Barriers to the Effective Use of Technology in Education

“Time stays long enough for those who use it.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

“He that rises late must trot all day.” – Benjamin Franklin

I will admit, without any reluctance, to not being the most efficient person when it comes to time management.  It takes me forever to ‘get going’ in the mornings; I obsess over tiny details instead of just getting on with the job; I waste hours in consideration of the fact that I don’t have enough time to get everything done.  So it was no surprise to me to read that “time consistently is considered one of the biggest barriers to the integration of learning technologies”.*

It is a well-voiced fact that teachers feel constantly constrained by available time.  (I’m sure I’ll comment further on this when I am qualified).  And what could be less time effective than having to learn a new technology to integrate into yet another late-night lesson planning session?  

The Lisa Donaldson article quoted above includes a case study “examining the question ‘how can higher level educators be best supported in their adoption and integration of learning technologies?’”**  In it, it is claimed that “100% of participating educators strongly believe that technology has a place in the classroom indicating it is not an attitudinal shift in educators that is required”.***  So what can be done to improve the situation for teachers?

Donaldson concludes that:

“The research has indicated a number of measures that Institutions should consider to help

support their lecturers on this journey towards pedagogical innovation:

• Develop a suite of online resources enabling lecturers to learn in their own time with

online tutor support available.

• Develop online resources illustrating examples of use which are practically focused

and offer immediate benefits to the educator for teaching and learning activities.

• Establish a regular schedule of professional development training for educators to

engender confidence and reduce technical anxiety. The schedule should include a

regular, perhaps quarterly, series of technology peer sharing workshops to enable the

sharing of best practice examples.

• Assign eLearning mentors or champions to work with and support lecturers locally.

Make time. The assimilation and subsequent integration of learning technologies in the

classroom will take time. Ensure that educators and institutional heads understand that time

will need to be dedicated to achieve the huge potential that technology offers to education.”

****

Time.  The word surfaces over and over again.

An ALT (Association for Learning Technology) survey on ‘the effective use of learning technology in education’ reaches similar conclusions.  Again “lack of time” is cited as a major barrier.  As is “lack of resource to provide release and support for staff to enable them to incorporate technology in their practices”, which time constitutes a significant part of.  The ALT survey’s suggestions to “encourage effective innovation in learning technology” includes the following subsection: 

“Build in time for continuing teacher development

• Allow time for the champions and time for the colleagues they are mentoring.

• Allow time to experiment.

• Establish mandatory training with time provided.

• Allow thinking, planning and reporting time for practitioners.

• Teaching is about experimentation and not always getting it right, this leads itself to trying out technology.

• Make time and staff available to support users in creating innovative ideas.

• Make staff use technologies in their development at the Institution.

• Time and staff available to train staff in the basics to get the confident and competent enough to want to be innovative.

• Give appropriate, adequate, regular training to staff and students.”

There are, of course, numerous other barriers to consider – both from a teacher and a student perspective.  These might include:

• Limited funding to purchase new technology

• Lack of motivation amongst staff

• No unified good practice guidance from the school

• Little or no teacher credit for the inclusion of learning technology

• Lack of confidence in the teacher’s own skills and knowledge

• Students who do not have access to up-to-date technology

• Abuse of social media amongst students

• Disbelief in the benefits of learning technology

And so on.  The primary concern, however, does seem to revolve around time: finding the time to learn, finding the time to incorporate learning technologies, and finding the time to assess the success of those learning technologies which have been implemented.  I am sold on the ALT survey’s assertion that “teaching is about experimentation”.  I have learnt this myself over many years as a ski instructor.  Unless teachers are provided with the breathing space to experiment, perhaps the inclusion of learning technologies will continue to be a subject more talked about than enacted.

Time and the lack thereof, though, must also be considered alongside the teachers’ attitude towards technology.  If the teacher does not have a natural inclination towards technological advancement, they are unlikely to spend that limited time which is available to them exploring technological possibilities.  This quote is a neat and amusing encompassment of the problem.

“When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — then it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity!” – Albert Einstein

* Integrating Web 2.0 Learning Technologies in Higher Education: The Necessity, The Barriers And The Factors For Success.  Lisa Donaldson. (http://ojs.aishe.org/index.php/aishe-j/article/view/202) pp. 13

** Lisa Donaldson. (http://ojs.aishe.org/index.php/aishe-j/article/view/202) pp. 4

*** Lisa Donaldson. (http://ojs.aishe.org/index.php/aishe-j/article/view/202) pp. 14

**** Lisa Donaldson. (http://ojs.aishe.org/index.php/aishe-j/article/view/202) pp. 17

Driving Forward with Google Drive

I’ve often found myself becoming frustrated, in the past, with the hassle of technology; with all the clicking and tab opening and copying and pasting.  And now, I have been introduced to Google Drive!  What a treat – to have everything available in one place, saved and neatly packaged, and readily available to access from another computer.  I love this idea!  I have already used it to make feedback forms for a class, and it is so SO easy to use.  And it’s no doubt a great paper saving tool, too. 

How Technology Has Changed the Way We Learn

OR … Has Technology Changed the Way We Learn?

Don’t tell anyone – it’s something of a secret – but I am 28 years of age.  The reason I’m divulging this information is because, when I completed my GCSEs in the early 2000s, my school did not offer an ICT GCSE.  You might find this surprising.  I am still, just about, under 30; I received a standard state secondary education; I had a computer in my home at the time.  But I was not offered the opportunity to continue my ICT education past the age of 14.  

