Challenge Two: Technology Supports
What it is:
The Technology Supports competency means integrating technology into our courses by intentionally selecting appropriate tools for different tasks. This includes evaluating technologies for factors such as ethics, accessibility, and affordability. In addition, we strive to reduce students’ cognitive load by providing the proper support to help them be successful with the technology. This may seem like a big task, but helpful frameworks exist to guide decisions about choosing educational technologies to use in the classroom.
Why it is important:
Since there are many educational technologies available to use in the classroom, it’s essential to evaluate these technologies from multiple perspectives. This will help ensure that an ethical, accessible, and affordable technology is chosen. It’s also important to avoid assuming students will automatically understand how to use the chosen technology. While some students might be proficient at using technology in their personal lives, technologies used for learning in the classroom may be a different matter. It’s crucial to include proper support so that all students can be successful. Overall, getting to know our students’ needs and abilities, choosing tools with purpose, and ensuring that we and our students have the proper support.
Examples:
- Browse a snapshot of the educational technology tools being used across the province in 2019: Educational Technology at Work in British Columbia: The ETUG Community Survey Results (blog post)
- Explore this edtech demo to see how others have built on existing models to create a rubric to assess technologies for use in the classroom: More Tools Than Time: Sharing a Rubric for Aiding Instructors’ Predictive Evaluation of eLearning Tools (video, 50 minutes)
Multimedia Activity
Choosing and evaluating a technology to use in your classroom is a multidimensional decision that involves many perspectives beyond the technology’s ability to do what you need it to do. The SECTIONS model offers a helpful framework based on eight important factors to consider. To begin to familiarize yourself with the model, click on each of the hotspots on the image for a question to consider when choosing technology. We will apply this model later in this challenge. The image below is from the chapter on choosing and using media in Teaching in a Digital Age by Tony Bates.
Learning Activities
1. Learn it for yourself
When considering integrating technologies into your teaching practice, a great place to start is exploring what’s available at your institution for both you and your students. This way, you and the students can gain access to free and supported tools that take student privacy into account.
To help you discover and document the technologies and supports available at your institution, download and/or print this scavenger hunt activity. Browse your institution’s website or speak with staff in service areas (e.g., information technologies, teaching and learning centre directly to learn more about what’s available to help you fill it out. The more specific you can be, the more helpful this resource will be, as it will become a “cheat sheet” to refer back to when planning future lessons. We will also be referring back to it in future challenges.
If you are looking to explore other tools that aren’t available at your institution, browse the B.C. Digital Literacy repository’s Technology Supports page. You will be introduced to tools such as Hypothes.is, H5P, and SPLOT websites. Keep in mind that a good practice is to check with your institution before using new technologies to ensure student privacy and protection.
2. Incorporate it into your teaching practice
Using the scavenger hunt that you completed earlier, or the B.C. Digital Literacy repository’s Technology Supports page, choose a technology you learned about in this challenge. Think about a problem or situation you’re experiencing in the classroom that you think one of the technologies can help you resolve (e.g., you want to incorporate more formative assessments into your lectures and you think Slido can help you achieve that).
Work through the following H5P activity, which includes a few streamlined questions based on the SECTIONS model above, to help you reflect on choosing suitable technologies to use in your classroom. It will help you see how technology supports, ethics, and accessibility are intertwined. Be sure to click the buttons next to the yes/no answers to learn more!
Please note that this is only a small sample of the kinds of questions to ask yourself when choosing a technology for your course. See Appendix 2 in the Further Reading section for additional questions.
Sources for the SECTIONS quiz questions:
- SECTIONS UBC resource (PDF framework)
- H5P activity
- Using SECTIONS to Select Digital Tools
- Digital Literacy Framework
We hope this simplified technology assessment has prompted you to think beyond the simple utility of an educational technology. If you answered mainly yes, it likely means you’ve thought about technology integration from a variety of perspectives — great job! If you answered with a few no’s, hopefully you were able to provide thoughtful rationales for those responses or were prompted with additional perspectives to consider in your decision-making journey when selecting a technology.
Next, create a reflective post that captures your journey through this assessment. What had you already considered when choosing the technology? What did you learn about that you hadn’t initially considered? Was there anything about the assessment that surprised you? What is one thing you learned to apply in the future?
When you’ve chosen an appropriate technology for your classroom, it’s essential to provide students with the technical support they need to be successful. Avoid assuming that students already know how to use the technology or that they have the skills to learn it quickly. While students might be familiar with certain technologies, educational technology platforms may be brand new to them!
- In your course outline, describe the technologies used in your course and what support resources are available.
- In assessments that involve technology, include:
- A brief description of the technology, how it aligns with the learning outcomes, and the skills students will develop as a result of using the technology
- Technical instructions or guides that students can refer to when learning how to use the technology
- Support resources available to students (e.g., where can students go if they have questions or need assistance with troubleshooting the technology?)
- Talk to the teaching and learning centre or learning technology centre at your institution for guidance on aligning technology with course learning outcomes and teaching practices.
3. Teach it to students
This Technology for Post-Secondary Readiness Lesson Plan will help you have a conversation with students about assessing their technology readiness skills and point them to self-directed learning opportunities.
Create a mini-survey at the beginning of the term to gather information about your students’ comfort level and familiarity with technologies you’re considering implementing in your course. This will help you ensure that the proper support is in place for students learning and using the technology.
Further Reading
- The Choosing and Using Media in Education: The SECTIONS Model chapter in Teaching in a Digital Age, by A.W. Bates, is an in-depth examination of the SECTIONS model.
- Or go straight to Appendix 2: Questions to Guide Media Selection and Use section for more in-depth questions aligned with the SECTIONS model to ask yourself.
- For a different option, explore the eLearning Toolkit Evaluation Rubric that Western University developed to guide the appraisal of technology tools.