Emerging Technologies in Education

Navigating Emerging Technologies in Education: Challenges, Solutions, and Preparing for the Future

The rapid growth of technology in the last 25 years left virtually nothing unaffected, and education is not an exception. From interactive boards and learning management systems to cloud service and AI models, the educational landscape is vastly different now compared to what it was a quarter century ago. In this article, we will explore how technology permeated the education system, the emerging learning technologies, what challenges arise with their adoption, and how to keep pace with it all.

Key technology milestones and their adoption

To understand the challenges and try to find possible solutions, it helps immensely to look at the history of how technology developed and how it was adopted in education. A good way of doing this is by looking at the main pieces of technology and what resistance they encountered.

Electronic grade books

One of the first pieces of technology that was adopted in education at a large scale was the electronic grade books. At first, these systems were simple spreadsheets designed to keep track of student’s grades, and essentially, just replace the paper grade books schools used back then.

This piece of technology, mostly, encountered little resistance with its adoption on the educators' part because it was not that different from keeping grades in a paper grade book. The only difference was that instead of handwriting marks, a teacher would input marks on a computer. This is not to say that there was no resistance at all: for a lot of people, this was their first time working with a personal computer, and moving records from paper books to digital spreadsheets still took some time and effort.

On the institutions’ part, however, there was significant resistance. This technology was available much earlier than it became widespread in educational facilities, and the reason for that is very simple: equipping classrooms with personal computers, creating local networks, and hiring specialists who can handle the upkeep is very expensive and takes time.

Student Information Systems or SIS

It didn’t take long for a new piece of technology to expand upon the functionality of electronic grade books. As more and more educational facilities were equipped with computers, and more and more digital data storage proved to be much more convenient and efficient than paper, student information systems started appearing. They were designed to keep track of not only grades, but all student records comprehensively: their attendance, academic progress, and schedules.

There was significant resistance to the adoption of SIS from both institutions and teachers, especially in the early stages of adoption.

The schools still had to deal with the high costs of implementing SIS because not all of them were equipped with computers and had proper IT infrastructure to support SIS. Moreover, moving the records of an entire institution from paper or, in some cases, older digital systems is extremely time-consuming and prone to errors. To make matters even more difficult, many schools lacked dedicated IT teams that could maintain and troubleshoot these systems.

Educators had to deal with a steep learning curve and increased workload. It took a lot of time to learn these new systems, move all the records to them, and adapt to the new workflows of grading, reporting, and maintaining the schedules. On top of that, early SIS platforms were not very reliable, and that led to lost data and system downtimes, increasing the workload for teachers even further.

Early Learning Management Systems or LMS

The first Learning Management Systems that appeared were designed for content delivery. Professors and teachers could upload PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, and lecture notes to make them available to the students. Early LMS were also capable of handling simple assessments: that mostly included multiple-choice quizzes and text assignments, with very limited automatic grading.

Arguably, there was greater resistance to LMS adoption on the educators’ part. Teachers had to invest a lot of time into learning these systems because they were much more complicated than spreadsheets containing student grades. Another big issue was digitizing course materials, setting up quizzes, and managing discussions. This took significantly more time and work than traditional teaching methods. And, as with many new technologies, early LMS were not the most reliable with slow internet, system crashes, and login issues. This made using them very frustrating, leading to many educators failing to see the value of these time-consuming and clunky systems.

One of the biggest problems with early LMS for the institutions was that they had to host these systems on their own servers. This led to very high costs because institutions had to maintain a serious IT infrastructure, and simply not all schools could afford that. This is why early LMS were primarily used in higher education as universities tend to have larger budgets.

Interactive whiteboards

With multimedia resources becoming more abundant and more accessible, schools took advantage of that with interactive whiteboards. They enabled the use of video materials, presentations, and pictures for educational purposes, and made lessons more interactive than ever. Smartboards also brought convenience with them: teachers and students no longer had to deal with chalk and washing blackboards, which can sometimes get messy. This is not to say that smartboards completely replaced blackboards: many people to this day enjoy the aesthetic of using chalk, but they made chalk optional.

The biggest problem with adoption for institutions was that interactive whiteboards were very expensive, costing thousands of dollars per classroom. They had to be installed together with projectors, which weren’t cheap, and on top of that, schools had to pay installation and maintenance fees. The high costs of installing and maintaining smartboards created a digital divide between institutions that could afford them and the ones that couldn’t. This digital divide was present even within single institutions: sometimes, they could afford to equip only some of their classrooms, creating a rift between the teachers as well.

