Digital Learning Versus Education Technology
Digital learning—in the forms of online and hybrid instruction—is a subset of education technology that also transcends ed tech.
This is a simple observation that quite a few educators, policymakers, researchers, and advocates miss. Or, perhaps they would agree, but they don’t think about it very much.
The large majority of education technology tools and applications—computers, math and reading software, online assessments, etc—occur within physical schools that operate on traditional bell schedules and semester calendars. The current forms of ed tech echo technology in schools across decades, in the forms of radio, television, desktop computers, CD-Roms, etc. Each of those was supposed to “transform” education. None did. Today the same transformative predictions are made regarding virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence.
Online and hybrid learning are different. When these instructional methods remove barriers of time and space, the benefits can be truly transformative. A state virtual school provides an online course and teacher that are otherwise unavailable to the rural student. A fully online school provides the flexibility for a student chasing a dream pursuit, or a refuge for a student escaping bullying, or dealing with a health issue. A hybrid school allows a high school student to see her future, because she is living that future in her college courses.
To many of our readers, these are commonplace observations. But a look outside our relatively narrow niche reminds us that many people in positions of influence aren’t connecting the dots to see what digital learning can do.
Case in point: in a series of excellent blog posts, Larry Cuban discusses three students that he felt he failed. He writes about how the students, and he as the teacher, brought:
“…strengths and limitations that made it difficult to find success in a complex organization designed for mass production of teaching and learning.
What does that last sentence mean?
Teachers did not design the age-graded high school structure for 1500-plus students that puts teachers into self-contained classrooms, mandates 45-60 minute periods of instruction and report cards every nine weeks. These structures trap students into routines that seem to work for most but not all students. These structures also trap teachers into routines as well that work for most but not all teachers.
Time, for example, is crucial since all students do not learn at the same pace. Daily school schedules seldom reflect that fact. Time is also crucial for teachers to work together for lessons and students that they share.
Cuban is absolutely correct in identifying these issues as barriers to success, and he also points out that “changing curriculum, improving tests to measure curricular changes, raising the stakes in teacher evaluation,” and other measures have not worked.
But he doesn’t mention the online and hybrid schools that not only have improved student outcomes, but have done so by breaking down the barriers of time, student groupings, and other issues that he identifies as holding many students back in traditional schools.
He correctly notes that many students do just fine in traditional schools. But the context of his posts is students that he says he failed to reach. Those students may be seen as a stand-in for the millions of students who would choose a better option, if such options were widely available.
These options—online and hybrid schools and courses—have been evolving and improving for about 25 years in K-12 education. Millions of students have been well served by them (and, to be clear, far too many students have been badly served by poorly implemented online options.) But K-12 education is a vast enterprise, and online/hybrid learning remained a niche, at least pre-pandemic.
Will the niche role of digital learning change as the pandemic impacts education for a third consecutive school year? Maybe. More on that—and more on the ed tech vs digital learning discussion—in the next post.