Evaluating Technology in Education

Examination of New Technology in Student Learning

  • Primary Question: How can I know whether new technology will improve student learning?

    • Sub-questions:

    • Should I adopt this new teaching/learning tool?

    • Is technology fundamentally changing our brains?

Willingham's Insights

  • Core assertion: Technology changes everything, but not necessarily in the expected manner.

Considerations for Adopting New Technology

  • High Quality Causally Informative Evidence

    • Be extremely cautious if the evidence is not from a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).

  • What if Strong Evidence Doesn’t Exist?

    • Good News: Technology HAS changed everything, but in ways that may not align with popular beliefs.

Memory and Learning

  • No Change in Working Memory Task Performance Across Decades

    • Despite the evolution of technology, performance on working memory tasks remains statistically similar.

  • Multitasking Impairment

    • Experimental Evidence: Multitasking decreases the ability to perform tasks effectively.

    • Example Task: “Ignore the digit, attend to the letter.”

    • High frequency task switches lead to decreased efficiency.

  • Impacts of Media Consumption

    • Multitasking impacts performance similarly for both TV and music.

    • Music may have energizing effects, potentially resulting in mixed academic outcomes.

Hypothetical Scenarios in Education

  • Impact of Providing Technology to Students:

  1. Everyone received a free laptop (One Laptop Per Child initiative).

  2. eBooks replacing traditional textbooks.

  3. Immediate search capability for unfamiliar terms (Example: Google “New BBQ”).

  4. Students taking notes on a laptop versus paper.

  5. Ambitious predictions regarding the future of education with technology integration.

Principles for Choosing Educational Technology

  • Distributional Effects

    • Consider how technology impacts students with varying backgrounds.

    • Recognition of previous educational disruptions like pandemic-related learning loss.

  • Early Adopter Consideration

    • Evaluate justification for being an early adopter of new technologies.

  • Self-Impact Prediction Confidence

    • Assess confidence level in predicting the impact of technology on personal teaching effectiveness and student learning.

  • Tradeoff Decisions

    • Should students be allowed to read audiobooks instead of assigned text materials?

    • Important factors include:

    • Balancing skill development in reading against knowledge acquisition and motivation.

    • Personal opinion:

      • No for young children (up to grade 2).

      • Yes for older students.

      • Possibly an intermediate stance for students in between.

  • Rules for Technology Use

    • Promote simple, consistent, and enforceable technology use regulations.

    • Advocacy for student autonomy in their learning management.

    • Emphasis on the necessity for students to demonstrate learning without immediate reliance on technology.

  • Literature Coverage Limitations

    • The course will not focus on the effects of technology on learning as extensively as other topics.

    • References offered for further exploration: School of Education (SOE), psychology course listings.