modern technology in education

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• Published: 12 February 2024

Education reform and change driven by digital technology: a bibliometric study from a global perspective

• Chengliang Wang 1 ,
• Xiaojiao Chen 1 ,
• Teng Yu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5198-7261 2 , 3 ,
• Yidan Liu 1 , 4 &
• Yuhui Jing 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  256 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Development studies
• Science, technology and society

Amidst the global digital transformation of educational institutions, digital technology has emerged as a significant area of interest among scholars. Such technologies have played an instrumental role in enhancing learner performance and improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning. These digital technologies also ensure the sustainability and stability of education during the epidemic. Despite this, a dearth of systematic reviews exists regarding the current state of digital technology application in education. To address this gap, this study utilized the Web of Science Core Collection as a data source (specifically selecting the high-quality SSCI and SCIE) and implemented a topic search by setting keywords, yielding 1849 initial publications. Furthermore, following the PRISMA guidelines, we refined the selection to 588 high-quality articles. Using software tools such as CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Charticulator, we reviewed these 588 publications to identify core authors (such as Selwyn, Henderson, Edwards), highly productive countries/regions (England, Australia, USA), key institutions (Monash University, Australian Catholic University), and crucial journals in the field ( Education and Information Technologies , Computers & Education , British Journal of Educational Technology ). Evolutionary analysis reveals four developmental periods in the research field of digital technology education application: the embryonic period, the preliminary development period, the key exploration, and the acceleration period of change. The study highlights the dual influence of technological factors and historical context on the research topic. Technology is a key factor in enabling education to transform and upgrade, and the context of the times is an important driving force in promoting the adoption of new technologies in the education system and the transformation and upgrading of education. Additionally, the study identifies three frontier hotspots in the field: physical education, digital transformation, and professional development under the promotion of digital technology. This study presents a clear framework for digital technology application in education, which can serve as a valuable reference for researchers and educational practitioners concerned with digital technology education application in theory and practice.

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Introduction.

Digital technology has become an essential component of modern education, facilitating the extension of temporal and spatial boundaries and enriching the pedagogical contexts (Selwyn and Facer, 2014 ). The advent of mobile communication technology has enabled learning through social media platforms (Szeto et al. 2015 ; Pires et al. 2022 ), while the advancement of augmented reality technology has disrupted traditional conceptions of learning environments and spaces (Perez-Sanagustin et al., 2014 ; Kyza and Georgiou, 2018 ). A wide range of digital technologies has enabled learning to become a norm in various settings, including the workplace (Sjöberg and Holmgren, 2021 ), home (Nazare et al. 2022 ), and online communities (Tang and Lam, 2014 ). Education is no longer limited to fixed locations and schedules, but has permeated all aspects of life, allowing learning to continue at any time and any place (Camilleri and Camilleri, 2016 ; Selwyn and Facer, 2014 ).

The advent of digital technology has led to the creation of several informal learning environments (Greenhow and Lewin, 2015 ) that exhibit divergent form, function, features, and patterns in comparison to conventional learning environments (Nygren et al. 2019 ). Consequently, the associated teaching and learning processes, as well as the strategies for the creation, dissemination, and acquisition of learning resources, have undergone a complete overhaul. The ensuing transformations have posed a myriad of novel issues, such as the optimal structuring of teaching methods by instructors and the adoption of appropriate learning strategies by students in the new digital technology environment. Consequently, an examination of the principles that underpin effective teaching and learning in this environment is a topic of significant interest to numerous scholars engaged in digital technology education research.

Over the course of the last two decades, digital technology has made significant strides in the field of education, notably in extending education time and space and creating novel educational contexts with sustainability. Despite research attempts to consolidate the application of digital technology in education, previous studies have only focused on specific aspects of digital technology, such as Pinto and Leite’s ( 2020 ) investigation into digital technology in higher education and Mustapha et al.’s ( 2021 ) examination of the role and value of digital technology in education during the pandemic. While these studies have provided valuable insights into the practical applications of digital technology in particular educational domains, they have not comprehensively explored the macro-mechanisms and internal logic of digital technology implementation in education. Additionally, these studies were conducted over a relatively brief period, making it challenging to gain a comprehensive understanding of the macro-dynamics and evolutionary process of digital technology in education. Some studies have provided an overview of digital education from an educational perspective but lack a precise understanding of technological advancement and change (Yang et al. 2022 ). Therefore, this study seeks to employ a systematic scientific approach to collate relevant research from 2000 to 2022, comprehend the internal logic and development trends of digital technology in education, and grasp the outstanding contribution of digital technology in promoting the sustainability of education in time and space. In summary, this study aims to address the following questions:

RQ1: Since the turn of the century, what is the productivity distribution of the field of digital technology education application research in terms of authorship, country/region, institutional and journal level?

RQ2: What is the development trend of research on the application of digital technology in education in the past two decades?

RQ3: What are the current frontiers of research on the application of digital technology in education?

Literature review

Although the term “digital technology” has become ubiquitous, a unified definition has yet to be agreed upon by scholars. Because the meaning of the word digital technology is closely related to the specific context. Within the educational research domain, Selwyn’s ( 2016 ) definition is widely favored by scholars (Pinto and Leite, 2020 ). Selwyn ( 2016 ) provides a comprehensive view of various concrete digital technologies and their applications in education through ten specific cases, such as immediate feedback in classes, orchestrating teaching, and community learning. Through these specific application scenarios, Selwyn ( 2016 ) argues that digital technology encompasses technologies associated with digital devices, including but not limited to tablets, smartphones, computers, and social media platforms (such as Facebook and YouTube). Furthermore, Further, the behavior of accessing the internet at any location through portable devices can be taken as an extension of the behavior of applying digital technology.

The evolving nature of digital technology has significant implications in the field of education. In the 1890s, the focus of digital technology in education was on comprehending the nuances of digital space, digital culture, and educational methodologies, with its connotations aligned more towards the idea of e-learning. The advent and subsequent widespread usage of mobile devices since the dawn of the new millennium have been instrumental in the rapid expansion of the concept of digital technology. Notably, mobile learning devices such as smartphones and tablets, along with social media platforms, have become integral components of digital technology (Conole and Alevizou, 2010 ; Batista et al. 2016 ). In recent times, the burgeoning application of AI technology in the education sector has played a vital role in enriching the digital technology lexicon (Banerjee et al. 2021 ). ChatGPT, for instance, is identified as a novel educational technology that has immense potential to revolutionize future education (Rospigliosi, 2023 ; Arif, Munaf and Ul-Haque, 2023 ).

Pinto and Leite ( 2020 ) conducted a comprehensive macroscopic survey of the use of digital technologies in the education sector and identified three distinct categories, namely technologies for assessment and feedback, mobile technologies, and Information Communication Technologies (ICT). This classification criterion is both macroscopic and highly condensed. In light of the established concept definitions of digital technology in the educational research literature, this study has adopted the characterizations of digital technology proposed by Selwyn ( 2016 ) and Pinto and Leite ( 2020 ) as crucial criteria for analysis and research inclusion. Specifically, this criterion encompasses several distinct types of digital technologies, including Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Mobile tools, eXtended Reality (XR) Technologies, Assessment and Feedback systems, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Publish and Share tools, Collaborative systems, Social media, Interpersonal Communication tools, and Content Aggregation tools.

Methodology and materials

Research method: bibliometric.

The research on econometric properties has been present in various aspects of human production and life, yet systematic scientific theoretical guidance has been lacking, resulting in disorganization. In 1969, British scholar Pritchard ( 1969 ) proposed “bibliometrics,” which subsequently emerged as an independent discipline in scientific quantification research. Initially, Pritchard defined bibliometrics as “the application of mathematical and statistical methods to books and other media of communication,” however, the definition was not entirely rigorous. To remedy this, Hawkins ( 2001 ) expanded Pritchard’s definition to “the quantitative analysis of the bibliographic features of a body of literature.” De Bellis further clarified the objectives of bibliometrics, stating that it aims to analyze and identify patterns in literature, such as the most productive authors, institutions, countries, and journals in scientific disciplines, trends in literary production over time, and collaboration networks (De Bellis, 2009 ). According to Garfield ( 2006 ), bibliometric research enables the examination of the history and structure of a field, the flow of information within the field, the impact of journals, and the citation status of publications over a longer time scale. All of these definitions illustrate the unique role of bibliometrics as a research method for evaluating specific research fields.

This study uses CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Charticulator to analyze data and create visualizations. Each of these three tools has its own strengths and can complement each other. CiteSpace and VOSviewer use set theory and probability theory to provide various visualization views in fields such as keywords, co-occurrence, and co-authors. They are easy to use and produce visually appealing graphics (Chen, 2006 ; van Eck and Waltman, 2009 ) and are currently the two most widely used bibliometric tools in the field of visualization (Pan et al. 2018 ). In this study, VOSviewer provided the data necessary for the Performance Analysis; Charticulator was then used to redraw using the tabular data exported from VOSviewer (for creating the chord diagram of country collaboration); this was to complement the mapping process, while CiteSpace was primarily utilized to generate keyword maps and conduct burst word analysis.

Data retrieval

This study selected documents from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) in the Web of Science Core Collection as the data source, for the following reasons:

(1) The Web of Science Core Collection, as a high-quality digital literature resource database, has been widely accepted by many researchers and is currently considered the most suitable database for bibliometric analysis (Jing et al. 2023a ). Compared to other databases, Web of Science provides more comprehensive data information (Chen et al. 2022a ), and also provides data formats suitable for analysis using VOSviewer and CiteSpace (Gaviria-Marin et al. 2019 ).

(2) The application of digital technology in the field of education is an interdisciplinary research topic, involving technical knowledge literature belonging to the natural sciences and education-related literature belonging to the social sciences. Therefore, it is necessary to select Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) as the sources of research data, ensuring the comprehensiveness of data while ensuring the reliability and persuasiveness of bibliometric research (Hwang and Tsai, 2011 ; Wang et al. 2022 ).

After establishing the source of research data, it is necessary to determine a retrieval strategy (Jing et al. 2023b ). The choice of a retrieval strategy should consider a balance between the breadth and precision of the search formula. That is to say, it should encompass all the literature pertaining to the research topic while excluding irrelevant documents as much as possible. In light of this, this study has set a retrieval strategy informed by multiple related papers (Mustapha et al. 2021 ; Luo et al. 2021 ). The research by Mustapha et al. ( 2021 ) guided us in selecting keywords (“digital” AND “technolog*”) to target digital technology, while Luo et al. ( 2021 ) informed the selection of terms (such as “instruct*,” “teach*,” and “education”) to establish links with the field of education. Then, based on the current application of digital technology in the educational domain and the scope of selection criteria, we constructed the final retrieval strategy. Following the general patterns of past research (Jing et al. 2023a , 2023b ), we conducted a specific screening using the topic search (Topics, TS) function in Web of Science. For the specific criteria used in the screening for this study, please refer to Table 1 .

Literature screening

Literature acquired through keyword searches may contain ostensibly related yet actually unrelated works. Therefore, to ensure the close relevance of literature included in the analysis to the research topic, it is often necessary to perform a manual screening process to identify the final literature to be analyzed, subsequent to completing the initial literature search.

The manual screening process consists of two steps. Initially, irrelevant literature is weeded out based on the title and abstract, with two members of the research team involved in this phase. This stage lasted about one week, resulting in 1106 articles being retained. Subsequently, a comprehensive review of the full text is conducted to accurately identify the literature required for the study. To carry out the second phase of manual screening effectively and scientifically, and to minimize the potential for researcher bias, the research team established the inclusion criteria presented in Table 2 . Three members were engaged in this phase, which took approximately 2 weeks, culminating in the retention of 588 articles after meticulous screening. The entire screening process is depicted in Fig. 1 , adhering to the PRISMA guidelines (Page et al. 2021 ).

The process of obtaining and filtering the necessary literature data for research.

Data standardization

Nguyen and Hallinger ( 2020 ) pointed out that raw data extracted from scientific databases often contains multiple expressions of the same term, and not addressing these synonymous expressions could affect research results in bibliometric analysis. For instance, in the original data, the author list may include “Tsai, C. C.” and “Tsai, C.-C.”, while the keyword list may include “professional-development” and “professional development,” which often require merging. Therefore, before analyzing the selected literature, a data disambiguation process is necessary to standardize the data (Strotmann and Zhao, 2012 ; Van Eck and Waltman, 2019 ). This study adopted the data standardization process proposed by Taskin and Al ( 2019 ), mainly including the following standardization operations:

Firstly, the author and source fields in the data are corrected and standardized to differentiate authors with similar names.

Secondly, the study checks whether the journals to which the literature belongs have been renamed in the past over 20 years, so as to avoid the influence of periodical name change on the analysis results.

Finally, the keyword field is standardized by unifying parts of speech and singular/plural forms of keywords, which can help eliminate redundant entries in the knowledge graph.

Performance analysis (RQ1)

This section offers a thorough and detailed analysis of the state of research in the field of digital technology education. By utilizing descriptive statistics and visual maps, it provides a comprehensive overview of the development trends, authors, countries, institutions, and journal distribution within the field. The insights presented in this section are of great significance in advancing our understanding of the current state of research in this field and identifying areas for further investigation. The use of visual aids to display inter-country cooperation and the evolution of the field adds to the clarity and coherence of the analysis.

Time trend of the publications

To understand a research field, it is first necessary to understand the most basic quantitative information, among which the change in the number of publications per year best reflects the development trend of a research field. Figure 2 shows the distribution of publication dates.

Time trend of the publications on application of digital technology in education.

From the Fig. 2 , it can be seen that the development of this field over the past over 20 years can be roughly divided into three stages. The first stage was from 2000 to 2007, during which the number of publications was relatively low. Due to various factors such as technological maturity, the academic community did not pay widespread attention to the role of digital technology in expanding the scope of teaching and learning. The second stage was from 2008 to 2019, during which the overall number of publications showed an upward trend, and the development of the field entered an accelerated period, attracting more and more scholars’ attention. The third stage was from 2020 to 2022, during which the number of publications stabilized at around 100. During this period, the impact of the pandemic led to a large number of scholars focusing on the role of digital technology in education during the pandemic, and research on the application of digital technology in education became a core topic in social science research.

Analysis of authors

An analysis of the author’s publication volume provides information about the representative scholars and core research strengths of a research area. Table 3 presents information on the core authors in adaptive learning research, including name, publication number, and average number of citations per article (based on the analysis and statistics from VOSviewer).

Variations in research foci among scholars abound. Within the field of digital technology education application research over the past two decades, Neil Selwyn stands as the most productive author, having published 15 papers garnering a total of 1027 citations, resulting in an average of 68.47 citations per paper. As a Professor at the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Selwyn concentrates on exploring the application of digital technology in higher education contexts (Selwyn et al. 2021 ), as well as related products in higher education such as Coursera, edX, and Udacity MOOC platforms (Bulfin et al. 2014 ). Selwyn’s contributions to the educational sociology perspective include extensive research on the impact of digital technology on education, highlighting the spatiotemporal extension of educational processes and practices through technological means as the greatest value of educational technology (Selwyn, 2012 ; Selwyn and Facer, 2014 ). In addition, he provides a blueprint for the development of future schools in 2030 based on the present impact of digital technology on education (Selwyn et al. 2019 ). The second most productive author in this field, Henderson, also offers significant contributions to the understanding of the important value of digital technology in education, specifically in the higher education setting, with a focus on the impact of the pandemic (Henderson et al. 2015 ; Cohen et al. 2022 ). In contrast, Edwards’ research interests focus on early childhood education, particularly the application of digital technology in this context (Edwards, 2013 ; Bird and Edwards, 2015 ). Additionally, on the technical level, Edwards also mainly prefers digital game technology, because it is a digital technology that children are relatively easy to accept (Edwards, 2015 ).

Analysis of countries/regions and organization

The present study aimed to ascertain the leading countries in digital technology education application research by analyzing 75 countries related to 558 works of literature. Table 4 depicts the top ten countries that have contributed significantly to this field in terms of publication count (based on the analysis and statistics from VOSviewer). Our analysis of Table 4 data shows that England emerged as the most influential country/region, with 92 published papers and 2401 citations. Australia and the United States secured the second and third ranks, respectively, with 90 papers (2187 citations) and 70 papers (1331 citations) published. Geographically, most of the countries featured in the top ten publication volumes are situated in Australia, North America, and Europe, with China being the only exception. Notably, all these countries, except China, belong to the group of developed nations, suggesting that economic strength is a prerequisite for fostering research in the digital technology education application field.

This study presents a visual representation of the publication output and cooperation relationships among different countries in the field of digital technology education application research. Specifically, a chord diagram is employed to display the top 30 countries in terms of publication output, as depicted in Fig. 3 . The chord diagram is composed of nodes and chords, where the nodes are positioned as scattered points along the circumference, and the length of each node corresponds to the publication output, with longer lengths indicating higher publication output. The chords, on the other hand, represent the cooperation relationships between any two countries, and are weighted based on the degree of closeness of the cooperation, with wider chords indicating closer cooperation. Through the analysis of the cooperation relationships, the findings suggest that the main publishing countries in this field are engaged in cooperative relationships with each other, indicating a relatively high level of international academic exchange and research internationalization.

In the diagram, nodes are scattered along the circumference of a circle, with the length of each node representing the volume of publications. The weighted arcs connecting any two points on the circle are known as chords, representing the collaborative relationship between the two, with the width of the arc indicating the closeness of the collaboration.

Further analyzing Fig. 3 , we can extract more valuable information, enabling a deeper understanding of the connections between countries in the research field of digital technology in educational applications. It is evident that certain countries, such as the United States, China, and England, display thicker connections, indicating robust collaborative relationships in terms of productivity. These thicker lines signify substantial mutual contributions and shared objectives in certain sectors or fields, highlighting the interconnectedness and global integration in these areas. By delving deeper, we can also explore potential future collaboration opportunities through the chord diagram, identifying possible partners to propel research and development in this field. In essence, the chord diagram successfully encapsulates and conveys the multi-dimensionality of global productivity and cooperation, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of the intricate inter-country relationships and networks in a global context, providing valuable guidance and insights for future research and collaborations.

