Digital learning must become more inclusive

As the edu­ca­tion sec­tor scram­bled to deliv­er an online cur­ricu­lum in the face of the first lock­down, the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has brought to the fore both the ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal learn­ing and short­com­ings of the UK school­ing sys­tem.

As COVID-relat­ed restric­tions look like­ly to con­tin­ue into the new year, and stu­dents need to move beyond catch-up mode, what steps are being tak­en to realise the poten­tial of dig­i­tal learn­ing?

In its EdTech Vision 2025 report, released in Novem­ber, the EdTech Advi­so­ry Forum not only reviewed how COVID-19 has “mag­ni­fied the uneven and patchy approach to dig­i­tal learn­ing in Eng­land”, but released sev­en rec­om­men­da­tions to address issues such as acces­si­bil­i­ty, inclu­siv­i­ty and qual­i­ty. The rec­om­men­da­tions all con­verge on tar­get­ed, blend­ed learn­ing as the way for­ward, rather than dig­i­tal being an out­right class­room sub­sti­tute.

Rec­om­men­da­tions includ­ed a nation­al edtech strat­e­gy, dri­ven for­ward by a new Office for EdTech and Dig­i­tal Skills, with a cen­tral dig­i­tal learn­ing plat­form. They also call for increas­ing sup­port for dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture and devices, as well as a boost for those with spe­cial edu­ca­tion­al needs and dis­abil­i­ties (SEND) via dig­i­tal assis­tive tech­nol­o­gy.

“The glob­al pan­dem­ic has high­light­ed the urgent need to ensure equi­table dig­i­tal pro­vi­sion,” the report argues. Ulti­mate­ly, it says, new ways of organ­is­ing deliv­ery are essen­tial to ensure lessons learnt dur­ing the pan­dem­ic are embed­ded.

The many facets of inclusivity

One of these lessons has been around inclu­siv­i­ty, which has been a two-sided coin: enforced online learn­ing has increased acces­si­bil­i­ty for some, but widened the dis­ad­van­tage gap for those on the wrong side of the dig­i­tal divide.

Dig­i­tal inno­va­tions in learn­ing have, in a num­ber of ways, been proven to improve inclu­siv­i­ty, as Cat Scutt, direc­tor of edu­ca­tion and research at the Char­tered Col­lege of Teach­ing, points out. For exam­ple, assis­tive tech­nol­o­gy built in to dig­i­tal devices and plat­forms, with text to speech, speech to text, and trans­la­tion tools has helped learn­ers with a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent needs, includ­ing stu­dents with SEND and those for whom Eng­lish is an addi­tion­al lan­guage.

“Too often there has been over­ly sim­plis­tic debate about whether face-to-face or remote learn­ing is ‘bet­ter’, but this miss­es a key point,” Scutt argues.

“Of course we need to con­sid­er these out­comes, but we also need to look at whether an online ver­sion of a course leads to some peo­ple being able to access it who might not have been able to do so if it were not avail­able online. But we need to be care­ful that increased tech­nol­o­gy use does not exac­er­bate exist­ing inequal­i­ties in access to learn­ing.”

Such inequal­i­ties are of par­tic­u­lar con­cern to Pro­fes­sor Cathy Lewin of Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan University’s Edu­ca­tion and Social Research Insti­tute, who says remote learn­ing is, in fact, like­ly to be impact­ing neg­a­tive­ly on inclu­siv­i­ty in school con­texts.

She lists a num­ber of issues iden­ti­fied by research con­duct­ed dur­ing the first lock­down: less expo­sure to live lessons, few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for teacher inter­ac­tion, dif­fi­cul­ties access­ing tech­nol­o­gy and con­nec­tiv­i­ty, more reliance on paper-based resources, being less engaged, spend­ing less time learn­ing at home while not nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing a qui­et space to work.

“Those from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds are less like­ly to be exposed to the rich range of ped­a­gog­i­cal prac­tices that dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy can sup­port. There is a lot of evi­dence of var­i­ous uses of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in school con­texts, but often the results of stud­ies are con­tra­dic­to­ry,” Lewin notes.

But echo­ing one of the EdTech Vision 2025 report rec­om­men­da­tions, she believes gaps will only close if suf­fi­cient funds are avail­able to ensure all stu­dents have access to tech­nol­o­gy and con­nec­tiv­i­ty, with new dig­i­tal teach­ing approach­es requir­ing invest­ment in resources and train­ing.

The role of innovation in education

Yet equal­ly impor­tant is a mind­set for inno­va­tion, says Olivi­er Wolff, chief exec­u­tive of Sim­ple­Cloud, a cloud-based con­tent plat­form that enables stu­dents with even basic devices to access the sophis­ti­cat­ed pro­grammes of an insti­tu­tion via a vir­tu­al work­sta­tion.

Wolff believes the long-term vision of the edu­ca­tion sec­tor should be “to solve the access prob­lem to edu­ca­tion,” enabling more peo­ple to join cours­es regard­less of where they live or the tools they have. Yet he acknowl­edges that infra­struc­ture needs to be updat­ed to make this shift more seam­less.

“The tools to make edu­ca­tion more acces­si­ble and inclu­sive exist, it’s just about chang­ing the mind­set,” he adds. “There is an appetite for evo­lu­tion, but a bit of resis­tance to change.”

Once this can be over­come, Wolff envi­sions a new “à la carte” high­er edu­ca­tion mod­el, where learn­ers could cher­ry pick indi­vid­ual cred­its with­in a frame­work, as opposed to being con­fined to long and expen­sive diplo­mas and degrees.

“The val­ue of edu­ca­tion is to give stu­dents the prac­ti­cal­i­ty to make them valu­able assets for com­pa­nies that will employ them in the future. A more per­son­alised edu­ca­tion mod­el offers more val­ue to stu­dents, and insti­tu­tions can gen­er­ate new sources of income,” he says.

Reinvention through collaboration

A sim­i­lar­ly flex­i­ble mod­el as part of a sec­ondary sys­tem shake-up could also bridge inclu­siv­i­ty bar­ri­ers, accord­ing to edtech plat­form Gluu founder Sean Gard­ner, who is about to take the online eduu.school por­tal from suc­cess­ful lock­down tri­al to nation­al roll­out.

“Now we have a cohort of chil­dren who are very dis­con­nect­ed from what should be avail­able to them. Those gaps need to be closed in a way that reflects not only their abil­i­ty to access learn­ing online, but the way in which you need to engage with them. Tra­di­tion­al school­ing per­haps isn’t the right way. So it’s about a kind of rein­ven­tion,” he explains.

“The ‘Open School’ piece is about try­ing to get indus­try and edu­ca­tors to col­lab­o­rate and to come up with some­thing that reflects the Open Uni­ver­si­ty struc­ture that can bring less advan­taged chil­dren into some­thing to sup­port them in a sus­tain­able way. That’s still the gap and some­thing we’d love to help accel­er­ate.”

Using the pow­er of a dig­i­tal plat­form to “give stu­dents agency” is crit­i­cal, says Gluu chief exec­u­tive Chris­tine Major. “It’s a once-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty that we have now to reshape the way we edu­cate through the way we engage with tech­nol­o­gy,” she con­cludes.