What students really think about your favourite EdTech (and how you can change their minds)

You’re all set. You’ve found this amazing piece of technology that is going to make your engaging course even more engaging. It is going to solve every problem you have and you are going to look like an innovative genius when all of your students love it.

Hang on. Take a step back here. Why will they love it?

You’ve found a solution to your problems but have you found a solution to theirs? Or have you just created another layer of learning for them?

We are three academics who have been using innovative technologies in our teaching for over twenty years. Yes that means that at least one of us even used Second Life back in the day to create the most amazing and engaging immersive and interactive learning environment. But for anyone old enough to remember that time you will also know that the promise of all classes being conducted in an immersive world purpose built, accessible at anytime and populated by avatars is still not the go-to learning environment for universities, over 20 years later. However, we have continued, despite setbacks, to explore different types of technologies to support the way that we want to teach and the way that we believe students will learn best.

In our recent research project we focused on supporting active asynchronous learning facilitated with several technologies. Our belief was that if we tried a whole variety, some more innovative than others, then we should be able to cater for everyone. And as is the case with most research projects about technology when we reported on the results we looked for the positives and considered the negatives to often be outliers. And mostly they are, but that might be because those students have chosen not to tell us.

Being seasoned new technology users in higher education we weren’t surprised by these comments albeit a little dented in our initial belief that we might have just hit upon the answer to all our problems. Was it the actual technologies if every time we try another when we get similar responses – those that love it and those that just don’t get it or don’t want to get it. There are hundreds of research papers over decades pointing out the same problems with introducing technologies citing the benefits and lamenting the uptake. Sometimes things stick but often not, we move on, and something else appears. In the early days of technology use in society, and in education students and staff alike were ‘excused’ for not quite understanding their way around a computer. Classes would start with ‘where to turn it on’. Now that we have had over 3 decades of the Internet and almost 20 years of carrying around mini computers in our pockets this initial inability to navigate the technology should have dissipated. However, it is not uncommon to hear a student lament thus “Like any new technology, initially, it was daunting to use. I am so weighed down with content and my worry is the difficulty and size of the content. The introduction of ‘new technology’ means that one needs to get learn the new technology.” And in recent years academics in higher education have latched onto the ‘cognitive load’ literature. Using the excuse that they have already hit their ‘cognitive load’ and can’t possibly deal with another new technology.

Is it the technology or our attitude towards the technology and/or technology in general? We tried to unpack this a bit more by continuing to ask directly about their experiences with the new technologies introduced in the courses. Two more of the courses used VoiceThread and while only small responses were recorded (six in each) what was more interesting to us was that almost all (5/6) of responses in one course were negative and in the other course it was only half (3/6). There was a definite inconsistency on the way that students spoke about the technology across the three courses which lead us to think about what the other variables were and why did a student in one course hate the technology so much when a student in another course thought it was difficult at first but got used to it and then really liked it. “I didn’t begin to enjoy using it until the last learning activity but I valued it highly from the beginning and throughout the course because it really made the course feel more in person than in a zoom tutorial”.

What we have concluded is that the person behind the introduction of the technology is largely responsible. When a student claims that “it took a little bit of time to get used to it, but once everything was clear the real value of the platform came to light. The tutor’s videos on how to use it were super helpful and made everything really clear. I enjoyed using it as it created a kind of motivating force” we can see multiple factors at work. Firstly the student persevered and this was in a course were the technology was explicitly linked to the activities each week and the final assessment items. There was a real imperative to persevere that was extrinsically motivated. Secondly the tutor made help videos therefore providing targeted support that they knew the students would need. Thirdly we know that the tutor was consistently providing positive discourse about the technology, why they were using and how useful it was. One student is this particular course commented that they “loved it, the platform gave me a real voice and interactions felt genuine and created true learning from each other”. On the other hand, the course in which 5 of the 6 responses claimed that VoiceThread was too time consuming with the “initial participation declining as assessment deadlines arose”. In this course the tutor was enthusiastic but new to using the technology, it was introduced in a semester that had been condensed in terms of time frame, and the tutor was away (with a substitute tutor in place) for a number of weeks. So, while well intentioned and students did see positives they were left feeling that they didn’t really have to buy into using the technology. This was also reflected in the actual participation in the VoiceThread space in which there was almost 6 hours of conversation compared to the course mentioned earlier in which there was 34 hours.

When you feel yourself about to blame the students for a lack of commitment to trying the tool and the continual decrying of hating technology or cognitive overload consider what role you have to play in all of this. You probably think you have done all you can and yes they just weren’t ready for the technology and what were you thinking. More over you might wonder why you even bother when there is little reward for you even from within your institution and you have put aside your thoughts of innovation glory amongst your peers when you know you can’t talk about the failures. All hope should not be lost. You believed in the technology and you could see the point. Go back to that point in your journey and map out where you started to give in to the problems.

What could you do differently next time and who could you find to help you champion the tool. Because at the end of the day the students will come along for the ride if you are driving in the direction that is meaningful for everyone. You are still the most important tool in the educational toolkit regardless of whatever the latest, brightest, most efficient and fun piece of technology is presenting the solution to today’s problem.

Join the Discussion

What tools do you love but maybe your students don’t? Have you stuck at using them or given in to student pressure?