An in-depth examination of the publishing institutions is provided in Table 5 , showcasing the foremost 10 institutions ranked by their publication volume. Notably, Monash University and Australian Catholic University, situated in Australia, have recorded the most prolific publications within the digital technology education application realm, with 22 and 10 publications respectively. Moreover, the University of Oslo from Norway is featured among the top 10 publishing institutions, with an impressive average citation count of 64 per publication. It is worth highlighting that six institutions based in the United Kingdom were also ranked within the top 10 publishing institutions, signifying their leading position in this area of research.

Analysis of journals

Journals are the main carriers for publishing high-quality papers. Some scholars point out that the two key factors to measure the influence of journals in the specified field are the number of articles published and the number of citations. The more papers published in a magazine and the more citations, the greater its influence (Dzikowski, 2018 ). Therefore, this study utilized VOSviewer to statistically analyze the top 10 journals with the most publications in the field of digital technology in education and calculated the average citations per article (see Table 6 ).

Based on Table 6 , it is apparent that the highest number of articles in the domain of digital technology in education research were published in Education and Information Technologies (47 articles), Computers & Education (34 articles), and British Journal of Educational Technology (32 articles), indicating a higher article output compared to other journals. This underscores the fact that these three journals concentrate more on the application of digital technology in education. Furthermore, several other journals, such as Technology Pedagogy and Education and Sustainability, have published more than 15 articles in this domain. Sustainability represents the open access movement, which has notably facilitated research progress in this field, indicating that the development of open access journals in recent years has had a significant impact. Although there is still considerable disagreement among scholars on the optimal approach to achieve open access, the notion that research outcomes should be accessible to all is widely recognized (Huang et al. 2020 ). On further analysis of the research fields to which these journals belong, except for Sustainability, it is evident that they all pertain to educational technology, thus providing a qualitative definition of the research area of digital technology education from the perspective of journals.

Temporal keyword analysis: thematic evolution (RQ2)

The evolution of research themes is a dynamic process, and previous studies have attempted to present the developmental trajectory of fields by drawing keyword networks in phases (Kumar et al. 2021 ; Chen et al. 2022b ). To understand the shifts in research topics across different periods, this study follows past research and, based on the significant changes in the research field and corresponding technological advancements during the outlined periods, divides the timeline into four stages (the first stage from January 2000 to December 2005, the second stage from January 2006 to December 2011, the third stage from January 2012 to December 2017; and the fourth stage from January 2018 to December 2022). The division into these four stages was determined through a combination of bibliometric analysis and literature review, which presented a clear trajectory of the field’s development. The research analyzes the keyword networks for each time period (as there are only three articles in the first stage, it was not possible to generate an appropriate keyword co-occurrence map, hence only the keyword co-occurrence maps from the second to the fourth stages are provided), to understand the evolutionary track of the digital technology education application research field over time.

2000.1–2005.12: germination period

From January 2000 to December 2005, digital technology education application research was in its infancy. Only three studies focused on digital technology, all of which were related to computers. Due to the popularity of computers, the home became a new learning environment, highlighting the important role of digital technology in expanding the scope of learning spaces (Sutherland et al. 2000 ). In specific disciplines and contexts, digital technology was first favored in medical clinical practice, becoming an important tool for supporting the learning of clinical knowledge and practice (Tegtmeyer et al. 2001 ; Durfee et al. 2003 ).

2006.1–2011.12: initial development period

Between January 2006 and December 2011, it was the initial development period of digital technology education research. Significant growth was observed in research related to digital technology, and discussions and theoretical analyses about “digital natives” emerged. During this phase, scholars focused on the debate about “how to use digital technology reasonably” and “whether current educational models and school curriculum design need to be adjusted on a large scale” (Bennett and Maton, 2010 ; Selwyn, 2009 ; Margaryan et al. 2011 ). These theoretical and speculative arguments provided a unique perspective on the impact of cognitive digital technology on education and teaching. As can be seen from the vocabulary such as “rethinking”, “disruptive pedagogy”, and “attitude” in Fig. 4 , many scholars joined the calm reflection and analysis under the trend of digital technology (Laurillard, 2008 ; Vratulis et al. 2011 ). During this phase, technology was still undergoing dramatic changes. The development of mobile technology had already caught the attention of many scholars (Wong et al. 2011 ), but digital technology represented by computers was still very active (Selwyn et al. 2011 ). The change in technological form would inevitably lead to educational transformation. Collins and Halverson ( 2010 ) summarized the prospects and challenges of using digital technology for learning and educational practices, believing that digital technology would bring a disruptive revolution to the education field and bring about a new educational system. In addition, the term “teacher education” in Fig. 4 reflects the impact of digital technology development on teachers. The rapid development of technology has widened the generation gap between teachers and students. To ensure smooth communication between teachers and students, teachers must keep up with the trend of technological development and establish a lifelong learning concept (Donnison, 2009 ).

In the diagram, each node represents a keyword, with the size of the node indicating the frequency of occurrence of the keyword. The connections represent the co-occurrence relationships between keywords, with a higher frequency of co-occurrence resulting in tighter connections.

2012.1–2017.12: critical exploration period

During the period spanning January 2012 to December 2017, the application of digital technology in education research underwent a significant exploration phase. As can be seen from Fig. 5 , different from the previous stage, the specific elements of specific digital technology have started to increase significantly, including the enrichment of technological contexts, the greater variety of research methods, and the diversification of learning modes. Moreover, the temporal and spatial dimensions of the learning environment were further de-emphasized, as noted in previous literature (Za et al. 2014 ). Given the rapidly accelerating pace of technological development, the education system in the digital era is in urgent need of collaborative evolution and reconstruction, as argued by Davis, Eickelmann, and Zaka ( 2013 ).

In the domain of digital technology, social media has garnered substantial scholarly attention as a promising avenue for learning, as noted by Pasquini and Evangelopoulos ( 2016 ). The implementation of social media in education presents several benefits, including the liberation of education from the restrictions of physical distance and time, as well as the erasure of conventional educational boundaries. The user-generated content (UGC) model in social media has emerged as a crucial source for knowledge creation and distribution, with the widespread adoption of mobile devices. Moreover, social networks have become an integral component of ubiquitous learning environments (Hwang et al. 2013 ). The utilization of social media allows individuals to function as both knowledge producers and recipients, which leads to a blurring of the conventional roles of learners and teachers. On mobile platforms, the roles of learners and teachers are not fixed, but instead interchangeable.

In terms of research methodology, the prevalence of empirical studies with survey designs in the field of educational technology during this period is evident from the vocabulary used, such as “achievement,” “acceptance,” “attitude,” and “ict.” in Fig. 5 . These studies aim to understand learners’ willingness to adopt and attitudes towards new technologies, and some seek to investigate the impact of digital technologies on learning outcomes through quasi-experimental designs (Domínguez et al. 2013 ). Among these empirical studies, mobile learning emerged as a hot topic, and this is not surprising. First, the advantages of mobile learning environments over traditional ones have been empirically demonstrated (Hwang et al. 2013 ). Second, learners born around the turn of the century have been heavily influenced by digital technologies and have developed their own learning styles that are more open to mobile devices as a means of learning. Consequently, analyzing mobile learning as a relatively novel mode of learning has become an important issue for scholars in the field of educational technology.

The intervention of technology has led to the emergence of several novel learning modes, with the blended learning model being the most representative one in the current phase. Blended learning, a novel concept introduced in the information age, emphasizes the integration of the benefits of traditional learning methods and online learning. This learning mode not only highlights the prominent role of teachers in guiding, inspiring, and monitoring the learning process but also underlines the importance of learners’ initiative, enthusiasm, and creativity in the learning process. Despite being an early conceptualization, blended learning’s meaning has been expanded by the widespread use of mobile technology and social media in education. The implementation of new technologies, particularly mobile devices, has resulted in the transformation of curriculum design and increased flexibility and autonomy in students’ learning processes (Trujillo Maza et al. 2016 ), rekindling scholarly attention to this learning mode. However, some scholars have raised concerns about the potential drawbacks of the blended learning model, such as its significant impact on the traditional teaching system, the lack of systematic coping strategies and relevant policies in several schools and regions (Moskal et al. 2013 ).

2018.1–2022.12: accelerated transformation period

The period spanning from January 2018 to December 2022 witnessed a rapid transformation in the application of digital technology in education research. The field of digital technology education research reached a peak period of publication, largely influenced by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Yu et al. 2023 ). Research during this period was built upon the achievements, attitudes, and social media of the previous phase, and included more elements that reflect the characteristics of this research field, such as digital literacy, digital competence, and professional development, as depicted in Fig. 6 . Alongside this, scholars’ expectations for the value of digital technology have expanded, and the pursuit of improving learning efficiency and performance is no longer the sole focus. Some research now aims to cultivate learners’ motivation and enhance their self-efficacy by applying digital technology in a reasonable manner, as demonstrated by recent studies (Beardsley et al. 2021 ; Creely et al. 2021 ).

The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a crucial backdrop for the digital technology’s role in sustaining global education, as highlighted by recent scholarly research (Zhou et al. 2022 ; Pan and Zhang, 2020 ; Mo et al. 2022 ). The online learning environment, which is supported by digital technology, has become the primary battleground for global education (Yu, 2022 ). This social context has led to various studies being conducted, with some scholars positing that the pandemic has impacted the traditional teaching order while also expanding learning possibilities in terms of patterns and forms (Alabdulaziz, 2021 ). Furthermore, the pandemic has acted as a catalyst for teacher teaching and technological innovation, and this viewpoint has been empirically substantiated (Moorhouse and Wong, 2021 ). Additionally, some scholars believe that the pandemic’s push is a crucial driving force for the digital transformation of the education system, serving as an essential mechanism for overcoming the system’s inertia (Romero et al. 2021 ).

The rapid outbreak of the pandemic posed a challenge to the large-scale implementation of digital technologies, which was influenced by a complex interplay of subjective and objective factors. Objective constraints included the lack of infrastructure in some regions to support digital technologies, while subjective obstacles included psychological resistance among certain students and teachers (Moorhouse, 2021 ). These factors greatly impacted the progress of online learning during the pandemic. Additionally, Timotheou et al. ( 2023 ) conducted a comprehensive systematic review of existing research on digital technology use during the pandemic, highlighting the critical role played by various factors such as learners’ and teachers’ digital skills, teachers’ personal attributes and professional development, school leadership and management, and administration in facilitating the digitalization and transformation of schools.

The current stage of research is characterized by the pivotal term “digital literacy,” denoting a growing interest in learners’ attitudes and adoption of emerging technologies. Initially, the term “literacy” was restricted to fundamental abilities and knowledge associated with books and print materials (McMillan, 1996 ). However, with the swift advancement of computers and digital technology, there have been various attempts to broaden the scope of literacy beyond its traditional meaning, including game literacy (Buckingham and Burn, 2007 ), information literacy (Eisenberg, 2008 ), and media literacy (Turin and Friesem, 2020 ). Similarly, digital literacy has emerged as a crucial concept, and Gilster and Glister ( 1997 ) were the first to introduce this concept, referring to the proficiency in utilizing technology and processing digital information in academic, professional, and daily life settings. In practical educational settings, learners who possess higher digital literacy often exhibit an aptitude for quickly mastering digital devices and applying them intelligently to education and teaching (Yu, 2022 ).

The utilization of digital technology in education has undergone significant changes over the past two decades, and has been a crucial driver of educational reform with each new technological revolution. The impact of these changes on the underlying logic of digital technology education applications has been noticeable. From computer technology to more recent developments such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI), the acceleration in digital technology development has been ongoing. Educational reforms spurred by digital technology development continue to be dynamic, as each new digital innovation presents new possibilities and models for teaching practice. This is especially relevant in the post-pandemic era, where the importance of technological progress in supporting teaching cannot be overstated (Mughal et al. 2022 ). Existing digital technologies have already greatly expanded the dimensions of education in both time and space, while future digital technologies aim to expand learners’ perceptions. Researchers have highlighted the potential of integrated technology and immersive technology in the development of the educational metaverse, which is highly anticipated to create a new dimension for the teaching and learning environment, foster a new value system for the discipline of educational technology, and more effectively and efficiently achieve the grand educational blueprint of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (Zhang et al. 2022 ; Li and Yu, 2023 ).

Hotspot evolution analysis (RQ3)

The examination of keyword evolution reveals a consistent trend in the advancement of digital technology education application research. The emergence and transformation of keywords serve as indicators of the varying research interests in this field. Thus, the utilization of the burst detection function available in CiteSpace allowed for the identification of the top 10 burst words that exhibited a high level of burst strength. This outcome is illustrated in Table 7 .

According to the results presented in Table 7 , the explosive terminology within the realm of digital technology education research has exhibited a concentration mainly between the years 2018 and 2022. Prior to this time frame, the emerging keywords were limited to “information technology” and “computer”. Notably, among them, computer, as an emergent keyword, has always had a high explosive intensity from 2008 to 2018, which reflects the important position of computer in digital technology and is the main carrier of many digital technologies such as Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Assessment and Feedback systems (Barlovits et al. 2022 ).

Since 2018, an increasing number of research studies have focused on evaluating the capabilities of learners to accept, apply, and comprehend digital technologies. As indicated by the use of terms such as “digital literacy” and “digital skill,” the assessment of learners’ digital literacy has become a critical task. Scholarly efforts have been directed towards the development of literacy assessment tools and the implementation of empirical assessments. Furthermore, enhancing the digital literacy of both learners and educators has garnered significant attention. (Nagle, 2018 ; Yu, 2022 ). Simultaneously, given the widespread use of various digital technologies in different formal and informal learning settings, promoting learners’ digital skills has become a crucial objective for contemporary schools (Nygren et al. 2019 ; Forde and OBrien, 2022 ).

Since 2020, the field of applied research on digital technology education has witnessed the emergence of three new hotspots, all of which have been affected to some extent by the pandemic. Firstly, digital technology has been widely applied in physical education, which is one of the subjects that has been severely affected by the pandemic (Parris et al. 2022 ; Jiang and Ning, 2022 ). Secondly, digital transformation has become an important measure for most schools, especially higher education institutions, to cope with the impact of the pandemic globally (García-Morales et al. 2021 ). Although the concept of digital transformation was proposed earlier, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated this transformation process. Educational institutions must carefully redesign their educational products to face this new situation, providing timely digital learning methods, environments, tools, and support systems that have far-reaching impacts on modern society (Krishnamurthy, 2020 ; Salas-Pilco et al. 2022 ). Moreover, the professional development of teachers has become a key mission of educational institutions in the post-pandemic era. Teachers need to have a certain level of digital literacy and be familiar with the tools and online teaching resources used in online teaching, which has become a research hotspot today. Organizing digital skills training for teachers to cope with the application of emerging technologies in education is an important issue for teacher professional development and lifelong learning (Garzón-Artacho et al. 2021 ). As the main organizers and practitioners of emergency remote teaching (ERT) during the pandemic, teachers must put cognitive effort into their professional development to ensure effective implementation of ERT (Romero-Hall and Jaramillo Cherrez, 2022 ).

The burst word “digital transformation” reveals that we are in the midst of an ongoing digital technology revolution. With the emergence of innovative digital technologies such as ChatGPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot, technology trends will continue to evolve, albeit unpredictably. While the impact of these advancements on school education remains uncertain, it is anticipated that the widespread integration of technology will significantly affect the current education system. Rejecting emerging technologies without careful consideration is unwise. Like any revolution, the technological revolution in the education field has both positive and negative aspects. Detractors argue that digital technology disrupts learning and memory (Baron, 2021 ) or causes learners to become addicted and distracted from learning (Selwyn and Aagaard, 2020 ). On the other hand, the prudent use of digital technology in education offers a glimpse of a golden age of open learning. Educational leaders and practitioners have the opportunity to leverage cutting-edge digital technologies to address current educational challenges and develop a rational path for the sustainable and healthy growth of education.

Discussion on performance analysis (RQ1)

The field of digital technology education application research has experienced substantial growth since the turn of the century, a phenomenon that is quantifiably apparent through an analysis of authorship, country/region contributions, and institutional engagement. This expansion reflects the increased integration of digital technologies in educational settings and the heightened scholarly interest in understanding and optimizing their use.

Discussion on authorship productivity in digital technology education research

The authorship distribution within digital technology education research is indicative of the field’s intellectual structure and depth. A primary figure in this domain is Neil Selwyn, whose substantial citation rate underscores the profound impact of his work. His focus on the implications of digital technology in higher education and educational sociology has proven to be seminal. Selwyn’s research trajectory, especially the exploration of spatiotemporal extensions of education through technology, provides valuable insights into the multifaceted role of digital tools in learning processes (Selwyn et al. 2019 ).

Other notable contributors, like Henderson and Edwards, present diversified research interests, such as the impact of digital technologies during the pandemic and their application in early childhood education, respectively. Their varied focuses highlight the breadth of digital technology education research, encompassing pedagogical innovation, technological adaptation, and policy development.

Discussion on country/region-level productivity and collaboration

At the country/region level, the United Kingdom, specifically England, emerges as a leading contributor with 92 published papers and a significant citation count. This is closely followed by Australia and the United States, indicating a strong English-speaking research axis. Such geographical concentration of scholarly output often correlates with investment in research and development, technological infrastructure, and the prevalence of higher education institutions engaging in cutting-edge research.

China’s notable inclusion as the only non-Western country among the top contributors to the field suggests a growing research capacity and interest in digital technology in education. However, the lower average citation per paper for China could reflect emerging engagement or different research focuses that may not yet have achieved the same international recognition as Western counterparts.

The chord diagram analysis furthers this understanding, revealing dense interconnections between countries like the United States, China, and England, which indicates robust collaborations. Such collaborations are fundamental in addressing global educational challenges and shaping international research agendas.

Discussion on institutional-level contributions to digital technology education

Institutional productivity in digital technology education research reveals a constellation of universities driving the field forward. Monash University and the Australian Catholic University have the highest publication output, signaling Australia’s significant role in advancing digital education research. The University of Oslo’s remarkable average citation count per publication indicates influential research contributions, potentially reflecting high-quality studies that resonate with the broader academic community.

