Educational technology is a big umbrella term that can shift in meaning depending on who you’re talking to. Wikipedia has a strong entry on educational technology, BUT it’s focus is (in theory) centered on the impact of technology on learning. The US government also has an Office of Educational Technology (https://tech.ed.gov). It’s slightly ironic that until I went to start on this blog, I hadn’t really thought of “educational technology” in terms of student learning. Of course, I get the use of technology. I’ve spent much of my career trying out technology, writing about it, and developing it all to the ultimate goal of improving student learning.
But, in my own mind, I’ve always kept the term “educational technology” or “edtech” specifically for the institutional technologies that faculty (staff and students) are forced to use. These technologies are often bought my those in administrative offices with an eye toward organizational efficiencies, but anyone who has ever used one knows that the user experience is so ridiculously bad that they are anything but efficient. I have logn said that higher education is the most inefficient (and in many ways least effective) organization. There is no denying that the universities and colleges are businesses in that they have to worry about the financial aspects of how to get the work done. When state budgets moved to diminish the support of higher education, the financial stakes increased, which meant an organization that was never meant to be efficient now has to pretend that it is.
So that means, faculty and staff and students are stuck with a whole lot of simply terrible edtech that infiltrates our daily lives. It doesn’t make our lives easier or better or more efficient. In most ways, they absolutely don’t help student learning. But here we are with more workplace tools being ported into educational settings where they simply never work as intended. The list is long. There are likely no higher education institutions that have not invested in some sort of learning management software. These tools trying to do all the things for all the people end up doing few things well.* To do this I still refuse to have learning “managed” and only use what I am contractually obligated to use. For example, the institution where I am employed for another 3 days has the grading system embedded in the LMS. I have to enter grades in it. We are mandated by institutional policy to post a syllabus in the LMS 7 days before the start of the term. I do both of those things. Otherwise, I do not use it.#
Decision making in higher education is a labyrinth of black boxes, and often decision makers don’t fully realize the faculty, staff, and student effects of their divisions because they do not think in those terms. They make decisions based on institutional goals. For example, many institutions use a system “catalog management” system which keeps track of degree programs and requirements. One of the big edtech players in this almost monopoly market is Modern Campus who markets its catalog management system to folks who run big, essential departments on college campuses. And one of the big sells is that these systems can be integrated with student information systems and wither enterprise resource planning systems. All of these things are necessary to run a university or a college. But the user experience professional in me knows that decisions disconnected from the larger system are bound to fail or in the case of higher ed are bound to not meet the needs of key users such as faculty, staff, and students.
Catalogs and their “management” are directly connected to curriculum. Faculty create curricula and courses that aligns with general education and degree programs. That information is housed in catalogs. The catalog system in theory makes it easy to find options for study and know what the requirements are. Catalogs are connected student course registration systems in a variety of ways. The efficiency at the level of management does not trickle down to a good user experience for other key stakeholders such as faculty, staff, and students. Relatedly, what is meant to be student facing “find yoru program” pages are often
In a preach to the choir moment, let’s take a look at what I mean. You are student trying to find a degree program. Typically you’re gonna land on one of these pages to do an additional search:
Figures 1-4 are all somewhat problematic with the figure 4 being the most so. The general “areas of interest” make it difficult to find programs unless you have a sense of what these categories already mean, and the lack of a humanities or arts category is extremely problematic. Figure 4 is not uncommon. And this is the power that ed tech asserts on programs and recruitment and enrollment.
But of course, if you’re lucky enough to be interested in a university or college that has the optional chat bot installed, you can simply ask it a question.
But if you’ve ever used a chatbot before, they are frustrating often times, and this one (and others like them) are generally not helpful. For example, they could not answer if the institution offered a specific degree (and I was using the official title for it, as well as other optional titles). It could tell me if had a sports team. Figure 5 is simply the example that I screenshotted. I cannot confirm for you what I asked this one particularly cause I was not doing a formal study. Cause the results of my general question yielded exactly what I thought might happen. This isn’t really a researchable project. It simply confirms what we already know, and sadly, what we—those in higher education—can likely not change.
Further complicating all of this, once a student is enrolled, if they wanna search for a course, typically they are gonna met with a search result that is simply a title or some course code that may not readily mean anything. Students can search by subject area if they happen to know the course code (which are often not intuitive; e.g., English can be EN, ENG, ENGL, English). So the systems that should help students find courses and potentially locate courses that may relate to their interests are often too difficult to find so they rely on word of mouth, Reddit threads, or other socials. I wouldn’t think I would be wrong to say that these systems have not been tested locally with students or advisors to improve their usability and more so, to improve the findability of courses through exploration and curiosity. These user experience problems make it difficult for lesser-known fields of disciplines to gain traction and grow new students. As someone about to take the reins of an interdisciplinary studies department, these sorts of hidden in plain sight issues are worrying.
It may sound cynical for me to say that these are user experience issues are incommensurable with those people in power who buy the technology and the tech divisions that may have some latitude to try and customize it. But, the sad fact remains is that faculty, staff, and students have little power in these capacities. My expertise as a UX researcher and practitioner (still in the world outside of higher ed) is not gonna get me an audience with decision makers and even if it does, the chances for user improvements are not really high. What I hope to be able to accomplish is to continue to push for small changes. Those are realistic and can potentially have the most payoffs for students. But even small changes take an enormous amount of time and energy to try get accomplished.&
I suppose the takeaways to my annoyance at ed tech is
(1) yes, ed tech is as bad as you think it is;
(2)ed tech is typically purchased by those who do not use it and likely do not understand the full system/assemblage ramifications of the users that will use it;
3) knowing 1 and 2 means faculty have to strategize different ways of recruiting and advising; and
(4) faculty and staff really have to pick the issue they want to try and change because of the labor and effort involved in it +
And since these screen shots and this idea have been sitting on my desktop since early December, I’m feeling like I got something accomplished. I had captured these images because the more faculty and staff can understand how the tech works (or doesn’t) the better equipped we are to assist students.
Sending best wishes for the end of the term (and for you folks on quarters strength for the last push!).
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* ask me about the time I ran a user test for the first update to Blackboard a thousand years ago. No NDA so hahaha.
# I did not make this decision lightly. I can have an informed discussion as to why I do this, and I can also acknowledge the potential pitfalls of doing this for students. But as I am paid to do as a scholar and teacher, I made the decision because I do not feel it impacts student learning, and I can show benefits to students of not using it. But that is a conversation for another day.
& The list of faculty who have worked tirelessly just to get some control over the website or changes made to a program website can speak directly to this
+I read with interest the work of Stuart Selber and institutional literacies. That book highlights what can happen in a case where institutional IT was engaged to the larger good. In some ways, Selber advocates for the what I do here, i.e., to find your moments for the things that matter.