How Much Technology is Too Much in Your Classroom?

Others have written about the Millennial generation, especially in regards to their use of technology. Many research papers, blog posts, and journal articles have analyzed how this generation use social media to communicate, share knowledge, and build networks. Some users have found a way to become famous or make money with it. The point is: they are not afraid of adapting new technologies to their everyday life.

Regarding education, students now arrive to campus with the expectation that technology will be used in the classroom. They come equipped with the experience of online learning and elearning, they know what an LMS is, and what it does.

Unfortunately, professors and instructors are usually behind on the use of technology in the classroom, there is still resistance to the use of new tools, they may fear the technology, or they don’t know how to use it. But many are making the effort to update their skills, their institutions may offer professional development for faculty.

Now the question is, if you are considering using technology in your classroom, how much of it should you use? On one side of the spectrum, we have instructors that still want to use a blackboard and chalk, exam papers, and written assignments graded by hand. The opposite side is an instructor that would automate the classroom inside an LMS, students would interact with technological tools and very little with the instructor (we would be referring to an elearning course). What we need is to find the best approach, or maybe a middle ground.

Consider Your Learning Objectives (LO)

In many cases, your first guide when assessing the use of technology is the LOs you developed for the syllabus. Look at the assignments, activities, and assessments that will measure the outcomes for your course. If you can conduct those in the online environment, or you can use other technologies to achieve the same results, those are good candidates for further analysis.

For example, if you need to assess student engagement in class, you can conduct a quiz using tools such as clickers, cloud-based solutions, Survey Monkey, or the quizzing tool in your LMS. In another instance, you can prerecord slide presentations for students to watch, this way they will come prepared to class, the lecturing time could be used to other activities that engage students (flipped learning).

Take a Test Drive

It’s always a good idea to test the limits and features of the technology you intend to use. How is it going to help you achieve your course LOs? How easy will it be for students to use it? For example, you may be considering the use of a private Facebook page for students to share content, or you could share content with them. Considering that most users of Facebook access the platform through a smart phone, will it be convenient for your class? If they will be sharing content on the web, then the answer is yes but if you need them to post an essay (for which a blog could be more useful), then it might not work out, just imagine trying to type more than twenty words on a Facebook post, on your phone. Go ahead and create your Facebook page, experiment with the tool, find out how you could use it in your class for assignments.

The same goes for other platforms where security and data safety are a concern. Instagram is used a lot by marketers but it might not have an application in education. For one thing, it is designed for smart phones and tablets, and Instagram works for posts that include a picture, you cannot post a text entry. But if you are teaching graphic design or photography, it might be a great tool for your class. You can create your account and make it private, this way you can control who can see your posts.

Start Slow

Plunge yourself into the myriads of technological solutions for elearning and online education, don’t treat it as a shopping spree though. Start with one thing, for example, if your LOs require students to submit the analysis of a paper, you may ask them to do it in a blog inside your LMS. The other activities may remain the same, you might find it did not work as intended and you may need to switch to something else.

Remember that adding technology to your class means somebody must manage those solutions, you may be one of the lucky few that has an entire enterprise that can support those tools but if you are a one-man-show, you may want to keep it down to a couple of solutions, plus your LMS.

Final Thoughts

It is clear you need to make an analysis of your class to determine how you will be measuring your learning outcomes, then you need to determine if the solution could be the use of technology. The goal here is not to make your class completely online, unless your class is going to be in elearning mode, you still want to interact with your students in the classroom.

If you do decide to use technology, consider a couple of tools and spend time using them, this way you can determine if they will be of help to you, you may have to turn to a different solution if it doesn’t work out.

Start small, don’t try to overreach because you will find yourself managing many things that you probably don’t understand well. Start with one tool and see if it works out, you may find it needs some tweaking. The next time around, you could try another one, there is no rush. You will not miss a lot, even though technology is moving in strides, implementation of these in education can take a long time.

As always, thank you for reading this post, let me know if you have questions or comments, you can reach me at [email protected], visit us at www.elearninginmotion.com where we have more content related to elearning and instructional design.