The strong showing of UK institutions, including the University of London, The Open University, and the University of Cambridge, reinforces the UK’s prominence in this research field. Such institutions are often at the forefront of pedagogical innovation, benefiting from established research cultures and funding mechanisms that support sustained inquiry into digital education.

Discussion on journal publication analysis

An examination of journal outputs offers a lens into the communicative channels of the field’s knowledge base. Journals such as Education and Information Technologies , Computers & Education , and the British Journal of Educational Technology not only serve as the primary disseminators of research findings but also as indicators of research quality and relevance. The impact factor (IF) serves as a proxy for the quality and influence of these journals within the academic community.

The high citation counts for articles published in Computers & Education suggest that research disseminated through this medium has a wide-reaching impact and is of particular interest to the field. This is further evidenced by its significant IF of 11.182, indicating that the journal is a pivotal platform for seminal work in the application of digital technology in education.

The authorship, regional, and institutional productivity in the field of digital technology education application research collectively narrate the evolution of this domain since the turn of the century. The prominence of certain authors and countries underscores the importance of socioeconomic factors and existing academic infrastructure in fostering research productivity. Meanwhile, the centrality of specific journals as outlets for high-impact research emphasizes the role of academic publishing in shaping the research landscape.

As the field continues to grow, future research may benefit from leveraging the collaborative networks that have been elucidated through this analysis, perhaps focusing on underrepresented regions to broaden the scope and diversity of research. Furthermore, the stabilization of publication numbers in recent years invites a deeper exploration into potential plateaus in research trends or saturation in certain sub-fields, signaling an opportunity for novel inquiries and methodological innovations.

Discussion on the evolutionary trends (RQ2)

The evolution of the research field concerning the application of digital technology in education over the past two decades is a story of convergence, diversification, and transformation, shaped by rapid technological advancements and shifting educational paradigms.

At the turn of the century, the inception of digital technology in education was largely exploratory, with a focus on how emerging computer technologies could be harnessed to enhance traditional learning environments. Research from this early period was primarily descriptive, reflecting on the potential and challenges of incorporating digital tools into the educational setting. This phase was critical in establishing the fundamental discourse that would guide subsequent research, as it set the stage for understanding the scope and impact of digital technology in learning spaces (Wang et al. 2023 ).

As the first decade progressed, the narrative expanded to encompass the pedagogical implications of digital technologies. This was a period of conceptual debates, where terms like “digital natives” and “disruptive pedagogy” entered the academic lexicon, underscoring the growing acknowledgment of digital technology as a transformative force within education (Bennett and Maton, 2010 ). During this time, the research began to reflect a more nuanced understanding of the integration of technology, considering not only its potential to change where and how learning occurred but also its implications for educational equity and access.

In the second decade, with the maturation of internet connectivity and mobile technology, the focus of research shifted from theoretical speculations to empirical investigations. The proliferation of digital devices and the ubiquity of social media influenced how learners interacted with information and each other, prompting a surge in studies that sought to measure the impact of these tools on learning outcomes. The digital divide and issues related to digital literacy became central concerns, as scholars explored the varying capacities of students and educators to engage with technology effectively.

Throughout this period, there was an increasing emphasis on the individualization of learning experiences, facilitated by adaptive technologies that could cater to the unique needs and pacing of learners (Jing et al. 2023a ). This individualization was coupled with a growing recognition of the importance of collaborative learning, both online and offline, and the role of digital tools in supporting these processes. Blended learning models, which combined face-to-face instruction with online resources, emerged as a significant trend, advocating for a balance between traditional pedagogies and innovative digital strategies.

The later years, particularly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerated the necessity for digital technology in education, transforming it from a supplementary tool to an essential platform for delivering education globally (Mo et al. 2022 ; Mustapha et al. 2021 ). This era brought about an unprecedented focus on online learning environments, distance education, and virtual classrooms. Research became more granular, examining not just the pedagogical effectiveness of digital tools, but also their role in maintaining continuity of education during crises, their impact on teacher and student well-being, and their implications for the future of educational policy and infrastructure.

Across these two decades, the research field has seen a shift from examining digital technology as an external addition to the educational process, to viewing it as an integral component of curriculum design, instructional strategies, and even assessment methods. The emergent themes have broadened from a narrow focus on specific tools or platforms to include wider considerations such as data privacy, ethical use of technology, and the environmental impact of digital tools.

Moreover, the field has moved from considering the application of digital technology in education as a primarily cognitive endeavor to recognizing its role in facilitating socio-emotional learning, digital citizenship, and global competencies. Researchers have increasingly turned their attention to the ways in which technology can support collaborative skills, cultural understanding, and ethical reasoning within diverse student populations.

In summary, the past over twenty years in the research field of digital technology applications in education have been characterized by a progression from foundational inquiries to complex analyses of digital integration. This evolution has mirrored the trajectory of technology itself, from a facilitative tool to a pervasive ecosystem defining contemporary educational experiences. As we look to the future, the field is poised to delve into the implications of emerging technologies like AI, AR, and VR, and their potential to redefine the educational landscape even further. This ongoing metamorphosis suggests that the application of digital technology in education will continue to be a rich area of inquiry, demanding continual adaptation and forward-thinking from educators and researchers alike.

Discussion on the study of research hotspots (RQ3)

The analysis of keyword evolution in digital technology education application research elucidates the current frontiers in the field, reflecting a trajectory that is in tandem with the rapidly advancing digital age. This landscape is sculpted by emergent technological innovations and shaped by the demands of an increasingly digital society.

Interdisciplinary integration and pedagogical transformation

One of the frontiers identified from recent keyword bursts includes the integration of digital technology into diverse educational contexts, particularly noted with the keyword “physical education.” The digitalization of disciplines traditionally characterized by physical presence illustrates the pervasive reach of technology and signifies a push towards interdisciplinary integration where technology is not only a facilitator but also a transformative agent. This integration challenges educators to reconceptualize curriculum delivery to accommodate digital tools that can enhance or simulate the physical aspects of learning.

Digital literacy and skills acquisition

Another pivotal frontier is the focus on “digital literacy” and “digital skill”, which has intensified in recent years. This suggests a shift from mere access to technology towards a comprehensive understanding and utilization of digital tools. In this realm, the emphasis is not only on the ability to use technology but also on critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ethical use of digital resources (Yu, 2022 ). The acquisition of digital literacy is no longer an additive skill but a fundamental aspect of modern education, essential for navigating and contributing to the digital world.

Educational digital transformation

The keyword “digital transformation” marks a significant research frontier, emphasizing the systemic changes that education institutions must undergo to align with the digital era (Romero et al. 2021 ). This transformation includes the redesigning of learning environments, pedagogical strategies, and assessment methods to harness digital technology’s full potential. Research in this area explores the complexity of institutional change, addressing the infrastructural, cultural, and policy adjustments needed for a seamless digital transition.

Engagement and participation

Further exploration into “engagement” and “participation” underscores the importance of student-centered learning environments that are mediated by technology. The current frontiers examine how digital platforms can foster collaboration, inclusivity, and active learning, potentially leading to more meaningful and personalized educational experiences. Here, the use of technology seeks to support the emotional and cognitive aspects of learning, moving beyond the transactional view of education to one that is relational and interactive.

Professional development and teacher readiness

As the field evolves, “professional development” emerges as a crucial area, particularly in light of the pandemic which necessitated emergency remote teaching. The need for teacher readiness in a digital age is a pressing frontier, with research focusing on the competencies required for educators to effectively integrate technology into their teaching practices. This includes familiarity with digital tools, pedagogical innovation, and an ongoing commitment to personal and professional growth in the digital domain.

Pandemic as a catalyst

The recent pandemic has acted as a catalyst for accelerated research and application in this field, particularly in the domains of “digital transformation,” “professional development,” and “physical education.” This period has been a litmus test for the resilience and adaptability of educational systems to continue their operations in an emergency. Research has thus been directed at understanding how digital technologies can support not only continuity but also enhance the quality and reach of education in such contexts.

Ethical and societal considerations

The frontier of digital technology in education is also expanding to consider broader ethical and societal implications. This includes issues of digital equity, data privacy, and the sociocultural impact of technology on learning communities. The research explores how educational technology can be leveraged to address inequities and create more equitable learning opportunities for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background.

Innovation and emerging technologies

Looking forward, the frontiers are set to be influenced by ongoing and future technological innovations, such as artificial intelligence (AI) (Wu and Yu, 2023 ; Chen et al. 2022a ). The exploration into how these technologies can be integrated into educational practices to create immersive and adaptive learning experiences represents a bold new chapter for the field.

In conclusion, the current frontiers of research on the application of digital technology in education are multifaceted and dynamic. They reflect an overarching movement towards deeper integration of technology in educational systems and pedagogical practices, where the goals are not only to facilitate learning but to redefine it. As these frontiers continue to expand and evolve, they will shape the educational landscape, requiring a concerted effort from researchers, educators, policymakers, and technologists to navigate the challenges and harness the opportunities presented by the digital revolution in education.

Conclusions and future research

Conclusions.

The utilization of digital technology in education is a research area that cuts across multiple technical and educational domains and continues to experience dynamic growth due to the continuous progress of technology. In this study, a systematic review of this field was conducted through bibliometric techniques to examine its development trajectory. The primary focus of the review was to investigate the leading contributors, productive national institutions, significant publications, and evolving development patterns. The study’s quantitative analysis resulted in several key conclusions that shed light on this research field’s current state and future prospects.

(1) The research field of digital technology education applications has entered a stage of rapid development, particularly in recent years due to the impact of the pandemic, resulting in a peak of publications. Within this field, several key authors (Selwyn, Henderson, Edwards, etc.) and countries/regions (England, Australia, USA, etc.) have emerged, who have made significant contributions. International exchanges in this field have become frequent, with a high degree of internationalization in academic research. Higher education institutions in the UK and Australia are the core productive forces in this field at the institutional level.

(2) Education and Information Technologies , Computers & Education , and the British Journal of Educational Technology are notable journals that publish research related to digital technology education applications. These journals are affiliated with the research field of educational technology and provide effective communication platforms for sharing digital technology education applications.

(3) Over the past two decades, research on digital technology education applications has progressed from its early stages of budding, initial development, and critical exploration to accelerated transformation, and it is currently approaching maturity. Technological progress and changes in the times have been key driving forces for educational transformation and innovation, and both have played important roles in promoting the continuous development of education.

(4) Influenced by the pandemic, three emerging frontiers have emerged in current research on digital technology education applications, which are physical education, digital transformation, and professional development under the promotion of digital technology. These frontier research hotspots reflect the core issues that the education system faces when encountering new technologies. The evolution of research hotspots shows that technology breakthroughs in education’s original boundaries of time and space create new challenges. The continuous self-renewal of education is achieved by solving one hotspot problem after another.

The present study offers significant practical implications for scholars and practitioners in the field of digital technology education applications. Firstly, it presents a well-defined framework of the existing research in this area, serving as a comprehensive guide for new entrants to the field and shedding light on the developmental trajectory of this research domain. Secondly, the study identifies several contemporary research hotspots, thus offering a valuable decision-making resource for scholars aiming to explore potential research directions. Thirdly, the study undertakes an exhaustive analysis of published literature to identify core journals in the field of digital technology education applications, with Sustainability being identified as a promising open access journal that publishes extensively on this topic. This finding can potentially facilitate scholars in selecting appropriate journals for their research outputs.

Limitation and future research

Influenced by some objective factors, this study also has some limitations. First of all, the bibliometrics analysis software has high standards for data. In order to ensure the quality and integrity of the collected data, the research only selects the periodical papers in SCIE and SSCI indexes, which are the core collection of Web of Science database, and excludes other databases, conference papers, editorials and other publications, which may ignore some scientific research and original opinions in the field of digital technology education and application research. In addition, although this study used professional software to carry out bibliometric analysis and obtained more objective quantitative data, the analysis and interpretation of data will inevitably have a certain subjective color, and the influence of subjectivity on data analysis cannot be completely avoided. As such, future research endeavors will broaden the scope of literature screening and proactively engage scholars in the field to gain objective and state-of-the-art insights, while minimizing the adverse impact of personal subjectivity on research analysis.

Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the Dataverse repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/F9QMHY

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Social Science Planning Project, “Mechanisms and Pathways for Empowering Classroom Teaching through Learning Spaces under the Strategy of High-Quality Education Development”, the 2022 National Social Science Foundation Education Youth Project “Research on the Strategy of Creating Learning Space Value and Empowering Classroom Teaching under the background of ‘Double Reduction’” (Grant No. CCA220319) and the National College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program of China (Grant No. 202310337023).

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Wang, C., Chen, X., Yu, T. et al. Education reform and change driven by digital technology: a bibliometric study from a global perspective. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 256 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02717-y

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How Has Technology Changed Education?

Technology has impacted almost every aspect of life today, and education is no exception. Or is it? In some ways, education seems much the same as it has been for many years. A 14th century illustration by Laurentius de Voltolina depicts a university lecture in medieval Italy. The scene is easily recognizable because of its parallels to the modern day. The teacher lectures from a podium at the front of the room while the students sit in rows and listen. Some of the students have books open in front of them and appear to be following along. A few look bored. Some are talking to their neighbors. One appears to be sleeping. Classrooms today do not look much different, though you might find modern students looking at their laptops, tablets, or smart phones instead of books (though probably open to Facebook). A cynic would say that technology has done nothing to change education.

However, in many ways, technology has profoundly changed education. For one, technology has greatly expanded access to education. In medieval times, books were rare and only an elite few had access to educational opportunities. Individuals had to travel to centers of learning to get an education. Today, massive amounts of information (books, audio, images, videos) are available at one’s fingertips through the Internet, and opportunities for formal learning are available online worldwide through the Khan Academy, MOOCs, podcasts, traditional online degree programs, and more. Access to learning opportunities today is unprecedented in scope thanks to technology.

Opportunities for communication and collaboration have also been expanded by technology. Traditionally, classrooms have been relatively isolated, and collaboration has been limited to other students in the same classroom or building. Today, technology enables forms of communication and collaboration undreamt of in the past. Students in a classroom in the rural U.S., for example, can learn about the Arctic by following the expedition of a team of scientists in the region, read scientists’ blog posting, view photos, e-mail questions to the scientists, and even talk live with the scientists via a videoconference. Students can share what they are learning with students in other classrooms in other states who are tracking the same expedition. Students can collaborate on group projects using technology-based tools such as wikis and Google docs. The walls of the classrooms are no longer a barrier as technology enables new ways of learning, communicating, and working collaboratively.

Technology has also begun to change the roles of teachers and learners. In the traditional classroom, such as what we see depicted in de Voltolina’s illustration, the teacher is the primary source of information, and the learners passively receive it. This model of the teacher as the “sage on the stage” has been in education for a long time, and it is still very much in evidence today. However, because of the access to information and educational opportunity that technology has enabled, in many classrooms today we see the teacher’s role shifting to the “guide on the side” as students take more responsibility for their own learning using technology to gather relevant information. Schools and universities across the country are beginning to redesign learning spaces to enable this new model of education, foster more interaction and small group work, and use technology as an enabler.

Technology is a powerful tool that can support and transform education in many ways, from making it easier for teachers to create instructional materials to enabling new ways for people to learn and work together. With the worldwide reach of the Internet and the ubiquity of smart devices that can connect to it, a new age of anytime anywhere education is dawning. It will be up to instructional designers and educational technologies to make the most of the opportunities provided by technology to change education so that effective and efficient education is available to everyone everywhere.

You can help shape the influence of technology in education with an Online Master of Science in Education in Learning Design and Technology from Purdue University Online. This accredited program offers studies in exciting new technologies that are shaping education and offers students the opportunity to take part in the future of innovation.

Learn more about the online MSEd in Learning Design and Technology at Purdue University today and help redefine the way in which individuals learn. Call (877) 497-5851 to speak with an admissions advisor or to request more information.

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Global education monitoring report summary, 2023: technology in education: a tool on whose terms? (hin)

The new 2023 GEM Report on  Technology in education: A tool on whose terms?  addresses the use of technology in education around the world through the lenses of relevance, equity, scalability and sustainability.

It argues that education systems should always ensure that learners’ interests are placed at the center and that digital technologies are used to support an education based on human interaction rather than aiming at substituting it. The report looks at ways in which technology can help reach disadvantaged learners but also ensure more knowledge reaches more learners in more engaging and cheaper formats. It focuses on how quality can be improved, both in teaching and learning basic skills, and in developing the digital skills needed in daily life. It recognizes the role of technology in system management with special reference to assessment data and other education management information.

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How technology is shaping learning in higher education

About the authors.

This article is a collaborative effort by Claudio Brasca, Charag Krishnan , Varun Marya , Katie Owen, Joshua Sirois, and Shyla Ziade, representing views from McKinsey’s Education Practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift to remote learning overnight for most higher-education students, starting in the spring of 2020. To complement video lectures and engage students in the virtual classroom, educators adopted technologies that enabled more interactivity and hybrid models of online and in-person activities. These tools changed learning, teaching, and assessment in ways that may persist after the pandemic. Investors have taken note. Edtech start-ups raised record amounts of venture capital in 2020 and 2021, and market valuations for bigger players soared.

A study conducted by McKinsey in 2021 found that to engage most effectively with students, higher-education institutions can focus on eight dimensions  of the learning experience. In this article, we describe the findings of a study of the learning technologies that can enable aspects of several of those eight dimensions (see sidebar “Eight dimensions of the online learning experience”).

Eight dimensions of the online learning experience

Leading online higher-education institutions focus on eight key dimensions of the learning experience across three overarching principles.

Seamless journey

Clear education road map: “My online program provides a road map to achieve my life goals and helps me structure my day to day to achieve steady progress.”

Seamless connections: “I have one-click access to classes and learning resources in the virtual learning platform through my laptop or my phone.”

Engaging teaching approach

Range of learning formats: “My program offers a menu of engaging courses with both self-guided and real-time classes, and lots of interaction with instructors and peers.”

Captivating experiences: “I learn from the best professors and experts. My classes are high quality, with up-to-date content.”