In his speech to the Schools Network in January 2012, Michael Gove emphasised the pace at which technology is changing thus:

“If you were trying to build an iPhone using equivalent components from the 1980s […] just how big would that phone be? Running through all the parts - from the antennas to the batteries to the GPS to the gyroscope to the accelerometer to the cameras to the mobile computing capability and more - New Scientist concludes you would need a truck to haul around an iPhone built of 1985 parts. We’ve gone from an 18-wheeler to a pocket in just 26 years.”

This is an interesting example.  My own experience, though, is more immediate still.  I was born in the 1980s, I’ve owned a mobile phone since I was 13.  And yet, those who were determined to study an ICT GCSE at my school were forced to do so in their own time, at a local college.  I did not lament this situation.  I had as much interest in technology then as I do now – very little.  However, in being forced to study it for the first time since my early teens, I am finding that we can, on occasion, get along quite well together, technology and I.

How, though, has it changed the way we learn?  And how, in fact, will it change the way I plan to teach?

In an earlier speech (of June 2011) to the Royal Society, Michael Gove had discussed the means by which maths and science standards and the quality of teaching in these subject areas could be improved.  His first emphasis, naturally, was on the teacher.  As, in my strong opinion, it should be.  

“A teacher affects eternity:

he can never tell where his influence stops.”

Henry Adams

He then noted that “In addition to the debate over what is taught, and the issue of who does the teaching, we […] need to think about how the teaching takes place.”  And subsequently, he went on to discuss how technology can be an effective teacher of mathematics – not if but how.  I found this distinction very interesting.  The argument for or against the use of technology seems to have disappeared altogether in favour of simply considering how we should use it.

But, what of the why we are using it?

Personally, I am still exploring the possibilities of teaching with ICT.  I have never denied being a ‘paper and pen’ girl.  But perhaps it would be prudent of us, as teachers and learners, to continue throughout our practice to ask whether the integration of ICT into lessons is actually doing anything to enhance those lessons …

There is an interesting article by Adrian Kirkwood and Linda Price available via The Open University website (yes, I know, the irony!), which addresses this issue.  It is entitled ‘Technology-enhanced Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: What is ‘enhanced’ and how do we know? A Critical Literature Review’.  In it, the authors consider both whether what they term ‘interventions’ – i.e. those occasions when technology is employed to support learning and teaching, specifically within the higher education sector – enhance learning, and, if they do, whether we can adequately assess that they do so successfully or unsuccessfully.

In researching these TEL (or, Technology Enhanced Learning) interventions, the authors identify three types of intervention:

       1) Replication of existing techniques

       2) Supplementation of existing techniques

       3) Transformation of the learning experience

They claim that the final type, interventions aimed at transforming the learning experience, account for less than one-third of all interventions.  This would suggest that TEL is not changing the way we teach and learn, but simply reinforcing the ways in which we have always taught and learnt.

The authors also highlight difficulties in assessing the achievements of TEL, as there is no clear definition of what constitutes enhanced learning:

“Academics and managers need a clear articulation of what is meant by technology enhanced learning in higher education to develop a better understanding of achievements. This is vital if research is to inform future practices in teaching and learning with technology
to maximum effect.” *

Before I comment on these findings, I should reiterate my claim that I am firmly a paper-and-pen girl.  Having reminded you of that, I can happily admit that, as a teacher, my aim would be to use TEL for the first two types of intervention identified above (i.e. replication and supplementation), rather than the transformation of the learning experience.  But perhaps there is nothing wrong with this.  I can see the value of online resources.  I will soon utilise such resources to teach a poetry session – what better way to bring a poem to life than to show my students a video of an actor speaking it?  That certainly surpasses my reading it to them off a dog-eared sheet of A4!

But I can’t help but return in my considerations to the teacher, the teacher, the teacher.  Are we going to lose the teacher in all this technological advancement?  

In their article, Kirkwood and Price conclude that:

“The term TEL is too often used in an unconsidered manner. While technology has increasing influence throughout higher education, there is still much to be learned about its effective educational contribution. This review has highlighted variations in both the purpose of TEL interventions and the ways that enhancement has been conceived. Underpinning this is a conflation of two distinct aims:

changes in the means through which university teaching happens; and

changes in how university teachers teach and learners learn.

Many of the studies reviewed concentrated on the means: replicating and supplementing existing teaching. Fewer considered the second aim - how. The ways in which academics conceptualise teaching and learning with technology have significant and interrelated impacts upon their students’ experience of learning (Kirkwood and Price 2012). The potential of technology to transform teaching and learning practices does not appear to have achieved substantial uptake, as the majority of studies focused on reproducing or reinforcing existing practices.” **

And isn’t that interesting?  If, across the board, teachers are utilising technology to “reproduc[e] or reinforc[e] existing practices” rather than to alter them, surely our emphasis as educators remains on ourselves; the onus still rests with us.  And I like that idea.  We are not shifting our educational responsibilities onto the shoulders of technology.  We are continuing to carry them, and continuing to seek new ways to improve upon them.  Technology has its part to play, of course, but I’ll say it again – the teacher, the teacher, the teacher!

* Kirkwood, Adrian and Price, Linda (2014). Technology-enhanced learning and teaching in higher education: what is ‘enhanced’ and how do we know? A critical literature review. Learning, Media and Technology, 39(1) pp. 23.

** Kirkwood, Adrian and Price, Linda (2014). Technology-enhanced learning and teaching in higher education: what is ‘enhanced’ and how do we know? A critical literature review. Learning, Media and Technology, 39(1) pp. 24.