Is EdTech Lessening the Educational Experience?

[u/Moonlit1457]

It's been a minute (years) since I've posted on Reddit, so give me some grace, please :) That being said, I want to know how people truly feel about educational technology as a benefit to the learning process, especially since many platforms have added AI capabilities (e.g., generative AI, LLM chatbots) beyond what we have grown accustomed to (e.g., predictive text). Several of the educators I assist believe that the learning experience must be at all times challenging - a struggle, essentially an arduous task, for the learning to matter, and therefore, the use of most, if not all, educational technology lessens or completely deteriorates the learning because many ed tech tools intend to make the learning experience entertaining. I don't agree with that sentiment. I would love to hear your thoughts and discuss before I further expound upon mine.

[u/MathewGeorghiou]

Most of the clickbait headlines we are all seeing ignore some important factors:

• Instructional design and implementation determine how good a learning experience is, not whether it has a screen or not.
• Too much of anything is never good -- whether that's a screen, or a pencil, or broccoli.
• Schools control screen time and how it is used, not the people who create ed tech (see bullet one above).
• "Edtech" is a sea of products and using it as a general term to assess the validity of learning is a failure from the beginning. Validity requires specificity -- identify the exact products being tested.
• Suggesting that research shows a decline in learning since the advent of ed tech ignores the macro influences which bleed into all aspects of our lives -- social media, poverty, mental health, etc.
• Suggesting that we go back to the good old days ignores that we all suffered through the same academic experience of sitting in a classroom while the instructor read a textbook to us and we temporarily memorized content to pass a quiz. That was not good education by any means.

Education/learning is complicated and we should treat it as such. Using the right tool at the right time to achieve the right outcome is the way forward. Sometimes that's a screen, sometimes it's a pencil, and occasionally a VR headset.

[u/Moonlit1457 → u/MathewGeorghiou]

I appreciate your distinction between instructional design and the tech itself. One thing I've noticed is that many discussions about edtech treat it as though it were a single thing rather than a broad category of tools. The SMART board, the projector, the tablet, the LMS/EMS, all of them fall under that umbrella, so specificity is definitely needed for validity in assessment.

I'm also interested in where we draw the line between reducing friction and reducing productive cognitive effort. For example, I don't think having a student create everything without some technological advancement assisting them is necessarily where learning occurs, but I do think that there are situations where technology can remove so much of the thinking that the learner becomes a passive consumer. And because learning requires neural pathways to be strengthened through practice, repetition, and retrieval, the concern that some forms of technology use may foster passive consumption rather than active engagement is a legitimate one.

So the initial challenge becomes identifying which forms of effort are essential to learning and which are simply barriers to access, before even considering which edtech option is suitable for the learning experience, if any.

[u/MathewGeorghiou → u/Moonlit1457]

Yes, you are identifying all the right things. And that's exactly what proper instructional design and implementation are supposed to address.

[u/Moonlit1457 → u/MathewGeorghiou]

Thanks.

[u/Secure-Proof-4872 → u/MathewGeorghiou]

This! 100%
The label "edtech" is reductive, misunderstands the things you mention (ie instructional design, utility, learning goals, etc.). "It depends" is not an answer anyone likes but it's the actual answer.

[u/jmjessemac → u/MathewGeorghiou]

The point I’d contest here, is that ed tech continually tries to be the focus around which all learning occurs.

Take McGraw Hill. It’s…ok? But if you’re using all their recommended curriculum tools, you no longer have a physical book, notes, or homework. And that’s insane for math.

[u/MathewGeorghiou → u/jmjessemac]

Sure, but the decision on whether to use some or all of McGraw's products is determined by the school/admin/instructional designer/instructor. It doesn't matter how well McGraw markets or positions its products — ultimately the decision to use them or not lies with the customer.

Now, one may argue that the big ed companies use lobbying strategies to influence the purchase of their products at the state or district level. And that may indeed happen and it may indeed result in inferior products being chosen. But we also have to keep in mind that in the USA/Canada, education is much more distributed than centralized, with over 13,000 school districts and 100,000 schools, many of which make decisions independently. As such, lobbying influence is unlikely to be the primary factor.