Adaptive learning: “I access a personalized platform that helps me practice exercises and exams and gives immediate feedback without having to wait for the course teacher.”

Real-world skills application: “My online program helps me get hands-on practice using exciting virtual tools to solve real-world problems.”

Caring network

Timely support: “I am not alone in my learning journey and have adequate 24/7 support for academic and nonacademic issues.”

Strong community: “I feel part of an academic community and I’m able to make friends online.”

In November 2021, McKinsey surveyed 600 faculty members and 800 students from public and private nonprofit colleges and universities in the United States, including minority-serving institutions, about the use and impact of eight different classroom learning technologies (Exhibit 1). (For more on the learning technologies analyzed in this research, see sidebar “Descriptions of the eight learning technologies.”) To supplement the survey, we interviewed industry experts and higher-education professionals who make decisions about classroom technology use. We discovered which learning tools and approaches have seen the highest uptake, how students and educators view them, the barriers to higher adoption, how institutions have successfully adopted innovative technologies, and the notable impacts on learning (for details about our methodology, see sidebar “About the research”).

Double-digit growth in adoption and positive perceptions

Descriptions of the eight learning technologies.

• Classroom interactions: These are software platforms that allow students to ask questions, make comments, respond to polls, and attend breakout discussions in real time, among other features. They are downloadable and accessible from phones, computers, and tablets, relevant to all subject areas, and useful for remote and in-person learning.
• Classroom exercises: These platforms gamify learning with fun, low-stakes competitions, pose problems to solve during online classes, allow students to challenge peers to quizzes, and promote engagement with badges and awards. They are relevant to all subject areas.
• Connectivity and community building: A broad range of informal, opt-in tools, these allow students to engage with one another and instructors and participate in the learning community. They also include apps that give students 24/7 asynchronous access to lectures, expanded course materials, and notes with enhanced search and retrieval functionality.
• Group work: These tools let students collaborate in and out of class via breakout/study rooms, group preparation for exams and quizzes, and streamlined file sharing.
• Augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR): Interactive simulations immerse learners in course content, such as advanced lab simulations for hard sciences, medical simulations for nursing, and virtual exhibit tours for the liberal arts. AR can be offered with proprietary software on most mobile or laptop devices. VR requires special headsets, proprietary software, and adequate classroom space for simultaneous use.
• AI adaptive course delivery: Cloud-based, AI-powered software adapts course content to a student’s knowledge level and abilities. These are fully customizable by instructors and available in many subject areas, including business, humanities, and sciences.
• Machine learning–powered teaching assistants: Also known as chatbot programs, machine learning–powered teaching assistants answer student questions and explain course content outside of class. These can auto-create, deliver, and grade assignments and exams, saving instructors’ time; they are downloadable from mobile app stores and can be accessed on personal devices.
• Student progress monitoring: These tools let instructors monitor academic progress, content mastery, and engagement. Custom alerts and reports identify at-risk learners and help instructors tailor the content or their teaching style for greater effectiveness. This capability is often included with subscriptions to adaptive learning platforms.

Survey respondents reported a 19 percent average increase in overall use of these learning technologies since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Technologies that enable connectivity and community building, such as social media–inspired discussion platforms and virtual study groups, saw the biggest uptick in use—49 percent—followed by group work tools, which grew by 29 percent (Exhibit 2). These technologies likely fill the void left by the lack of in-person experiences more effectively than individual-focused learning tools such as augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR). Classroom interaction technologies such as real-time chatting, polling, and breakout room discussions were the most widely used tools before the pandemic and remain so; 67 percent of survey respondents said they currently use these tools in the classroom.

About the research

In November 2021, McKinsey surveyed 634 faculty members and 818 students from public, private, and minority-serving colleges and universities over a ten-day period. The survey included only students and faculty who had some remote- or online-learning experience with any of the eight featured technologies. Respondents were 63 percent female, 35 percent male, and 2 percent other gender identities; 69 percent White, 18 percent Black or African American, 8 percent Asian, and 4 percent other ethnicities; and represented every US region. The survey asked respondents about their:

• experiences with technology in the classroom pre-COVID-19;
• experiences with technology in the classroom since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; and
• desire for future learning experiences in relation to technology.

The shift to more interactive and diverse learning models will likely continue. One industry expert told us, “The pandemic pushed the need for a new learning experience online. It recentered institutions to think about how they’ll teach moving forward and has brought synchronous and hybrid learning into focus.” Consequently, many US colleges and universities are actively investing to scale up their online and hybrid program offerings .

Differences in adoption by type of institution observed in the research

• Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges and universities made the most use of classroom interactions and group work tools (55 percent) and the least use of tools for monitoring student progress (15 percent).
• Private institutions used classroom interaction technologies (84 percent) more than public institutions (63 percent).
• Public institutions, often associated with larger student populations and course sizes, employed group work and connectivity and community-building tools more often than private institutions.
• The use of AI teaching-assistant technologies increased significantly more at public institutions (30 percent) than at private institutions (9 percent), though overall usage remained comparatively higher at private institutions.
• The use of tools for monitoring student progress increased by 14 percent at private institutions, versus no growth at public institutions.

Some technologies lag behind in adoption. Tools enabling student progress monitoring, AR/VR, machine learning–powered teaching assistants (TAs), AI adaptive course delivery, and classroom exercises are currently used by less than half of survey respondents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that technologies such as AR/VR require a substantial investment in equipment and may be difficult to use at scale in classes with high enrollment. Our survey also revealed utilization disparities based on size. Small public institutions use machine learning–powered TAs, AR/VR, and technologies for monitoring student progress at double or more the rates of medium and large public institutions, perhaps because smaller, specialized schools can make more targeted and cost-effective investments. We also found that medium and large public institutions made greater use of connectivity and community-building tools than small public institutions (57 to 59 percent compared with 45 percent, respectively). Although the uptake of AI-powered tools was slower, higher-education experts we interviewed predict their use will increase; they allow faculty to tailor courses to each student’s progress, reduce their workload, and improve student engagement at scale (see sidebar “Differences in adoption by type of institution observed in the research”).

While many colleges and universities are interested in using more technologies to support student learning, the top three barriers indicated are lack of awareness, inadequate deployment capabilities, and cost (Exhibit 3).

Students want entertaining and efficient tools

More than 60 percent of students said that all the classroom learning technologies they’ve used since COVID-19 began had improved their learning and grades (Exhibit 4). However, two technologies earned higher marks than the rest for boosting academic performance: 80 percent of students cited classroom exercises, and 71 percent cited machine learning–powered teaching assistants.

Although AR/VR is not yet widely used, 37 percent of students said they are “most excited” about its potential in the classroom. While 88 percent of students believe AR/VR will make learning more entertaining, just 5 percent said they think it will improve their ability to learn or master content (Exhibit 5). Industry experts confirmed that while there is significant enthusiasm for AR/VR, its ability to improve learning outcomes is uncertain. Some data look promising. For example, in a recent pilot study, 1 “Immersive biology in the Alien Zoo: A Dreamscape Learn software product,” Dreamscape Learn, accessed October 2021. students who used a VR tool to complete coursework for an introductory biology class improved their subject mastery by an average of two letter grades.

Faculty embrace new tools but would benefit from more technical support and training

Faculty gave learning tools even higher marks than students did, for ease of use, engagement, access to course resources, and instructor connectivity. They also expressed greater excitement than students did for the future use of technologies. For example, while more than 30 percent of students expressed excitement for AR/VR and classroom interactions, more than 60 percent of faculty were excited about those, as well as machine learning–powered teaching assistants and AI adaptive technology.

Eighty-one percent or more of faculty said they feel the eight learning technology tools are a good investment of time and effort relative to the value they provide (Exhibit 6). Expert interviews suggest that employing learning technologies can be a strain on faculty members, but those we surveyed said this strain is worthwhile.

While faculty surveyed were enthusiastic about new technologies, experts we interviewed stressed some underlying challenges. For example, digital-literacy gaps have been more pronounced since the pandemic because it forced the near-universal adoption of some technology solutions, deepening a divide that was unnoticed when adoption was sporadic. More tech-savvy instructors are comfortable with interaction-engagement-focused solutions, while staff who are less familiar with these tools prefer content display and delivery-focused technologies.

According to experts we interviewed, learning new tools and features can bring on general fatigue. An associate vice president of e-learning at one university told us that faculty there found designing and executing a pilot study of VR for a computer science class difficult. “It’s a completely new way of instruction. . . . I imagine that the faculty using it now will not use it again in the spring.” Technical support and training help. A chief academic officer of e-learning who oversaw the introduction of virtual simulations for nursing and radiography students said that faculty holdouts were permitted to opt out but not to delay the program. “We structured it in a ‘we’re doing this together’ way. People who didn’t want to do it left, but we got a lot of support from vendors and training, which made it easy to implement simulations.”

Reimagining higher education in the United States

Takeaways from our research.

Despite the growing pains of digitizing the classroom learning experience, faculty and students believe there is a lot more they can gain. Faculty members are optimistic about the benefits, and students expect learning to stay entertaining and efficient. While adoption levels saw double-digit growth during the pandemic, many classrooms have yet to experience all the technologies. For institutions considering the investment, or those that have already started, there are several takeaways to keep in mind.

• It’s important for administration leaders, IT, and faculty to agree on what they want to accomplish by using a particular learning technology. Case studies and expert interviews suggest institutions that seek alignment from all their stakeholders before implementing new technologies are more successful. Is the primary objective student engagement and motivation? Better academic performance? Faculty satisfaction and retention? Once objectives are set, IT staff and faculty can collaborate more effectively in choosing the best technology and initiating programs.
• Factor in student access to technology before deployment. As education technology use grows, the digital divide for students puts access to education at risk. While all the institution types we surveyed use learning technologies in the classroom, they do so to varying degrees. For example, 55 percent of respondents from historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and universities use classroom interaction tools. This is lower than public institutions’ overall utilization rate of 64 percent and private institutions’ utilization rate of 84 percent. Similarly, 15 percent of respondents from historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and universities use tools for monitoring student progress, while the overall utilization rate for both public and private institutions is 25 percent.
• High-quality support eases adoption for students and faculty. Institutions that have successfully deployed new learning technologies provided technical support and training for students and guidance for faculty on how to adapt their course content and delivery. For example, institutions could include self-service resources, standardize tools for adoption, or provide stipend opportunities for faculty who attend technical training courses. One chief academic officer told us, “The adoption of platforms at the individual faculty level can be very difficult. Ease of use is still very dependent upon your IT support representative and how they will go to bat to support you.”
• Agree on impact metrics and start measuring in advance of deployment. Higher-education institutions often don’t have the means to measure the impact of their investment in learning technologies, yet it’s essential for maximizing returns. Attributing student outcomes to a specific technology can be complex due to the number of variables involved in academic performance. However, prior to investing in learning technologies, the institution and its faculty members can align on a core set of metrics to quantify and measure their impact. One approach is to measure a broad set of success indicators, such as tool usage, user satisfaction, letter grades, and DFW rates (the percentage of students who receive a D, F, or Withdraw) each term. The success indicators can then be correlated by modality—online versus hybrid versus in-class—to determine the impact of specific tools. Some universities have offered faculty grants of up to $20,000 for running pilot programs that assess whether tools are achieving high-priority objectives. “If implemented properly, at the right place, and with the right buy-in, education technology solutions are absolutely valuable and have a clear ROI,” a senior vice president of academic affairs and chief technology officer told us.

In an earlier article , we looked at the broader changes in higher education that have been prompted by the pandemic. But perhaps none has advanced as quickly as the adoption of digital learning tools. Faculty and students see substantial benefits, and adoption rates are a long way from saturation, so we can expect uptake to continue. Institutions that want to know how they stand in learning tech adoption can measure their rates and benchmark them against the averages in this article and use those comparisons to help them decide where they want to catch up or get ahead.

Claudio Brasca is a partner in McKinsey’s Bay Area office, where Varun Marya is a senior partner; Charag Krishnan is a partner in the New Jersey office; Katie Owen is an associate partner in the St. Louis office, where Joshua Sirois is a consultant; and Shyla Ziade is a consultant in the Denver office.

The authors wish to thank Paul Kim, chief technology officer and associate dean at Stanford School of Education, and Ryan Golden for their contributions to this article.

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The Evolution of Technology in K–12 Classrooms: 1659 to Today

Alexander Huls is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in  The New York Times ,  Popular Mechanics ,  Esquire ,  The Atlantic  and elsewhere.

In the 21st century, it can feel like advanced technology is changing the K–12 classroom in ways we’ve never seen before. But the truth is, technology and education have a long history of evolving together to dramatically change how students learn.

With more innovations surely headed our way, why not look back at how we got to where we are today, while looking forward to how educators can continue to integrate new technologies into their learning?

DISCOVER:  Special education departments explore advanced tech in their classrooms.

Using Technology in the K–12 Classroom: A History

1659: magic lantern.

• Inventor:  Christiaan Huygens
• A Brief History:  An ancestor of the slide projector, the magic lantern projected glass slides with light from oil lamps or candles. In the 1680s, the technology was brought to the education space to show detailed anatomical illustrations, which were difficult to sketch on a chalkboard.
• Interesting Fact:  Huygens initially regretted his creation, thinking it was too frivolous.

1795: Pencil

• Inventor:  Nicolas-Jacques Conté
• A Brief History : Versions of the pencil can be traced back hundreds of years, but what’s considered the modern pencil is credited to Conté, a scientist in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. It made its impact on the classroom, however, when it began to be mass produced in the 1900s.
• Interesting Fact:  The Aztecs used a form of graphite pencil in the 13th century.

1801: Chalkboard

• Inventor:  James Pillans
• A Brief History:  Pillans — a headmaster at a high school in Edinburgh, Scotland — created the first front-of-class chalkboard, or “blackboard,” to better teach his students geography with large maps. Prior to his creation, educators worked with students on smaller, individual pieces of wood or slate. In the 1960s, the creation was upgraded to a green board, which became a familiar fixture in every classroom.
• Interesting Fact:  Before chalkboards were commercially manufactured, some were made do-it-yourself-style with ingredients like pine board, egg whites and charred potatoes.

1888: Ballpoint Pen

• Inventory:  John L. Loud
• A Brief History:  John L. Loud invented and patented the first ballpoint pen after seeking to create a tool that could write on leather. It was not a commercial success. Fifty years later, following the lapse of Loud’s patent, Hungarian journalist László Bíró invented a pen with a quick-drying special ink that wouldn’t smear thanks to a rolling ball in its nib.
• Interesting Fact:  When ballpoint pens debuted in the U.S., they were so popular that Gimbels, the department store selling them, made $81 million in today’s money within six months.

LEARN MORE:  Logitech Pen works with Chromebooks to combine digital and physical learning.

1950s: Overhead Projector

• Inventor:  Roger Appeldorn
• A Brief History:  Overhead projects were used during World War II for mission briefings. However, 3M employee Appeldorn is credited with creating not only a projectable transparent film, but also the overhead projectors that would find a home in classrooms for decades.
• Interesting Fact:  Appeldorn’s creation is the predecessor to today’s  bright and efficient laser projectors .

1959: Photocopier

• Inventor:  Chester Carlson
• A Brief History:  Because of his arthritis, patent attorney and inventor Carlson wanted to create a less painful alternative to making carbon copies. Between 1938 and 1947, working with The Haloid Photographic Company, Carlson perfected the process of electrophotography, which led to development of the first photocopy machines.
• Interesting Fact:  Haloid and Carlson named their photocopying process xerography, which means “dry writing” in Greek. Eventually, Haloid renamed its company (and its flagship product line) Xerox .

1967: Handheld Calculator

• Inventor:   Texas Instruments
• A Brief History:  As recounted in our  history of the calculator , Texas Instruments made calculators portable with a device that weighed 45 ounces and featured a small keyboard with 18 keys and a visual display of 12 decimal digits.
• Interesting Fact:  The original 1967 prototype of the device can be found in the Smithsonian Institution’s  National Museum of American History .

1981: The Osborne 1 Laptop

• Inventor:  Adam Osborne, Lee Felsenstein
• A Brief History:  Osborne, a computer book author, teamed up with computer engineer Felsenstein to create a portable computer that would appeal to general consumers. In the process, they provided the technological foundation that made modern one-to-one devices — like Chromebooks — a classroom staple.
• Interesting Fact:  At 24.5 pounds, the Osborne 1 was about as big and heavy as a sewing machine, earning it the current classification of a “luggable” computer, rather than a laptop.

1990: World Wide Web

• Inventor:  Tim Berners-Lee
• A Brief History:  In the late 1980s, British scientist Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web to enable information sharing between scientists and academics. It wasn’t long before the Web could connect anyone, anywhere to a wealth of information, and it was soon on its way to powering the modern classroom.
• Interesting Fact:  The first web server Berners-Lee created was so new, he had to put a sign on the computer that read, “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!”

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What Technology Is Used in Today’s K–12 Classrooms?

Technology has come so far that modern classrooms are more technologically advanced than many science labs were two decades ago. Students have access to digital textbooks,  personal devices , collaborative  cloud-based tools , and  interactive whiteboards . Emerging technologies now being introduced to K–12 classrooms include voice assistants, virtual reality devices and 3D printers.

Perhaps the most important thing about ed tech in K–12 isn’t what the technology is, but how it’s used.

How to Integrate Technology into K–12 Classrooms

The first step to integrating technology into the K–12 classroom is  figuring out which solution to integrate , given the large variety of tools available to educators. That variety comes with benefits — like the ability to align tech with district objectives and grade level — but also brings challenges.

“It’s difficult to know how to choose the appropriate digital tool or resource,” says Judi Harris, professor and Pavey Family Chair in Educational Technology at the William & Mary School of Education. “Teachers need some familiarity with the tools so that they understand the potential advantages and disadvantages.”

Judi Harris Professor and Pavey Family Chair in Educational Technology, William and Mary School of Education

K–12 IT leaders should also be careful not to focus too much on technology implementation at the expense of curriculum-based learning needs. “What districts need to ask themselves is not only whether they’re going to adopt a technology, but how they’re going to adopt it,” says Royce Kimmons, associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University.