There was resistance on the teachers’ part, too. Many of them were not trained on how to use smartboards effectively, which led to minimal adoption and smartboards being utilized for their basic functions only. Moreover, having an interactive whiteboard in a classroom often meant an increased workload for the teacher. Early on, content designed to be used with smartboards was very limited, so in many cases, educators had to create their own to utilize the smartboard and engage their students.

1:1 computing programs

With computer technology becoming more widespread and processing power becoming significantly cheaper, it became feasible to provide each student with a personal device to facilitate learning. This would help increase student engagement, and allow access to many different learning tools and content both at school and home. With personal devices, students could research, collaborate, and work at their own pace, encouraging independent learning, and they would be better prepared for the digital world.

Personal devices encountered heavy resistance on both fronts.

Institutions had to deal with very high implementation complexity: rolling out a 1:1 program required major changes in how education was delivered to the students. Schools had to revise their entire curriculums, teaching strategies, and assessment methods. The IT maintenance difficulty also skyrocketed with personal devices: managing 20 smartboards is vastly different from managing upwards of a thousand devices, providing software updates, and replacing lost and damaged gadgets. Not to mention the technology improving rapidly, which meant that the devices distributed to students would become outdated after a while and would need replacement, increasing the already high costs of this initiative.

Educators had to heavily adjust their lesson plans, design new lesson materials to be used on personal devices, and work out new teaching methods that would suit the shifted learning paradigm. There were classroom management issues as well: students having access to computers during lessons raised concerns about engaging students in discussions, distractions that devices might cause, and cheating that they might enable.

Modern educational technology

As computers and the Internet kept developing and becoming more readily available, cloud services started gaining popularity. And it is no wonder: cloud service means the service is available to you anywhere, anytime, and from any device as long as you have an internet connection. Internet access being available basically anywhere in developed countries meant that cloud services could boast unrivaled convenience.

Cloud services also did something else that was very important: they allowed us to shift electric and computing power requirements from the end user to the company providing the service. This means that instead of an extremely expensive and power-intensive machine, you can get a cheaper device that can run on battery for hours and still have all the computational power and storage space you need in the form of cloud services.

The core of contemporary EdTech is modern Learning Management Systems like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams for Education. This technology is built on two key foundations of digital innovation: cloud services and affordable end-user devices.

The key difference between early and modern LMS is that modern LMS are cloud-based. This sets them miles apart: early LMS were incredibly expensive and therefore very inaccessible because educational institutions had to host them on their own servers and handle the maintenance themselves. With modern cloud technology, that burden was taken on by the companies that provide the software, making these services much cheaper or even completely free for schools.

Cloud technology allowed for some other improvements as well.

Because computing power and storage space requirements were shifted to large companies, modern LMS are able to incorporate the functionality of previously separate tech into one product: they can function as online gradebooks, student information systems, and content-delivery tools all in one while adding new features on top of that such as advanced student analytics, and integration with videoconferencing and external content platforms.

Another thing this shift allowed was that as a user, you no longer needed a powerful and expensive machine to use the LMS. Since all the heavy-duty computing as well as data storage is done server-side, any device, be it a personal computer, a laptop, or a phone can access these systems as long as it is connected to the Internet.

However, with a wider range of features comes increased complexity. Even though modern LMS do a great job of being user-friendly, they can still be difficult to learn and hard to master for both educators and students, especially if they haven’t had previous experience with digital EdTech. Because of that, many teachers and learners still prefer simpler tools over feature-rich LMS, and there is plenty of resistance left to overcome.

Emerging technologies in education

As education continues to evolve alongside technology, the recent growth of Artificial Intelligence, both its potential and popularity, could not have left education unaffected. AI turned out to be capable of enhancing both teaching and learning experiences in many ways. However, due to it being an example of emerging learning technologies, there is still significant resistance to its adoption because for many students and teachers, the benefits still aren’t very clear.

Learning Management Systems integration with AI

Modern LMS incorporate AI to improve their services in several ways:

1. AI can personalize learning paths for students by analyzing their performance and adapting course content to better suit the individual needs and learning styles of each student.
2. AI can offer automated grading and feedback for students by evaluating different assignments, providing instant feedback to students, and freeing up extra time for teachers.
3. AI is capable of Natural Language Processing, providing such functionality as speech-to-text, real-time translation, and automated transcription, making educational content more accessible to diverse learners.

