapting to diverse educational, socio-political and cultural backgrounds and maintaining a high standard of personal conduct.

WHO Competencies

• Respecting and promoting individual and cultural differences
• Communication
• Building and promoting partnerships across the organization and beyond
• Ensuring the effective use of resources
• Creating an empowering and motivating environment

Use of Language Skills

Essential : Expert knowledge of English. Expert knowledge of Sinhalese/Tamil.

REMUNERATION

Remuneration comprises an annual base salary starting at LKR 9,074,832 (subject to mandatory deductions for pension contributions and health insurance, as applicable) and 30 days of annual leave.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• This vacancy notice may be used to fill other similar positions at the same grade level.
• Only candidates under serious consideration will be contacted.
• A written test and/or an asynchronous video assessment may be used as a form of screening.
• In the event that your candidature is retained for an interview, you will be required to provide, in advance, a scanned copy of the degree(s)/diploma(s)/certificate(s) required for this position. WHO only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU)/United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed through the link:  http://www.whed.net/ . Some professional certificates may not appear in the WHED and will require individual review.
• According to article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations, the paramount consideration in the employment of the staff is the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. Due regard will be paid to the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.
• Any appointment/extension of appointment is subject to WHO Staff Regulations, Staff Rules and Manual.
• The WHO is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. The WHO recruits and employs staff regardless of disability status, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, language, race, marital status, religious, cultural, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, or any other personal characteristics.
• The WHO is committed to achieving gender parity and geographical diversity in its staff. Women, persons with disabilities, and nationals of unrepresented and underrepresented Member States ( https://www.who.int/careers/diversity-equity-and-inclusion ) are strongly encouraged to apply.
• Persons with disabilities can request reasonable accommodations to enable participation in the recruitment process. Requests for reasonable accommodation should be sent through an email to  [email protected]
• An impeccable record for integrity and professional ethical standards is essential. WHO prides itself on a workforce that adheres to the highest ethical and professional standards and that is committed to put the  WHO Values Charter  into practice.
• WHO has zero tolerance towards sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), sexual harassment and other types of abusive conduct (i.e., discrimination, abuse of authority and harassment). All members of the WHO workforce have a role to play in promoting a safe and respectful workplace and should report to WHO any actual or suspected cases of SEA, sexual harassment and other types of abusive conduct. To ensure that individuals with a substantiated history of SEA, sexual harassment or other types of abusive conduct are not hired by the Organization, WHO will conduct a background verification of final candidates.
• WHO has a smoke-free environment and does not recruit smokers or users of any form of tobacco.
• For information on WHO's operations please visit:  http://www.who.int.
• WHO also offers wide range of benefits to staff, including parental leave and attractive flexible work arrangements to help promote a healthy work-life balance and to allow all staff members to express and develop their talents fully.
• The statutory retirement age for staff appointments is 65 years. For external applicants, only those who are expected to complete the term of appointment will normally be considered.
• Please note that WHO's contracts are conditional on members of the workforce confirming that they are vaccinated as required by WHO before undertaking a WHO assignment, except where a medical condition does not allow such vaccination, as certified by the WHO Staff Health and Wellbeing Services (SHW). The successful candidate will be asked to provide relevant evidence related to this condition. A copy of the updated vaccination card must be shared with WHO medical service in the medical clearance process. Please note that certain countries require proof of specific vaccinations for entry or exit. For example, official proof /certification of yellow fever vaccination is required to enter many countries. Country-specific vaccine recommendations can be found on the WHO international travel and Staff Health and Wellbeing website. For vaccination-related queries please directly contact SHW directly at  [email protected] .
• This is a National Professional Officer position. Therefore, only applications from nationals of the country where the duty station is located will be accepted. Applicants who are not nationals of this country will not be considered.
• In case the website does not display properly, please retry by: (i) checking that you have the latest version of the browser installed (Chrome, Edge or Firefox); (ii) clearing your browser history and opening the site in a new browser (not a new tab within the same browser); or (iii) retry accessing the website using Mozilla Firefox browser or using another device. Click this link for detailed guidance on completing job applications:  Instructions for candidates

Link to apply:

• WHO Careers Website:  Careers at WHO
• Vacancies (staff member access):  https://careers.who.int/careersection/in/jobsearch.ftl  
• Vacancies (external candidate access):  https://careers.who.int/careersection/ex/jobsearch.ftl