In other words, while emerging technologies may be exciting, acquiring them without proper consideration of their role in improving classroom learning will likely result in mixed student outcomes. For effective integration, educators should ask themselves, in what ways would the tech increase or support a student’s productivity and learning outcomes? How will it improve engagement?

Integrating ed tech also requires some practical know-how. “Teachers need to be comfortable and confident with the tools they ask students to use,” says Harris.

Professional development for new technologies is crucial, as are supportive IT teams, tech providers with generous onboarding programs and technology integration specialists. Harris also points to initiatives like YES: Youth and Educators Succeeding, a nonprofit organization that prepares students to act as resident experts and classroom IT support.

KEEP READING:  What is the continued importance of professional development in K–12 education?

But as educational technology is rolled out and integrated, it’s important to keep academic goals in sight. “We should never stop focusing on how to best understand and help the learner to achieve those learning objectives,” says Harris.

That should continue to be the case as the technology timeline unfolds, something Harris has witnessed firsthand during her four decades in the field. “It’s been an incredible thing to watch and to participate in,” she notes. “The great majority of teachers are extremely eager to learn and to do anything that will help their students learn better.”

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How advanced technologies are transforming education

Mit leaders and professors eric grimson, cynthia breazeal, and christopher capozzola discuss challenges and opportunities of ai in education.

By Duyen Nguyen

Spurred on by the rapid advancement of generative AI like ChatGPT, much of the current conversation on artificial intelligence has emphasized its threat to humanity. Yet, this technology and other recent innovations also hold promise for the future.

“Today’s technologies in education — generative AI, responsible design, and the future of learning,” was a recent event hosted on MIT campus by MIT Open Learning. As part of the MIT Tech Reunions, this session welcomed over 60 alumni and friends. Vice President for Open Learning Eric Grimson, Dean for Digital Learning Cynthia Breazeal, and Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning Christopher Capozzola discussed both the challenges and opportunities that AI presents in education. Here are some of the most important takeaways from their conversation.

Technology is reshaping residential education

With MIT faculty dedicated to innovating in the classroom, digital tools have been a mainstay of on-campus teaching. Technologies like automated grading in computer science courses enable more time for teaching staff to interact with students, while students are able to correct their learning with immediate feedback on their problem sets. Prof. Grimson pointed to some of these technologies in improving residential education even before the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated a temporary shift to remote learning.

But remote learning pivots have expanded approaches to residential education. For example, using the Zoom chat feature to ask and answer questions during lectures allows more timely opportunities for students to clarify their understanding and engage more deeply in the subject matter and with their classmates. Faculty also gain a better sense of where students need bolstering in mastering concepts. The adoption of blended learning (a mix of in-person and online learning) would make it easier for students to pursue internships and experiences abroad while still receiving an MIT education, said Breazeal, Capozzola, and Grimson.

MIT can expand its role in education globally by leveraging today’s technologies

Several of MIT Open Learning ’s initiatives bring MIT’s resources to learners worldwide. In addition to popular programs like OpenCourseWare and MITx that open up MIT’s curriculum to the globe, efforts to serve under-resourced and vulnerable communities, such as refugee and migrant populations, pave the way for more equitable access to learning and employment opportunities. The MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT), which was incubated within Open Learning and is now part of the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL), offers a successful example of how to combine online courses, a virtual learning community, and remote apprenticeship and independent project opportunities with on-site support hubs to address the needs of learners facing challenging circumstances.

There’s an opportunity to strengthen the education pipeline

Grimson noted that, while nearly 75% of jobs in the U.S. paying $35,000 or more require a bachelor’s degree, only one-third of Americans have completed a four-year college education. Digital learning innovations, like flexible learning modalities, can help close this gap. MIT Open Learning is exploring an agile, continuous education (ACE) model that, Prof. Breazeal explained, will give learners more pathways to advance their education at their own pace. The ACE model, which MIT ReACT adopted for its Computer and Data Science certificate program, combines online, in-person, and at-work learning modalities that provide learners with flexible, cost- and time-efficient options for advancing their education. Innovating new ways to meet different learners’ needs, like experimenting with short-form content, is part of this effort, said Prof. Capozzola.

“We know there’s a lot more talent in the world” whom innovative educational approaches could reach, Capozzola added. MIT Open Learning is exploring digital learning innovations in the space between the end of high school and the start of college or university — “pre-matriculation” — as well as collaborations with community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to support more learners, particularly those whom the traditional higher education model has overlooked or shut out.

Education is inherently human

While a future where AI can create code is on the horizon, the goal of courses like 6.0001 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python is to teach students to think like computer scientists. “It’s not just about code, it’s about computational thinking,” said Grimson. ChatGPT is currently causing society to rethink what’s possible, but Breazeal noted that the promise of AI has been around for decades. Breazeal, who founded the Personal Robots Group at MIT’s Media Lab, has been researching and building socially intelligent personal robots for over a decade. Her work has led to the development of personalized AI tutors that help young learners improve their linguistic skills, improve literacy instruction, and nurture children’s curiosity and learning. “We don’t want an oracle, we want something that will help us learn,” she said, allaying fears that generative AI will displace the motivation and need to learn certain skills.

MIT is playing an important role in creating guidelines for the use of AI and other emerging technologies

Faculty from every school at the Institute are working in AI. At MIT Open Learning, the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative is advancing AI literacy for K-12 students, higher education, and the workforce through programs like Day of AI . The hands-on, team-based approach that RAISE uses to teach young learners about AI has the potential to be adapted to educational programs for learners of all ages. Breazeal explained that the recent program developed by MIT researchers to prepare U.S. Air and Space Forces personnel to understand and utilize AI technologies draws on the same teaching and learning philosophy as Day of AI curricula.

“We need humans interacting with humans,” Breazeal said, in response to an audience question about the likelihood of a future AI-only university. While the session emphasized that the challenges of AI and advanced technologies to education — and humanity — should be taken seriously, the prevailing sentiment was one of hope, not fear.

Learn more about MIT RAISE , Day of AI , and other Open Learning efforts to explore the impact of today’s technologies in education.

How advanced technologies are transforming education was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Global education trends and research to follow in 2022

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, emily gustafsson-wright , emily gustafsson-wright senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @egwbrookings helen shwe hadani , helen shwe hadani former brookings expert @helenshadani kathy hirsh-pasek , kathy hirsh-pasek senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @kathyandro1 maysa jalbout , maysa jalbout nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @maysajalbout elizabeth m. king , elizabeth m. king nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education jennifer l. o’donoghue , jennifer l. o’donoghue deputy director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @jennodjod brad olsen , brad olsen senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @bradolsen_dc jordan shapiro , jordan shapiro nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @jordosh emiliana vegas , and emiliana vegas former co-director - center for universal education , former senior fellow - global economy and development @emivegasv rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @rebeccawinthrop.

January 24, 2022

• 12 min read

As the third calendar year of the pandemic begins, 2022 promises to be an important one—especially for education. Around the world, education systems have had to contend with sporadic closures, inequitable access to education technology and other distance learning tools, and deep challenges in maintaining both students’ and teachers’ physical and emotional health. At the same time, not all of the sudden changes precipitated by the pandemic have been bad—with some promising new innovations, allies, and increased attention on the field of global education emerging over the past three years. The key question is whether 2022 and the years ahead will lead to education transformation or will students, teachers, and families suffer long-lasting setbacks?

In the Center for Universal Education, our scholars take stock of the trends, policies, practices, and research that they’ll be closely keeping an eye on this year and likely in the many to come.

More than ever, in 2022 it will be critical to focus on strengthening the fabric of our global education system in order to achieve positive outcomes—particularly through an increased focus on data-informed decisionmaking. We have seen a renewed focus on different forms of data that are critical to enhanced education outcomes, such as real-time performance data, which allow teachers and other decisionmakers to course-adjust to the needs of learners to better support their educational journeys. Additionally, high-quality program cost data are needed for decisionmakers to plan, budget, and choose the most cost-effective interventions.

One way we are seeing these areas strengthened is through innovative financing for education, such as impact bonds , which require data to operate at full potential. This year, pooled funding through outcomes funds—a scaled version of impact bonds—should make a particularly big splash. The Education Outcomes Fund organization is slated to launch programs in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and we also expect to see the launch of country-specific outcomes funds for education such as OFFER (Outcome Fund For Education Results) in Colombia, the Back-to-School Outcomes Fund in India, and another fund in Chile. At the Center for Universal Education, we will be following these innovations closely and look forward to the insights that they will bring to the education sector.

As we look ahead to 2022, one continued challenge for many families is navigating the uncharted territory of supporting children’s learning with a growing number of school closures . But while the pandemic forced an abrupt slowdown in modern life, it also provided an opportunity to reexamine how we can prioritize learning and healthy development both in and out of school. Moreover, the cascading effects of the pandemic are disproportionally affecting families living in communities challenged by decades of discrimination and disinvestment—and are very likely to widen already existing educational inequities in worrisome ways.

One innovative approach to providing enriching learning opportunities beyond school walls that address the inequities in our current systems is Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) —installations and programming that promote children and families’ learning through play in the public realm. A current focus for PLL at Brookings is measuring the impact of these spaces to show that PLL works and to garner greater investment in them. To that end, Brookings and its partners developed a framework and an initial set of indicators from both the learning science and placemaking perspectives to help assess the positive effects of PLL on learning outcomes , as well as its potential to enhance social interaction and public life in revitalized spaces. The framework will continue to evolve as we learn from communities that are testing the expansion and adaptation of PLL—this important work is just beginning.

The pandemic highlighted several trends in education that promise to be the focus of future policy and practice in 2022 and beyond: the importance of skills that supplement the learning of content, systemic inequities in education systems, and the role of digital technology in the education of the future. It has become increasingly clear that the memorization of content alone will not prepare children for the jobs and society of the future. As noted in a Brookings report “ A new path for education reform, ” in an automated world, manufacturing jobs and even preliminary medical diagnoses or legal contracts can be performed by computers and robots. Students who can work collaboratively—with strong communication skills, critical thinking, and creative innovation—will be highly valued. Mission statements from around the globe are starting to promote a “whole child” approach to education that will encourage the learning of a breadth of skills better aligning the education sector with needs from the business sector.

The past year also demonstrated weaknesses and inequalities inherent in remote learning that I’ll be closely tracking in the years to come. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that virtual learning presents risks to social-emotional learning . Further, research suggests that academic progress during the pandemic slowed such that students demonstrated only 35 to 50 percent of the gains they normally achieve in mathematics and 60 to 68 percent in reading. The losses are not experienced uniformly , with children from underresourced environments falling behind their more resourced peers.

The failure of remote learning also raises questions about the place of digital learning in the classroom. Learning will become more and more hybrid over time, and keeping an eye on advances in technology—especially regarding augmented reality and the metaverse—will be particularly important, as both have real consequences for the classrooms.

In 2022, I’ll be focusing on one group of children in particular–refugees–who are among those children who have historically had the least access to preprimary education. The pandemic has affected them disproportionally , as it pushed them and their families into poverty and deprived them from most forms of education during the school closures.

While much more investment in early childhood education research and evaluation is needed to improve evidence and channel scarce resources effectively, there are a few important efforts to watch. A report commissioned by Theirworld last year provided an overview of the sector and focused on a critical gap and opportunity to address the inequity of access to early childhood education in refugee settings by better supporting teachers and community workers. This year, Theirworld and partners will pursue two of the report’s recommendations–making the science of early childhood brain development widely accessible in refugee communities and building the evidence base on what works in supporting early childhood education teachers and the young refugee children they teach.

The report was informed by existing initiatives including Ahlan Simsim, which in 2017 received the largest known grant to early education in a humanitarian context. While the evaluation of Ahlan Simsim will not be complete until two more years, the Global Ties for Children research center, Sesame Workshop, and the International Rescue Committee will share critical insights into their learning to date in a forthcoming episode of the podcast the Impact Room .

This coming year I’ll be focused on how education systems can prepare for future disruptions, whatever the cause, with more deliberateness. The past two years of the COVID pandemic have seen education systems throughout the globe struggle to find ways to continue schooling. Additionally, there have been other public health crises, natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and severe storms, and wars and terrorism in different parts of the world that have gravely tested school systems’ ability to minimize the cost of catastrophes on students and teachers. Finding safer temporary learning places outside the school and using technologies such as radio, TV broadcasts, and online learning tools have helped, but quick fixes with little preparation are not effective approaches for sustaining and advancing learning gains.

In the age of broadcast and digital technologies, there are many more ways to meet the challenges of future emergency situations, but life- and education-saving solutions must be part of the way school systems operate—built into their structures, their staffing, their budgets, and their curricula. By preparing for the emergencies that are likely to happen, we can persevere to reach learning goals for all children.

By the close of 2021, a number of studies began to document the impact of COVID-19 on girls’ educational trajectories across the Global South. These studies point to promising trends –lower than expected dropout rates and reenrollment rates similar to (if not greater than) those of boys–while still highlighting the particular challenges faced by adolescent girls and girls living in poverty , conflict, and crisis .

In 2022, it will be critical to continue to generate more nuanced evidence—carefully considering questions such as “for which girls,” “where,” “when,” and “why.” And then we must put this knowledge to use to protect and promote girls’ and young women’s rights not just to education, but to participate and thrive in the world around them. Ensuring that marginalized girls and young women become transformative agents in improving their lives and livelihoods—as well as those of their families and communities—requires us to develop new strategies for learning and acting together.

At the Center for Universal Education, this means strengthening our work with local leaders in girls’ education: promoting gender-transformative research through the Echidna Global Scholars Program ; expanding the collective impact of our 33 Echidna alumni; and co-constructing a learning and action community to explore together how to improve beliefs, practices, programs, and policies so that marginalized adolescent girls’ can develop and exercise agency in pursuing their own pathways.

Going into year three of COVID-19, in 2022 I’m interested to see whether countries will transform their education systems or largely leave them the way they are. Will leaders of education systems tinker around the edges of change but mostly attempt a return to a prepandemic “normal,” or will they take advantage of this global rupture in the status quo to replace antiquated educational institutions and approaches with significant structural improvement?

In relation to this, one topic I’ll be watching in particular is how countries treat their teachers. How will policymakers, the media, parent councils, and others frame teachers’ work in 2022? In which locations will teachers be diminished versus where will they be defended as invaluable assets? How will countries learn from implications of out-of-school children (including social isolation and child care needs)? Will teachers remain appreciated in their communities but treated poorly in the material and political conditions of their work? Or will countries hold them dear—demanding accountability while supporting and rewarding them for quality work?

I’m interested in learning more about how pandemic lockdowns have impacted students. So far, we’ve only gotten very general data dealing with questions that are, in my opinion, too simple to be worthwhile. It’s all been about good and bad, positive and negative, learning loss and achievement. But I’ll be watching for more nuanced studies, which ask about specific ways increased time away from school has impacted social-emotional development. How do those results differ between gender, race, socioeconomic status, and geographic location? I suspect we’re going to learn some things about the relationship between home environment and school environment that will challenge a lot of our taken-for-granted assumptions.

In 2022, I’ll be tracking emerging evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 school closures on children and youth. Several researchers, including my co-authors and me , have provided estimates of the school closures’ impact on student learning losses, unemployment, future earnings, and productivity globally. But only recently are researchers analyzing actual evidence of learning losses , and an early systematic review finds that “Although robust and empirical research on COVID-19-related student learning loss is limited, learning loss itself may not be.”

Likewise, there is little rigorous reviews of remote learning tools’ and platforms’ impact on student learning during the school closures. After the pandemic, it is almost certain that remote and hybrid learning will continue—at a minimum occasionally and often periodically—in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. It is urgent that we build the evidence base to help education decisionmakers and practitioners provide effective, tailored learning experiences for all students.

Finally, a key issue for education is how to redesign curricula so that this generation (and future generations) of students gain a key set of skills and competencies required for technologically-advancing labor markets and societies. While foundational literacy and numeracy skills continue to be essential for learning, a strong foundational knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is ever more important in the 21st century, and I look forward to contributing research this year to help make the case for curricula redesign efforts.

I will be interested to see how parent-teacher relationships progress after the pandemic has (hopefully) faded into the background. COVID-19 has had an inescapable impact on the way we deliver education globally, but none more so than on how education leaders and teachers interact with students and their families.

For the past three years, I have been studying family-school collaboration. Together with my colleagues and partners, we have surveyed nearly 25,000 parents and 6,000 teachers in 10 countries around the world and found that the vast majority of teachers, parents, and caregivers want to work together more closely. Quality family-school collaboration has the potential to significantly improve educational outcomes, spur important discussions on the overall purpose of school, and smooth the path for schools and families to navigate change together. From community schools in New Mexico  to text message updates from teachers in India , new innovations are popping up every day—in every corner of the world. I’m excited to see what the future holds for family-school collaboration!

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How technology will transform learning in the COVID-19 era

The traditional degree programme could decline in favour of shorter, more focused courses reflecting the job market. Image:  Glenn Carstens-Peters/Unsplash

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• A "great unbundling" will see traditional degree courses make way for companies offering focused training in soft skills, core skills, critical thinking or an opportunity to network.

• Shorter courses, ROI-oriented career choices and a switch to lifelong learning will power new business models in education.

• Person-to-person contact as well as AI will be essential of the future of education.

Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, authors of The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity , offer three features that will define work in the 21st century.

First, people are likely to live much longer. Being a centenarian will soon become commonplace. Second, the lifespan of organizations will significantly reduce, so long-term employment will become a thing of the past. Third, the concept of retirement will fade away, partly due to financial reasons and partly out of choice.

Combining all these factors, it is easy to see how one might have to spend several years learning and unlearning in order to build a viable portfolio of careers. But if higher education institutions aren’t doing their job in teaching us, what are our alternatives?