Standalone AI learning tools

Standalone AI tools cover a wide range of purposes in education. The main ones are large language models like ChatGPT and summary tools like ReadPartner.

Large language models can assist both students and teachers in many different ways. They can act as personal assistants for students, providing explanation and direction across multiple subjects. One of the best things about AI in this regard is that it is available on-demand. Teachers can use them to help plan their lessons, brainstorm ideas for different practice assignments, and generate quizzes and even some learning materials.

The ReadPartner summarization tool is extremely helpful in the modern education landscape. Educators may use the tool to summarize their lecture materials or video lessons and provide their students with the essential points to aid information retention. It can also be used to quickly assess if students understand a topic by summarizing their responses or essays, saving lots of valuable time. Students can use it to aid comprehension, by generating short summaries for long complex texts. On top of that, ReadPartner can be used for research support, distilling long papers into digestible summaries for quick analysis.

Overcoming the EdTech resistance

Any new technology encounters resistance when it comes to adoption, and education is no exception. Generally speaking, the main problem with adopting new technology is that initially, it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to incorporate it into existing processes. Once this initial stage passes, however, the technology can really shine and improve the efficiency and the results of one’s work.

Adopting emerging learning technologies was a challenge in many institutions, but over time, several strategies were developed to help overcome it:

1. One of the popular strategies was to implement new technology progressively, in small steps. Many educational institutions employed pilot or trial programs with new EdTech to help educators familiarize themselves with these tools gradually, and test the effectiveness of these tools.
2. Providing professional development and training was another way to ensure the successful adoption of new technology. Since educators are the ones who have to deal with these educational tools, helping them learn these new systems and use them effectively helped the adoption process a great deal.
3. The improvement of the technology itself also played a big part in increasing its acceptance. The technology became more available, convenient, user-friendly, and efficient over time, which made its adoption easier and much more desired.

Adapting to emerging educational technologies as a teacher

If you look at the history of EdTech, you might notice that for the most part, new technology follows from the old. Student information systems are essentially electronic grade books that can store a bit more information. Modern learning management systems are not something entirely new: for the most part, they simply use old technology and wrap it into one neat package. So the first piece of advice is very simple: if you keep up with the EdTech that is used right now, learning new technology will not be very difficult, and most likely you will see a lot of similarities with some things you have used before.

The emerging AI technology in education is something completely new for most people, however, but this technology comes with a very unusual property: you can use AI to learn about AI. Have you never used AI before and there are tons of articles you need to read and videos to watch to understand how you can use it in your classes? Sign up to ReadPartner for free, and use it to summarize those articles, and cover a week’s worth of reading in one evening. You will also familiarize yourself with the tool in the process, which will go a long way once you start learning to use it in your lessons. No idea how to use a language model to generate quizzes? Simply ask the language model as you would a person, and it will tell you! Even though new technology can seem somewhat scary at first, one of its biggest upsides is that it is much more user-friendly than some of the older examples, and the learning curve is much less steep.

New technology can seem a little daunting to get into, but as educational institutions first have to invest heavily into it and only after a while can they reap the benefits, so do educators first have to spend some extra time to learn the new systems. However, once you do, these new systems will start saving time for you and they will increase your productivity, so it is a worthwhile investment.

FAQ

How can educators stay up-to-date on emerging technologies in education?

Attending conferences, workshops, and webinars covering modern EdTech can help educators a lot by covering the popular new technology used in the field of education. Collaborating and staying in touch with your colleagues can go a long way, too.

Are educational technologies difficult to integrate into existing educational systems?

For the most part, no. Many new EdTech solutions are designed to integrate with existing systems, and they try to create the most user-friendly interfaces possible. There is, however, a certain learning curve as with anything new, and gradual implementation can help a lot.

How do emerging EdTech tools improve student learning?

They offer personalized learning, enhance engagement with interactive tools, enable accessibility for diverse learners, and allow for more efficient use of time and resources.

References

• A Brief History of Technology-Enabled Learning
  ‍https://lf.westernsydney.edu.au/engage/theory/a-brief-history-of-technology-enabled-learning

• Overcoming Resistance to Instructional Technology
  ‍https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1151&context=jaca