The great unbundling

Historically, education offered an amorphous bundle of training in core skills, soft skills and critical thinking, along with an opportunity to network and also to demonstrate our value to employers through a recognized qualification. What we are witnessing now, however, is a “great unbundling” of education, with different companies and communities attempting to capture one part of the bundle. For example, the online Lambda School is focused only on core-skill building, making people of all backgrounds ready for computer science careers. Their Income Share Agreement (ISA) model charges students nothing for their tuition until they land a high-paying job, whereby they pay back 17% of their wages for two years. If they don’t land one within 60 months, the fee is waived. Thus we can see that Lambda has a single-minded focus on core skills, and pays much less attention to value demonstration, soft skills, networking and the other aspects of a traditional education.

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One-third of young people still optimistic despite covid's dramatic hit on education and jobs, investing in education and skills can improve the health of both humans and planet. here's why, covid-19 is widening the education gap. this is how we can stop it, changing focus areas.

The unbundling of education has brought about four tectonic shifts: career choices driven by return on investment (ROI), a move towards lifelong learning, shorter durations and new business models.

The first is ROI-oriented specializations. Following recessions and emergencies such as the one in which we find ourselves, there is usually a spike in ROI-driven career decisions. A whopping 80% of students surveyed at UCLA said that education for them was means towards employment. However, only 50% of US college presidents (a position equivalent to a chancellor in the UK) shared their view. Clearly there is a mismatch between what students want and what traditional universities offer.

Students want to learn tangible skills such as coding, marketing and sales in a condensed timeframe. You could argue that this is short-termist thinking and will one day backfire, but the demand for these skills at present is undeniable.

The second shift we are witnessing is the move towards lifelong learning. The traditional model was to conclude all education, including MBA/master’s programmes, as quickly as possible, and then apply that learning to jobs. This model no longer works today. The new normal is to have periods of study and learning interspersed throughout one’s work life.

This is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors. The 26-35 year olds looking for self-improvement and lifelong learning constitutes the largest opportunity in China, much greater than primary and secondary education or test preparation. While this spending analysis is focused on China, many of the conclusions will hold for the rest of the world.

The third shift we are seeing is that students want to pursue courses of shorter duration. Because of the focus on lifelong learning, students are keen to spend shorter duration during one block of learning. Make School , which also has an offline campus and specializes in project-based study, offers a two-year bachelor’s degree with very high employment rates. There are many similar examples. The rationale for students is that, if they have to go to school multiple times, then each course of study should not be too long. People want to make their time count and capitalize on the latest trends.

Lastly, we are witnessing a shift in business models. The growing popularity of ISAs reflect changing attitudes, whereby students are not willing to hand over huge, one-time payments upfront. This not only changes the student financing market but also forces educational institutions to focus on student outcomes, specifically their employment.

Waves of disruption

The unbundling of education will bring about disruption in multiple waves.

The first wave will include channels of learning hard skills with direct employment prospects. Think of coding bootcamps, Massive Open Online Courses with certifications and nanodegrees , for example. These are high-arbitrage opportunities, but very few such disruptions have worked at scale so far.

A big reason that people choose to go for higher studies is for networking, and that is where the second wave of disruption is likely. Alternatives to traditional networking in the form of coworking spaces, accelerators, private networks, curated associations and peer-mentoring communities are likely to be another area of massive disruption.

Along with hard skills and networks, there is likely to be a huge push for soft skills. Several innovations can be expected in this space in the coming years. The ones that will work are likely to be able to demonstrate tangible benefits for students and young professionals. There might not be a need to go to college to pick up soft skills or network.

Studying or working at an elite institution/organization signals competence to our network. It also increases our perceived social value. The fourth wave of disruption is likely to be the emergence of organizations where membership, association or affiliation signals equal or greater competence.

The renowned theorist of disruptive innovation Clayton Christensen famously said that 50% of all colleges will go bankrupt in the near future . The COVID-19 crisis has definitely pushed many closer to collapse. The ones that survive will adapt to the great unbundling of education and combine two essential components of learning in the 21st century: AI and communities.

AI + community = future of learning

The factory-inspired, 19th century model of education made sense when there were severe limitations on teaching resources. But AI can help us overcome such constraints by leveraging three of its defining features – perception, recognition and recommendation – and thereby creating personalized learning for students and more free time for instructors.

Let’s try and visualize an AI-powered higher education experience. It will operate on four planes: virtual teaching, learning assessment, opportunity matching for internships and jobs, and mentoring from peers and experts.

Imagine Sally sitting in Beirut. She is enrolled in a distance learning program that brings together leading data science professors from around the world and awards a degree valued by the most coveted employers. She attends lectures in a coworking space. There is a video camera at the front of the room that uses facial recognition and posture analysis not only to take attendance but also to figure out if Sally is paying attention. Maybe she is unwell and not able to concentrate. All this data is fed into her student profile and a customized homework is created for her. Sally completes her assignment with some help from a peer mentor with whom she is matched based on her learning needs. They build a friendship and, over time, start working on complex data sets together. They figure out a way to optimize an algorithm that is valuable to one of the sponsors of the programme. After several rounds of back and forth, they decide to patent their solution and work on their idea independently. They move from a full-time degree programme to a flexible-part time option designed for entrepreneurs.

Key challenge

The above scenario above might sound compelling, but it is bound to fail in the short term. Today, there are innumerable digital learning platforms powered by AI that are struggling to find customers. Even when students sign up, only 3% end up completing course requirements.

In fact, research presented by Dr Susan Dynarski at the University of Michigan makes it abundantly clear that, while online education works for mature learners, it can harm academically weak students and compromise on conceptual learning. Clearly, the AI-powered education technology model is missing something critical. That’s why there is urgent need to complement AI-based learning tools with the power of communities. This approach will humanize the way we think about both higher education and technology.

No matter how sophisticated our gadgets become, it is hard to relate to shiny, dark screens. All of us have a fundamental need to belong, learn and share. We need meaningful communities, because they are force multipliers . They make learning fun and create a peer-to-peer accountability mechanism that shapes a culture of learning. AI enables personalization at scale.

Only by combining both AI and communities will higher education be relevant and prepare students for the adventures of the Fourth Industrial Revolution . The good news is that traditional educational institutions aren’t the only ones that can create this customized offering. The unbundling of education means that far more players are now competing in the market. This is likely to democratize learning and make it accessible to more than privileged few who can afford to pay a quarter million dollars for an advanced degree.

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How Important Is Technology in Education? Benefits, Challenges, and Impact on Students

Many of today’s high-demand jobs were created in the last decade, according to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). As advances in technology drive globalization and digital transformation, teachers can help students acquire the necessary skills to succeed in the careers of the future.

How important is technology in education? The COVID-19 pandemic is quickly demonstrating why online education should be a vital part of teaching and learning. By integrating technology into existing curricula, as opposed to using it solely as a crisis-management tool, teachers can harness online learning as a powerful educational tool.

The effective use of digital learning tools in classrooms can increase student engagement, help teachers improve their lesson plans, and facilitate personalized learning. It also helps students build essential 21st-century skills.

Virtual classrooms, video, augmented reality (AR), robots, and other technology tools can not only make class more lively, they can also create more inclusive learning environments that foster collaboration and inquisitiveness and enable teachers to collect data on student performance.

Still, it’s important to note that technology is a tool used in education and not an end in itself. The promise of educational technology lies in what educators do with it and how it is used to best support their students’ needs.

Educational Technology Challenges

BuiltIn reports that 92 percent of teachers understand the impact of technology in education. According to Project Tomorrow, 59 percent of middle school students say digital educational tools have helped them with their grades and test scores. These tools have become so popular that the educational technology market is projected to expand to $342 billion by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum.

However, educational technology has its challenges, particularly when it comes to implementation and use. For example, despite growing interest in the use of AR, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technology, less than 10 percent of schools report having these tools in their classrooms, according to Project Tomorrow. Additional concerns include excessive screen time, the effectiveness of teachers using the technology, and worries about technology equity.

Prominently rising from the COVID-19 crisis is the issue of content. Educators need to be able to develop and weigh in on online educational content, especially to encourage students to consider a topic from different perspectives. The urgent actions taken during this crisis did not provide sufficient time for this. Access is an added concern — for example, not every school district has resources to provide students with a laptop, and internet connectivity can be unreliable in homes.

Additionally, while some students thrive in online education settings, others lag for various factors, including support resources. For example, a student who already struggled in face-to-face environments may struggle even more in the current situation. These students may have relied on resources that they no longer have in their homes.

Still, most students typically demonstrate confidence in using online education when they have the resources, as studies have suggested. However, online education may pose challenges for teachers, especially in places where it has not been the norm.

Despite the challenges and concerns, it’s important to note the benefits of technology in education, including increased collaboration and communication, improved quality of education, and engaging lessons that help spark imagination and a search for knowledge in students.

The Benefits of Technology in Education

Teachers want to improve student performance, and technology can help them accomplish this aim. To mitigate the challenges, administrators should help teachers gain the competencies needed to enhance learning for students through technology. Additionally, technology in the classroom should make teachers’ jobs easier without adding extra time to their day.

Technology provides students with easy-to-access information, accelerated learning, and fun opportunities to practice what they learn. It enables students to explore new subjects and deepen their understanding of difficult concepts, particularly in STEM. Through the use of technology inside and outside the classroom, students can gain 21st-century technical skills necessary for future occupations.

Still, children learn more effectively with direction. The World Economic Forum reports that while technology can help young students learn and acquire knowledge through play, for example, evidence suggests that learning is more effective through guidance from an adult, such as a teacher.

Leaders and administrators should take stock of where their faculty are in terms of their understanding of online spaces. From lessons learned during this disruptive time, they can implement solutions now for the future. For example, administrators could give teachers a week or two to think carefully about how to teach courses not previously online. In addition to an exploration of solutions, flexibility during these trying times is of paramount importance.

Below are examples of how important technology is in education and the benefits it offers to students and teachers.

Increased Collaboration and Communication

Educational technology can foster collaboration. Not only can teachers engage with students during lessons, but students can also communicate with each other. Through online lessons and learning games, students get to work together to solve problems. In collaborative activities, students can share their thoughts and ideas and support each other. At the same time, technology enables one-on-one interaction with teachers. Students can ask classroom-related questions and seek additional help on difficult-to-understand subject matter. At home, students can upload their homework, and teachers can access and view completed assignments using their laptops.

Personalized Learning Opportunities

Technology allows 24/7 access to educational resources. Classes can take place entirely online via the use of a laptop or mobile device. Hybrid versions of learning combine the use of technology from anywhere with regular in-person classroom sessions. In both scenarios, the use of technology to tailor learning plans for each student is possible. Teachers can create lessons based on student interests and strengths. An added benefit is that students can learn at their own pace. When they need to review class material to get a better understanding of essential concepts, students can review videos in the lesson plan. The data generated through these online activities enable teachers to see which students struggled with certain subjects and offer additional assistance and support.

Curiosity Driven by Engaging Content

Through engaging and educational content, teachers can spark inquisitiveness in children and boost their curiosity, which research says has ties to academic success. Curiosity helps students get a better understanding of math and reading concepts. Creating engaging content can involve the use of AR, videos, or podcasts. For example, when submitting assignments, students can include videos or interact with students from across the globe.

Improved Teacher Productivity and Efficiency

Teachers can leverage technology to achieve new levels of productivity, implement useful digital tools to expand learning opportunities for students, and increase student support and engagement. It also enables teachers to improve their instruction methods and personalize learning. Schools can benefit from technology by reducing the costs of physical instructional materials, enhancing educational program efficiency, and making the best use of teacher time.

Become a Leader in Enriching Classrooms through Technology

Educators unfamiliar with some of the technology used in education may not have been exposed to the tools as they prepared for their careers or as part of their professional development. Teachers looking to make the transition and acquire the skills to incorporate technology in education can take advantage of learning opportunities to advance their competencies. For individuals looking to help transform the education system through technology, American University’s School of Education online offers a Master of Arts in Teaching and a Master of Arts in Education Policy and Leadership to prepare educators with essential tools to become leaders. Courses such as Education Program and Policy Implementation and Teaching Science in Elementary School equip graduate students with critical competencies to incorporate technology into educational settings effectively.

Learn more about American University’s School of Education online and its master’s degree programs.

Virtual Reality in Education: Benefits, Tools, and Resources

Data-Driven Decision Making in Education: 11 Tips for Teachers & Administration

Helping Girls Succeed in STEM

BuiltIn, “Edtech 101”

EdTech, “Teaching Teachers to Put Tech Tools to Work”

International Society for Technology in Education, “Preparing Students for Jobs That Don’t Exist”

The Journal, “How Teachers Use Technology to Enrich Learning Experiences”

Pediatric Research, “Early Childhood Curiosity and Kindergarten Reading and Math Academic Achievement”

Project Tomorrow, “Digital Learning: Peril or Promise for Our K-12 Students”

World Economic Forum, “The Future of Jobs Report 2018”

World Economic Forum, “Learning through Play: How Schools Can Educate Students through Technology”

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The new era of education is high-tech and high-touch

We’ve heard a lot about the role of technology in pandemic education, and for good reason: Digital solutions enabled school communities to maintain learning through uncertainty and interruption none of us could have imagined.

However, the triumphs of edtech have been paired with critical challenges. Since the pandemic closed schools in March 2020, school districts have invested in getting students access to computing devices and the internet.

Technology-hesitant teachers became technology-proficient as they learned to navigate remote teaching and learning in impromptu virtual classrooms. Still, with all of the progress we made in digital learning, the interruption of the face-to-face social aspects of the classroom experience resulted in the students finishing the 2020-2021 school year four to five months behind in reading and math on average, according to a recent study from McKinsey & Company .

We’re starting to see the promise of digital learning take hold; teachers can use software to differentiate and personalize instruction. But we can’t stop here. Over the last 18 months, “technology” has been a synonym for “virtual,” where many kids felt isolated, sitting behind a device and craving connection with their peers and teachers.

We now have the opportunity to take what we have learned and use it to usher in a new era of education — one that is powered to a meaningful degree by technology yet centered on human connection, and one where we reject the false choice between engaging software and an incredible teacher. As we return to school this fall, we can blend the best of technology with the best of the classroom experience.

HMH recently shared results of our annual Educator Confidence Report , and the findings provide critical insights into the characteristics that should define the post-pandemic classroom.

Over 1,200 front-line educators from across the U.S. responded, and while optimism has fallen (only 38% of educators reported a somewhat positive or positive view of the state of their profession), confidence in the mastery and benefit of learning technologies is on the rise.

We’re moving from digital promise to digital proof.

Despite a tumultuous year, teachers’ current views on technology provide a bright spot, paving the way for more purposeful use of digital solutions.

Educator confidence in using edtech is at an all-time high since we began this survey seven years ago, with 66% of teachers very or extremely confident in their abilities. Many credit their experience of being thrown into the deep end in March 2020. Today, a nearly unanimous 95% of teachers have experienced the benefits of edtech, and 77% believe tech will help them be more effective teachers post-pandemic.

Of critical importance is the type of benefit teachers are experiencing. 81% report at least one of the following top three benefits, all of which are highly student-centric: improved student engagement; differentiated, individualized instruction; and flexible access to instructional content.

Despite technology playing a larger and more effective role, educators report that there are still critical barriers to access and efficacy that must be addressed, including lack of devices and internet access. 57% of educators also indicated that lack of student engagement with tech is a major barrier. More than half told us that the lack of time to plan for integrating digital resources into instruction was a top challenge.

Students’ emotional well-being is educators’ top concern

We all recognize that at the center of teaching and learning is the strong connection built and nurtured between teacher and student, which serves as the foundation for academic and social-emotional growth and drives engagement. We cannot let technology that breaks that connection and isolates students obscure that critical relationship, and data from this year’s survey is an important harbinger.

Among educators, 58% are concerned that students will demonstrate increased social-emotional needs after the pandemic, and social-emotional needs broadly remained the top concern this year (ahead of teachers’ own salaries and concerns about students falling behind). In addition, 82% of educators believe a well-crafted, fully integrated social-emotional learning (SEL) program will have an impact.

Ultimately, to begin to recover and transition into our “post-pandemic instructional model,” we can benefit from a best-of-both-worlds approach that fuses the power of technology with the tried-and-true social gathering of the classroom — “high-tech” working in a mutually reinforcing way with “high-touch.”

Educators’ unique experiences shed light on what the classroom of the future will look like

Technology alone will not usher in education’s new era. It is critical that we leverage digital solutions with a community-oriented, connected and human mindset.

At HMH, we strive for an edtech ecosystem that drives engagement, not isolation; for solutions that offer actionable data and insights that allow teachers to differentiate instruction, not simply “a page under glass”; for innovations that do not add to educators’ full plates, but rather extend their capabilities and give them time to focus on the social-emotional needs of their students.

We heard loud and clear that educators believe in the potential of technology to accomplish these goals — 82% of educators believe customized learning for every student will transform learning and teaching in the future, and 75% believe technology solutions that connect instruction and assessment on one platform will be essential to this transformation.

Edtech’s potential has been unlocked at an exponential rate over the past year, but the future of the classroom is not merely high-tech. It is high-touch, too.

When we asked educators what they are most looking forward to post-pandemic, the answer was clear — being together with their student community: 80% cited interacting face-to-face with students, 74% said more student engagement and 63% noted student collaboration opportunities.

The passionate discussion around in-person versus digital learning is too often shortsighted in its creation of a strict binary — digital or analog. But our greatest success will come from embracing the fact that these are not opposing forces; they are complementary force multipliers.

We’ve lost a great deal over the last year, but we’ve also gained important ground — and we can continue that momentum. As a society, we will continue to assess the health risks before us and navigate an increasingly hybrid world that includes our workplaces, neighborhoods and, of course, our schools.

I believe that as we do ultimately return to our school buildings, we’ll be ready to usher in a new era of learning, one powered by tech and innovation but forever defined by the community of teachers and students at its heart.

Image credit: Kristina Closs

Technology might be making education worse

Listen to the essay, as read by Antero Garcia, associate professor in the Graduate School of Education.

As a professor of education and a former public school teacher, I’ve seen digital tools change lives in schools.

I’ve documented the ways mobile technology like phones can transform student engagement in my own classroom.

I’ve explored how digital tools might network powerful civic learning and dialogue for classrooms across the country – elements of education that are crucial for sustaining our democracy today.

And, like everyone, I’ve witnessed digital technologies make schooling safer in the midst of a global pandemic. Zoom and Google Classroom, for instance, allowed many students to attend classrooms virtually during a period when it was not feasible to meet in person.

So I want to tell you that I think technologies are changing education for the better and that we need to invest more in them – but I just can’t.

Given the substantial amount of scholarly time I’ve invested in documenting the life-changing possibilities of digital technologies, it gives me no pleasure to suggest that these tools might be slowly poisoning us. Despite their purported and transformational value, I’ve been wondering if our investment in educational technology might in fact be making our schools worse.

Let me explain.

When I was a classroom teacher, I loved relying on the latest tools to create impressive and immersive experiences for my students. We would utilize technology to create class films, produce social media profiles for the Janie Crawfords, the Holden Caulfields, and other literary characters we studied, and find playful ways to digitally share our understanding of the ideas we studied in our classrooms.

As a teacher, technology was a way to build on students’ interests in pop culture and the world around them. This was exciting to me.

But I’ve continued to understand that the aspects of technology I loved weren’t actually about technology at all – they were about creating authentic learning experiences with young people. At the heart of these digital explorations were my relationships with students and the trust we built together.

“Part of why I’ve grown so skeptical about this current digital revolution is because of how these tools reshape students’ bodies and their relation to the world around them.”

I do see promise in the suite of digital tools that are available in classrooms today. But my research focus on platforms – digital spaces like Amazon, Netflix, and Google that reshape how users interact in online environments – suggests that when we focus on the trees of individual tools, we ignore the larger forest of social and cognitive challenges.

Most people encounter platforms every day in their online social lives. From the few online retail stores where we buy groceries to the small handful of sites that stream our favorite shows and media content, platforms have narrowed how we use the internet today to a small collection of Silicon Valley behemoths. Our social media activities, too, are limited to one or two sites where we check on the updates, photos, and looped videos of friends and loved ones.

These platforms restrict our online and offline lives to a relatively small number of companies and spaces – we communicate with a finite set of tools and consume a set of media that is often algorithmically suggested. This centralization of internet – a trend decades in the making – makes me very uneasy.

From willfully hiding the negative effects of social media use for vulnerable populations to creating tools that reinforce racial bias, today’s platforms are causing harm and sowing disinformation for young people and adults alike. The deluge of difficult ethical and pedagogical questions around these tools are not being broached in any meaningful way in schools – even adults aren’t sure how to manage their online lives.

You might ask, “What does this have to do with education?” Platforms are also a large part of how modern schools operate. From classroom management software to attendance tracking to the online tools that allowed students to meet safely during the pandemic, platforms guide nearly every student interaction in schools today. But districts are utilizing these tools without considering the wider spectrum of changes that they have incurred alongside them.

Antero Garcia, associate professor of education (Image credit: Courtesy Antero Garcia)

For example, it might seem helpful for a school to use a management tool like Classroom Dojo (a digital platform that can offer parents ways to interact with and receive updates from their family’s teacher) or software that tracks student reading and development like Accelerated Reader for day-to-day needs. However, these tools limit what assessment looks like and penalize students based on flawed interpretations of learning.

Another problem with platforms is that they, by necessity, amass large swaths of data. Myriad forms of educational technology exist – from virtual reality headsets to e-readers to the small sensors on student ID cards that can track when students enter schools. And all of this student data is being funneled out of schools and into the virtual black boxes of company databases.

Part of why I’ve grown so skeptical about this current digital revolution is because of how these tools reshape students’ bodies and their relation to the world around them. Young people are not viewed as complete human beings but as boxes checked for attendance, for meeting academic progress metrics, or for confirming their location within a school building. Nearly every action that students perform in schools – whether it’s logging onto devices, accessing buildings, or sharing content through their private online lives – is noticed and recorded. Children in schools have become disembodied from their minds and their hearts. Thus, one of the greatest and implicit lessons that kids learn in schools today is that they must sacrifice their privacy in order to participate in conventional, civic society.

The pandemic has only made the situation worse. At its beginnings, some schools relied on software to track students’ eye movements, ostensibly ensuring that kids were paying attention to the tasks at hand. Similarly, many schools required students to keep their cameras on during class time for similar purposes. These might be seen as in the best interests of students and their academic growth, but such practices are part of a larger (and usually more invisible) process of normalizing surveillance in the lives of youth today.

I am not suggesting that we completely reject all of the tools at our disposal – but I am urging for more caution. Even the seemingly benign resources we might use in our classrooms today come with tradeoffs. Every Wi-Fi-connected, “smart” device utilized in schools is an investment in time, money, and expertise in technology over teachers and the teaching profession.

Our focus on fixing or saving schools via digital tools assumes that the benefits and convenience that these invisible platforms offer are worth it.

But my ongoing exploration of how platforms reduce students to quantifiable data suggests that we are removing the innovation and imagination of students and teachers in the process.

Antero Garcia is associate professor of education in the Graduate School of Education .

In Their Own Words is a collaboration between the Stanford Public Humanities Initiative  and Stanford University Communications.

If you’re a Stanford faculty member (in any discipline or school) who is interested in writing an essay for this series, please reach out to Natalie Jabbar at [email protected] .

Educational Technology pp 3–31 Cite as

Introduction to Educational Technology

• Ronghuai Huang 9 ,
• J. Michael Spector 10 &
• Junfeng Yang 11  
• First Online: 28 February 2019

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Educational Technology ((LNET))

Educational technology refers to the use of tools, technologies, processes, procedures, resources, and strategies to improve learning experiences in a variety of settings, such as formal learning, informal learning, non-formal learning, lifelong learning, learning on demand, workplace learning, and just-in-time learning. Educational technology approaches evolved from early uses of teaching tools and have rapidly expanded in recent years to include such devices and approaches as mobile technologies, virtual and augmented realities, simulations and immersive environments, collaborative learning, social networking, cloud computing, flipped classrooms, and more. This chapter provides a historical overview, key definitions and principles, various perspectives and representative developments, all of which will be explored and elaborated in subsequent chapters.

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Jessica Grose

Every tech tool in the classroom should be ruthlessly evaluated.

By Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

Educational technology in schools is sometimes described as a wicked problem — a term coined by a design and planning professor, Horst Rittel, in the 1960s , meaning a problem for which even defining the scope of the dilemma is a struggle, because it has so many interconnected parts that never stop moving.

When you have a wicked problem, solutions have to be holistic, flexible and developmentally appropriate. Which is to say that appropriate tech use for elementary schoolers in rural Oklahoma isn’t going to be the same as appropriate tech use in a Chicago high school.

I spent the past few weeks speaking with parents, teachers, public school administrators and academics who study educational technology. And while there are certainly benefits to using tech as a classroom tool, I’m convinced that when it comes to the proliferation of tech in K-12 education, we need “ a hard reset ,” as Julia Freeland Fisher of the Christensen Institute put it, concurring with Jonathan Haidt in his call for rolling back the “phone-based childhood.” When we recently spoke, Fisher stressed that when we weigh the benefits of ed tech, we’re often not asking, “What’s happening when it comes to connectedness and well-being?”

Well said. We need a complete rethink of the ways that we’re evaluating and using tech in classrooms; the overall change that I want to see is that tech use in schools — devices and apps — should be driven by educators, not tech companies.

In recent years, tech companies have provided their products to schools either free or cheap , and then schools have tried to figure out how to use those products. Wherever that dynamic exists, it should be reversed: Districts and individual schools should first figure out what tech would be most useful to their students, and their bar for “useful” should be set by available data and teacher experience. Only then should they acquire laptops, tablets and educational software.

As Mesut Duran — a professor of educational technology at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and the author of “Learning Technologies: Research, Trends and Issues in the U.S. Education System” — told me, a lot of the technology that’s used in classrooms wasn’t developed with students in mind. “Most of the technologies are initially created for commercial purposes,” he said, “and then we decide how to use them in schools.”

In many cases, there’s little or no evidence that the products actually work, and “work” can have various meanings here: It’s not conclusive that tech, as opposed to hard-copy materials, improves educational outcomes. And sometimes devices or programs simply don’t function the way they’re supposed to. For example, artificial intelligence in education is all the rage, but then we get headlines like this one, in February, from The Wall Street Journal: “ We Tested an A.I. Tutor for Kids. It Struggled With Basic Math. ”

Alex Molnar, one of the directors of the National Educational Policy Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said that every school should be asking if the tech it’s using is both necessary and good. “The tech industry’s ethos is: If it’s doable, it is necessary. But for educators, that has to be an actual question: Is this necessary?” Even after you’ve cleared the bar of necessary, he said, educators should be asking, “Is doing it this way good, or could we do it another way that would be better? Better in the ethical sense and the pedagogical sense.”

With that necessary and good standard in mind, here are some specific recommendations that I’ve taken away from several discussions and a lot of reading. It’s unrealistic — and considering that we’re in a tech-saturated world, not ideal — to get rid of every last bit of educational technology. But we’re currently failing too many children by letting it run rampant.

At the State and Federal Levels: Privacy Protections and Better Evaluation

A complaint I heard from many public school parents who responded to my March 27 questionnaire and wanted a lower-tech environment for their kids is that they’re concerned about their children’s privacy. They couldn’t opt out of things like Google Classroom, they said, because in many cases, all of their children’s homework assignments were posted there. Molnar has a radical but elegant solution for this problem: “All data gathered must be destroyed after its intended purpose has been accomplished.” So if the intended purpose of a platform or application is grading, for example, the data would be destroyed at the end of the school year; it couldn’t be sold to a third party or used to further enhance the product or as a training ground for artificial intelligence.

Another recommendation — from a recent paper by the University of Edinburgh’s Ben Williamson, Molnar and the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Faith Boninger outlining the risks of A.I. in the classroom — is for the creation of an “independent government entity charged with ensuring the quality of digital educational products used in schools” that would evaluate tech before it is put into schools and “periodically thereafter.” Because the technology is always evolving, our oversight of it needs to be, as well.

At the District Level: Centralize the Tech-Vetting Process

Stephanie Sheron is the chief of strategic initiatives for the Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest district in Maryland, and all the district’s technology departments report to her. She likened the tech landscape, coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic remote school period, to the “Wild West.” School districts were flooded with different kinds of ed tech in an emergency situation in which teachers were desperately trying to engage their students, and a lot of relief money was pouring in from the federal government. When the dust settled, she said, the question was, “Now what do we do? How do we control this? How do we make sure that we’re in alignment with FERPA and COPPA and all of those other student data privacy components?”

To address this, Sheron said, her district has secured grant funding to hire a director of information security, who will function as the hub for all the educational technology vending and evaluate new tech. Part of the standardization that the district has been undergoing is a requirement that to be considered, curriculum vendors must offer both digital and hard-copy resources. She said her district tried to look at tech as a tool, adding: “A pencil is a tool for learning, but it’s not the only modality. Same thing with technology. We look at it as a tool, not as the main driver of the educational experience.”

At the Classroom Level: Ruthlessly Evaluate Every Tool

In my conversations with teachers, I’ve been struck by their descriptions of the cascade of tech use — that more tech is often offered as a solution to problems created by tech. For example, paid software like GoGuardian, which allows teachers to monitor every child’s screen, has been introduced to solve the problem of students goofing off on their laptops. But there’s a simple, free, low-tech solution to this problem that Doug Showley, a high school English teacher in Indiana I spoke to, employs: He makes all his students face their computer screens in his direction.

Every teacher who is concerned about tech use in his or her classroom should do a tech audit. There are several frameworks ; I like the worksheet created by Beth Pandolpho and Katie Cubano, the authors of “Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning.” In the chapter “Balancing Technology Use in the Classroom,” they suggest that teachers list every tech tool they are using and evaluate its specific functions, asking, “Are these novel or duplicative?” They also encourage teachers to write out a defense of the tool and the frequency of use.

I like these questions because they make clear that the solutions are not going to be one size fits all.

Students Deserve Authentic Connection

As I close out this series, I want to return to what Fisher said about the importance of student connection and well-being. Of course academic outcomes matter. I want our kids to learn as much about as many different topics as they can. I care about falling test scores and think they’re an important piece of data.

But test scores are only one kind of information. A key lesson we should have learned from 2020 and ’21 is that school is about so much more than just academics. It’s about socialization, critical thinking, community and learning how to coexist with people who are different from you. I don’t know that all of these are things that can be tracked in a scientific way, which brings me back to the idea of tech in schools as a wicked problem: These aren’t easily measurable outcomes.

Jeff Frank, a professor of education at St. Lawrence University, expresses a sense that I’ve had very well in a paper , “Sounding the Call to Teach in a Social Media Age: Renewing the Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education.” He says students are “hungry for experiences that make them feel alive and authentically connected to other people and to deeper sources of value. Though filtering and managing life through technologies offers safety, predictability and a sense of control, it also leads to life that can feel extremely small, constraining and lonely. Teaching can offer a powerful way to pierce this bubble.”

Ultimately, I believe the only way kids will be able to find that deeper meaning is through human relationships with their peers and teachers, no matter how shiny an A.I. tutor appears to be at first blush.

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.

Modern Technology in Education

Diana bajraktari.

• October 22, 2020

Technology has heavily impacted almost every aspect of our lives, and education is no exception. In many ways, one might think that education hasn’t changed much over the years. If you look at classroom photos of decades ago, the scene might look familiar because it’s very similar to the modern classroom. The teacher is lecturing from the podium, while the students are sat with their books opened. Some may be looking at the teacher, some are talking to each other and some are nearly asleep. Modern classrooms are quite the same. However, one of the  differences is that now the hardcover books have been replaced by screens of technological devices. This isn’t the only aspect in which technology has left its footprints. Let’s see which are the changes technology brought along with it.

Table of Contents

How Is Technology Affecting Education?

Teachers in the pre-technological era didn’t have many tools to enhance their teaching process. They depended mostly on the blackboard and the chalk to make the learning process easier and enjoyable for the students. Being the primary source of information, teachers stood at the center of the room, delivering lectures while students passively received it. However, in the technological era, the classrooms transformed from teacher-centered to student-centered.

This came as a result of wanting to focus more on the students. A student-centered classroom means that the learning responsibility is put on the student with the intention of getting them out of the shell and teaching to become independent. Through many technological tools that teachers have at their disposal, they try to make the learning process fun, interactive, and informational for students by engaging them and giving a sense of independence.

Technology hasn’t only changed the way teachers deliver their lessons and how students learn; it has also made education in general more accessible to millions of students through online classes and online resources.

Benefits of Technology in Education

Using technology in the classroom definitely has many advantages. Here are some of them.

Creates a more engaging learning environment

Technology can encourage students to participate in the classroom actively. While some students might find the experience of talking in front of their classmates intimidating, the online classes might have the opposite effect on them. They might feel more comfortable expressing themselves in writing by joining discussions on discussion boards that online courses offer. Not to mention the lessons that become more interactive and interesting for students to follow. It may also help with communication between students. While some find it awkward to ask colleagues for help on particular subjects, communicating online might be easier for them.

Improves collaboration

Over the years, professors have seen an increase in collaboration between students whenever they involve technology in the classroom. Unlike lecture-based classes where students stay passive and wait for the teacher to disseminate information for them, and most of it isn’t retained, in the classes where technology is involved, students tend to collaborate more, and the percentage of the retained information increases too.

Incorporated different learning styles

You can’t find two identical students. They all have different learning styles. That’s why it’s difficult for the teachers to create a lesson plan that incorporates all of the different learning styles. With the help of technology, this has become possible. Some students learn best by hearing, so you use videos or podcasts in the classroom; some students prefer using pictures to visualize what they’re learning, and some might learn best on their own, so they use online learning. Technology helps teachers become creative in ways of teaching.

Boosts student motivation to learn

When we do something that we enjoy, we want to do it more. Simple as that. That’s how technology can boost students’ motivation to learn. Most students have been raised with technology, and they’re used to it. So they don’t have a problem with it, quite contrarily, they enjoy using it. Through technology, active learners remain engaged with the lessons and it encourages the students who aren’t that active to find something that will make the learning process easier and fun for them.

Makes self-paced learning possible

Schools continue to have rigid schedules that students must follow. However, technology is reducing that rigidity. Technology makes it possible for students to study at a pace that fits them. Self-paced learning has opened the door to education to many individuals around the world. It’s through self-paced online learning that many people who don’t have time and resources to attend the university get to earn degrees online like online MBAs .

The technology is also helping teachers to create programs and compile curriculums that best meet the needs of individual students and helps enhance the learning process.

Drawbacks of Technology in Education

We can’t deny the advantages of using technology in the classroom. But, we also can’t deny its disadvantages. Find listed a few of them below.

Students might lose their interest to learn

Seeing that most of the learning resources are stored online or in computers, students might develop poor learning habits and create a lazy attitude toward learning. Some might even think that they don’t even have to go to school since they can find everything they need to know online. Who needs school when you have Google, right?

Students might become vulnerable to pitfalls of technology

The computer can be a source of problems as much as it is an invaluable tool. This is mostly true for students who lack technical skills to maximize the functionality of the device. Not everyone has an Information Technology degree to be proficient in the ways computers work. Computer malfunctions, as well as technical problems, can result in students losing their assignments and other important materials, which, in turn, can cause high levels of stress.

Can diminish the value of online education

Although there isn’t any research that can show how personal interaction affects students’ performance, there is data that indicates that students enrolled in online classes are more likely to have lower grades or fail than they are to benefit from them. This may come as a result of the lack of face-to-face interaction between teachers and students in the online classroom. Another reason might be that without a teacher that looks over them, students might get tempted to use technology for other purposes instead of learning online.

Technology used in the Classrooms

When we talk about technology in education, we mean all types of technology that are used to enhance the learning experience. Here are a few most used technology tools in education.

• Electronic Whiteboards
• Flipped Learning
• Desktops and Laptops
• Distance Learning
• Virtual Field Trips

All things considered, technology has had a significant impact on technology. Some may consider this impact as positive, and some say that this impact was negative at most. At the end of the day, we know that the use of technology is inevitable. However, it’s in the hands of the teachers and students themselves to decide how much technology they want to incorporate into the learning process .

Technology in Education

Technology has heavily impacted almost every aspect of our lives, and education is no exception. In the technological era, the classrooms transformed from teacher- centered to student-centered. This came as a result of wanting to focus more on the students. A student-centered classroom means that the learning responsibility is put on the student with the intention of getting them out of the shell and teaching to become independent. Through many technological tools that teachers have at their disposal, they try to make the learning process fun, interactive, and informational for students by engaging them and giving a sense of independence. Technology hasn’t only changed the way teachers deliver their lessons and how students learn; it has also made education in general more accessible to millions of students through online classes and online resources.Technology creates a more engaging learning environment. It improves collaboration and incorporates different learning styles. It also boosts motivation and allows students to self-pace.

A: Online learning benefits students by offering flexibility in terms of time and location, allowing them to access educational resources and participate in courses at their own convenience.

A: Examples of multimedia resources used in education include educational videos, interactive simulations, digital presentations, and online educational games.

A: Technology promotes collaboration among students by providing tools such as online discussion boards, shared document editing, video conferencing, and collaborative project management platforms.

A: Personalized learning refers to the approach that tailors educational content, pace, and instructional strategies to meet the individual needs, interests, and learning styles of students, often facilitated by technology.

A: Data analytics in education helps educators track student progress, identify areas of improvement, and make informed decisions about instructional strategies, interventions, and curriculum development.

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Meta unveils new virtual reality headsets — and a plan for their use in classrooms

Ayesha Rascoe

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta about the company's new virtual reality headsets and Meta's plans to have the headsets used in classrooms.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Facebook's parent company, Meta, has a new educational product for their Quest virtual reality headset, intended to go along with third-party educational apps. That's right - this one's headed to the classroom. Now, the headsets, which costs around $300 and are aimed at students who are 13 and older, are already in some schools. Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, thinks these headsets can engage students by immersing them into virtual environments - study ancient Rome by walking through ancient Rome, dinosaurs by walking among dinosaurs. We've seen Meta's commercials. I asked him, though, if headsets were an answer for students struggling with reading or math, areas where test scores have been at their lowest level in decades.

NICK CLEGG: I was reading a study the other day by I think it's Pricewaterhouse, PwC, who said that the learners that they'd spoken to, who'd been learning in virtual reality, said that they were 150% more engaged during classes than they otherwise would be. And Morehouse College reported much higher average final test scores for students learning in VR than from traditional or even traditional online methods. This isn't just about kind of academic learning. This is also about practical education. So for instance, in Tulsa, there is a welding school where welders of all levels are using VR to upskill their welding, you know, certification, their welding training. So I think there are lots and lots of different applications that educators and teachers are telling us at this very sort of nascent stage of the technology that they're using.

RASCOE: What do you say to those who will be critical of Meta in this space, given Meta's record of creating and marketing social media tools to children and teens that are addictive, and that research shows can have a real negative impact on kids' mental health? Why should Meta or its products be trusted in a classroom?

CLEGG: I don't think it's about whether you do or don't trust a company like Meta. It's do you or don't you trust the judgment of the teacher in the classroom? And we are building these tools so it is entirely controlled by the teacher. It's not controlled by us. It's the teacher that decides whether the headset is used. It's the teacher that decides what the content is on the headset. Students won't be able to access the Meta Quest store. They won't be able to access social media apps and social experiences on the Meta platform.

RASCOE: Separately, since I have you here - we're in an election year. There are major concerns about deepfakes and altered media spreading misinformation online. Meta announced starting next month, it will label AI-generated content and will also label any digitally altered media, AI or not, that it feels poses a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of importance. When it comes to election-related content, why just label the content and not remove it completely if it poses a risk of deceiving the public?

CLEGG: Oh, no. We will continue, of course, to remove content that breaks our rules. It doesn't matter whether it's synthetic or whether it's by a human being. We disable networks of fake accounts. We expect people, if they're going to use AI to produce political ads, to declare that. And if they don't, and they repeatedly fall foul of our rules, we won't allow them to run ads. But we have to work across the industry.

RASCOE: Well, that brings me to this question, because researchers at the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights - they released a report this year arguing that it's not the creation of AI content that's really a threat to election security, but the distribution of, quote, "false, hateful and violent content" via social media platforms. They argue that companies like Meta need to add more humans to content moderation. They need to fund more outside fact-checkers and institute circuit breakers to slow the spread of certain viral posts, that it's really about the distribution of the content versus, like, how it's created by AI or whatever. What is your response to that?

CLEGG: Well, we as Meta so happen to have by far the world's largest network of fact-checkers, over 100 of them around the world, working in over 70 languages. If you look, for instance, at the prevalence of hate speech on Facebook now, what does prevalence mean? That means the percentage of hate speech as a percentage of the total amount of content on Facebook. It's down to as low as 0.01%. And by the way, that's not just my statistic or the statistic from Meta. That's actually a independently vetted statistic.

RASCOE: But you said you have 100 fact-checkers. I mean, there are millions and millions of posts. So is that something where you need more content moderators, you need more fact-checkers - is that something that Meta would consider in a pivotal election year?

CLEGG: Well, as I say, we constantly expand the number of fact-checkers we have. We'll never be perfect. The internet is a big open landscape of content, but I think we are a completely different company now than we were, for instance, back in 2016 at the time of the Russian interference in the U.S. elections then.

RASCOE: That's Nick Clegg, Meta's president for global affairs. Thanks for joining us.

CLEGG: Thank you.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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How technology is reinventing education.

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of  Stanford Graduate School of Education  (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the  Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately  worried  that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or  coach  students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the  AI + Education initiative  at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of  CRAFT  (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the  Digital Learning initiative  at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of  virtual field trips  to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Removing Barriers to Quality Education in the MENA Region

Investments in digital innovation have the potential to greatly expand access to education, but creating new, high-quality, low-cost, and scalable learning platforms requires broad collaboration.

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By Amr Awad & Waleed Al Ali Apr. 16, 2024

Quality education is essential to sustainable development. Access to safe learning spaces, reliable resources, an accredited and student-centered curriculum, and effective teachers all foster individual, societal, and economic growth, and preserve and advance cultural values that pass to future generations. In other words, a nation's educational system directly affects its potential to prosper. The UNESCO Education Monitoring Report , for example, suggests that the development of basic reading skills among students in low-income countries would help 171 million people escape extreme poverty.

Inequitable access to education opportunities remains the biggest challenge to capitalizing on this force. Barriers include poor transportation infrastructure, which means that many students in remote rural areas must walk long distances to school, and poverty, which forces many students to work rather than study as their families struggle to survive.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated barriers like these. A useful metric here is learning poverty: the share of children who haven’t achieved minimum reading proficiency in school, adjusted by the proportion of children out of school. According to a World Bank report , the rate of learning poverty increased from 57 percent to 70 percent in low- and middle-income countries in the first 2 years of the pandemic due to extended school closures, and girls and vulnerable groups already struggling to access education were even more likely to fall behind. Save the Children estimates that 9.7 million children in the poorest and most marginalized areas worldwide may permanently miss out on educational opportunities.

Meanwhile, disruptions like the earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey , and wars in the Ukraine, Pakistan, and Sudan have made “digital education” or “distance learning” a necessity rather than just an advantage. This has prompted many countries to expand the use of technology to enhance their educational systems, improve student and teacher performance, and bridge the education gap between urban and remote areas.

These investments in digital innovation have the potential to not only create new, high-quality, low-cost, and scalable learning platforms, but also strengthen digital infrastructure, build capacity, and develop industry-wide standards for equitable access. The Digital School , an initiative also known as Madrasa , launched in 2020 that focuses on education access for vulnerable groups and refugees in Arab communities and beyond, offers an example.

Building on Previous Efforts

The Digital School is part of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives , a foundation comprising more than 30 different projects and entities that target issues such as humanitarian and relief aid, health care, and community empowerment. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai, launched most of these efforts but sees the Digital School as a top priority for sustainable development.

The initiative was designed to complement the goals of prior programs, including Dubai Cares , which originally focused on providing quality education opportunities and building schools, then expanded to include areas such as education in emergencies and protracted crises, as well as gender equity in education. The Digital School also builds on the Arab Reading Challenge , which promotes reading in Arabic among youth and achieved record participation in 2023, its seventh year, with 24.8 million students. In addition, the project draws on the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE’s) experience in digital education, including projects such as the 2012 Mohammed bin Rashid Smart Learning Program , which deployed state-of-the-art technology in UAE schools, and the 2013 Smart Government Initiative , which made government services available to people around the clock.

A New E-Learning Platform

The starting point of the project was to create a robust learning platform with high-quality educational content in Arabic. Although Arabic is one of the most common languages ​​in the world, optimistic estimates at the time put the percentage of online educational content in Arabic at 3 percent.

Building out the platform therefore required the provision of new content in Arabic and the Arabization of existing content on the Internet. One major effort that resulted from this directive was a localization agreement with Khan Academy , a nonprofit that offers a wide range of digital classes and learning materials. Starting with its nearly 5,000 science and mathematics courses, Mohammed bin Rashid introduced a “translation challenge” via social media, digital advertising, and other channels that called on institutions and individuals to contribute to the localization project, whether by translating text, providing voice-overs, or creating graphics. The project involved the creation of translation guidelines, including the use of “colloquial language,” which is similar to Modern Standard Arabic and understood across many regions.

Within a year, all these courses and many other educational materials from sources like UNICEF and UNESCO were Arabized, and in 2018, after obtaining accreditation from the Ministry of Education for content quality, they became available on the Digital School platform. The management team, comprised of teachers, educators, IT specialists, and volunteers, has since added hundreds of new learning materials every year.

Five Key Areas for Collaboration

Investing in technology can help governments and existing educational institutions make learning more accessible to more students and increase the resiliency of local educational systems overall. But success requires finding creative ways to build capacity, particularly through broad collaboration in five areas.

1. Partnering to Build a Digital Infrastructure

An e-learning platform is valuable only if students have the devices and Internet service they need to access it. A strong digital infrastructure is essential, and building one requires coordinated efforts by a range of institutions.

The Digital School has partnered with government agencies, companies, and NGOs to put the necessary tools in place. This includes the creation of digital learning centers—classrooms in existing schools where teachers are present and students can use digital devices to engage with coursework, and where teachers undertake training. We have worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross to equip 1,000 digital learning centers in countries like Egypt, Jordan, Bangladesh, and Syria, and with the UAE Red Crescent to supply 66 digital learning centers in Mauritania.

The Digital School also recently launched a campaign for electronic device donations in collaboration with Ecyclex , a company based in Dubai that specializes in recycling and refurbishing electronic devices. The campaign calls on individuals and institutions to donate electronic devices such as printers, computers, and tablets to support education worldwide. It has supported 23,392 students with 5,823 devices so far and ultimately aims to collect 10,000 devices.

Partnerships are also important for securing Internet access. A mobile network operator based in Egypt, Orange Egypt , for example, provides free SIM cards for tablets the Egyptian Ministry of Education distributes to schools, and free Internet access to students learning on tablets at the Digital School.

2. Partnering for Accreditation

Independent evaluation and accreditation motivate educational institutions to continuously improve. They also make public loans, scholarships, postsecondary education, and military programs more readily available to students.

Developing a new curriculum and obtaining accreditation generally takes one to three years . The Digital School decided to pursue two paths to shorten and simplify the process. First, it aligned its existing course components, or subject areas, with the certified curriculum in each country. From there, a volunteer team created new collections of lessons, and ultimately a comprehensive digital program that included inputs, evaluation, and monitoring.

Second, the Digital School is obtaining accreditation for its programs from international accreditation bodies as a charitable institution specializing in digital education. This includes working with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), which has established rigorous standards and an accreditation system for digital education, and potential partnerships with colleges like the University of Arizona and the University of Manchester to provide scholarships to graduates in the future.

3. Prioritizing Digital Training for Teachers

Teachers are the most influential factor in achieving a high-quality education. Their scope of knowledge and teaching style profoundly affect the extent to which students absorb and retain new information.

The primary responsibility of teachers at the Digital School is to design new course pathways that cater to the unique needs of students in each region. This may involve creating and recording new materials, or using existing ones, such as lessons that have been translated. In 2021, to help qualify and prepare new teachers, the Digital School developed a training program in collaboration with the University of Arizona that includes sessions on using learning tools and interacting with students. The program is available in four languages, consists of three levels (according to topic and teachers’ level of development or specialization), and takes about three months to complete. So far, 1,500 teachers have graduated from the program.

An open international academy for all educators, the Global Academy for Digital Teachers , evolved out of this same collaboration. The academy focuses on developing teachers’ teaching, facilitation, and management skills, and has established a certification mechanism in collaboration with the British University in Dubai, the University of Manchester, and the University of Nicosia to ensure global verification. This supports the academy’s goal to enable teachers to impart and shape knowledge globally, while supporting local values.

4. Supporting the Most Vulnerable at Scale

Access to education is particularly challenging for refugees. According to a 2021 Human Rights Watch report , there were approximately 660,000 school-aged, Syrian refugee children in Lebanon alone, and nearly 400,000 of them had received no schooling in recent years.

Given the potential for online education to serve displaced groups, the Digital School has intensified its efforts to support them through projects like the Digital School for refugees and underprivileged children in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Mauritania, and Colombia, a collaboration with the charity Human Aid and Development (HAND) , which runs schools for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. For example, initially one of HAND’s schools could physically accommodate only 1,500 students, leaving 10,000 students on the waiting list. HAND worked with the Digital School to build a learning room where students could take digital lessons during part of the school day, thus splitting their time between digital and in-class lessons and opening up space for more students to attend overall. Today, the school can accommodate 3,500 students.

The Digital School also aims to support girls’ education in different ways. One example is its collaboration with the Fatima bin Mohammed bin Zayed Initiative in Afghanistan, which runs centers where girls can learn traditional handicrafts. Girls can take courses in person at these centers, which are equipped with computers and digital tools, and in some cases continue their education online from home later on. Courses cover health and hygiene, reading, numeracy, and vocational subjects for women, and apprenticeships and training programs in teaching, nursing, and midwifery are available.

5. Innovating for Sustainability

One of the major challenges facing the Digital School’s work is that electricity is often unavailable in areas where vulnerable students live. To help address this, a team of Emirati engineers developed a “school in a bag” that contains a charger, five tablets loaded with learning content, a projector, and other devices. The equipment is solar-powered and consumes 80 percent less energy in total than a standard computer, and teachers can set it up in 2 to 3 hours.

The Digital School also aims to take advantage of new technological developments, including education technology tools and artificial intelligence. For example, it organized a challenge for programmers to help teachers prepare lesson plans using ChatGPT. These innovations help create efficiencies and remove barriers that interfere with access.

Looking Ahead

From the beginning, the Digital School aimed to reach Arabic-speaking students not only in the MENA region but globally. Today, it has a presence in nine countries and has provided its services to 60,000 students globally. The school hopes to reach a million students over the next two years, in part by collaborating with the Southern African Development Community and the national offices of the World Food Program in South Africa. The initial goal is to train 1,000 digitally qualified teachers and begin to popularize the digital education model in Angola, Lesotho, Madagascar, Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa.

While the Digital School is largely focused on meeting technological needs, its work starts with and is grounded in educational needs and the mission to bridge the education gap. It will continue to build real learning opportunities for students in underprivileged areas, with the hope of advancing equity and the potential for educational prosperity regionally and globally.

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Read more stories by Amr Awad & Waleed Al Ali .

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Human Capital Ministerial Conclave: Realizing the Potential of Digital Technology and AI

Ministers from over 30 countries participated in the Human Capital Conclave, focused on how technology and AI can help equip people to thrive.    

Photo credit: Ian Foulk/World Bank

At the Spring Meetings Human Capital Ministerial Conclave, leading voices in digital technology and artificial intelligence and ministers of finance from the World Bank’s Human Capital Network highlighted that technology can boost how countries build, use, and protect their human capital.

The 95-country Network is a unique global effort to accelerate investments in people.

The event kicked off with a discussion between Axel van Trotsenburg, the World Bank’s Senior Managing Director for Development Policy and Partnerships; Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of online learning platform Coursera; and Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder and Chairman of the Board.

The speakers focused on foundational infrastructure and skills – starting from basic literacy and math combined with access to electricity and technologies – to prepare people to make the most in training and finding jobs in the digital economy.

Van Trotsenburg pointed out that digital tools provide a “fighting chance” for those who might otherwise be left behind. He highlighted the global nature of talent, emphasizing that skills, not geography, should dictate opportunity.

Nilekani noted that that literacy creates the foundation for using technology and developing a continuous learning mindset. He stressed that while technology cannot replace human abilities to empathize, mentor, counsel, and collaborate – it can support service delivery for human capital such as India’s digital ID Aadhaar extending financial inclusion and social protection. The potential of this application was also endorsed by Morocco, which uses similar technology to provide social benefits – exemplifying the power of international collaboration.

Maggioncalda highlighted that with a strong human capital foundation, people can learn from anywhere while using AI to boost productivity and opportunities. “Talent is global and not constrained by borders. More people will have meaningful economic opportunity without needing to move if they have the desire, skills, and work ethic.” He noted that AI has helped reduce the cost of translating Coursera courses from $10,000 to $20 – which has allowed them to make their content more accessible. 

Ministers from Morocco, Cape Verde, Kenya, and Armenia stressed the importance of electricity and internet access as a necessity, as well as making technology education available to people of all ages. Their overall message was clear: technology offers a toolkit for helping level the playing field. Success requires a collaborative effort, where governments, development partners, and the private sector work closely together to ensure that the benefits of technological progress reach all. 

Kate Kallot, founder and CEO of Nairobi-based startup Amini, shared how AI and satellite data can help African farmers facing climate change enabled by the contributions of talented young people, while co-founder of Curai Health, Neal Khosla, spoke about AI to revolutionize health care in all countries – and help reach the 4.5 billion people that are not receiving the health care that they need.

Reflecting on how digital technology can play a role in World Bank projects as diverse as digital social registries to AI tools that help community health workers, van Trotsenburg said, "We must work together with ‘total ambition’ to help countries see better human capital outcomes now – and in decades to come."

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