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The Impact of Technology on Education: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction

This comprehensive analysis was prepared for the joint Ithaka S+R and Educational Advisory Board project, “Supporting Technology for Improved Educational Productivity.” The authors explore the potential of educational productivity to improve the quality of instruction for end users through changes in technology provision and the implications of online provision on colleges and universities. They define the concept of educational productivity and its impact within the context of higher education. Throughout the paper, the authors explore numerous issues related to educational productivity and identify opportunities for innovation that might increase the efficacy of technology production that will move educational productivity towards service concepts generally associated with e-commerce websites.

It is widely believed that technological change has the potential to play a critical and productive role in improving education. After reviewing the large and consistent literature that finds, on average, large and increasing private sector returns to college and university education, it is useful to ask how many of these gains actually increase the productivity of the delivery of education and how many are mainly in the nature of rationed rents. Do students and especially institutions respond to productivity incentives to find, apply and implement low-cost and high-benefit technology that already exists?

2. Historical Overview of Technology in Education

The historical record makes it clear that the introduction and impact of new technologies is anything but swift, uniform, or predictable. A good part of this is simply due to the natural inertia in any system. Changes cannot be incorporated overnight. Individuals as well as institutions must adapt to them. Capital equipment, teaching methodologies, and learning processes all play a part of different roles, and time is required to effect their adjustment. The slowness may also reflect social, economic, and psychological factors. The Resistors of Innovation wear many labels, as a recitation of the historical episodes of resistance makes clear. Sometimes society is just not ready to change, perhaps from ignorance or inertia, perhaps from some heightened awareness of what the future may bring.

In fact, throughout history there has been a pendulum-like oscillation in the relative emphasis put on technology and education in altering man’s interaction with his external environment. As Marshall McLuhan describes in, during certain periods man becomes obsessed with printing or alludes, as in earlier years, to “the technique of the alphabet.” At other times, on the other hand, technology is more than a passive servant of pedagogy. When Leonardo da Vinci, or names less celebrated but no less significant, seek new methods to speed the acquisition of knowledge or arc themselves embodiments of universal knowledge, their diagrams and notebooks serve as starting points for those who seek a relationship between teaching and technology. In the 1960s, best known, of course, was B.F. Skinner and his teaching machines.

3. Current Technological Trends in Education

Education has evolved repeatedly thanks to the major technology-driven spruce-ups of our times: from the printed word, which democratized knowledge, through the Industrial Revolution, when teaching became compulsory, all the way to the arrival of the Internet. However, we need to continue monitoring the development in order to understand the most recent trends. In fact, right now we are going through a new acceleration of the effect of technology in education. New technologies have entered the classroom, enriching and providing new forms for teaching. These innovations have combined with new needs and new social perspectives.

The integration of technologies in the schools is increasingly a necessity since, in a global society, students need to develop skills related to technology. This technology skill will dictate what kind of work these youths will access in adult life. So, the necessary technology has imposed itself inside and outside the school for the personal and professional development of individuals. A school that ignores this necessity will not be able to accompany the advances of the digital society, nor to answer the pupil’s articulations in the face of “old-fashioned” methodologies. The present time dictates a new school model, where the traditional teacher is called to exceptional performance, emerging to the design several functions, offering the school opportunities to take better advantage of the pedagogical potential which the technologies allow.

4. Benefits and Challenges of Technology Integration in Education

The integration of technology in education is widely promoted. It is generally believed that technology can facilitate the teaching and learning process. Therefore, it is commonly advocated that the integration of technology in pedagogy can assist the educational process. In this section, the underlying premises for the technology-promoted agendas in education are first examined. Although the potential effect of technology on teaching and learning can be beneficial, a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between technology and the teaching and learning process is required. Both the benefits and the challenges of technology use in the educational process are then explored.

The movement towards a knowledge economy is generating a high demand for knowledge workers, leading to a demand for a high level of education. The emergence of the information economy induces changes in social organization, and a developing consensus exists which identifies knowledge and learning as the most important resources in the global process. Increased globalization and economic restructuring have led to a differentiation trend in social structure. The knowledge economy is essentially based on non-tangible rather than tangible resources, on management and technology rather than capital and labor, and on continuous rather than fixed costs. Knowledge is a key production factor in an increasing number of industries and services. It is precipitating a social transformation process with important effects on education. The transition from an industrial-based economy to a knowledge economy implies a shift in the relative distribution of resources, including capital, labor, and technology. It is widely believed that technology is central to the shift and transition to a knowledge economy.

5. Future Directions and Recommendations

From the above analysis, it is clear that much has been said and done about the role of technology in education. However, a careful and critical evaluation of the present educational uses of technology suggests that both the supporters and the critics of educational technology are off the mark. Those who trumpet the capacity of technology to transform educational structure often make unrealistic claims, just as those who see technology as the source of evil. As such, future research on the role of technology in education must be circumspect or must, at the very least, address these issues systematically.

First, future research and development of the role of technology in education must be based on careful ethical reflection on the goals of education. Any reform initiative that employs technology must, therefore, address those goals of education as its point of departure.

Second, while ethical reflection is necessary, it is not sufficient. The present educational uses of technology nowhere address the goals mentioned above. As such, future educational development of technology must aim for the development of technology that is specifically aimed at meeting the educational needs of diverse demographic populations in diverse educational situations. It is possible to think of an educational setting where technology is designed to complement other teaching resources that are already in place, rather than replace them. Such a reinvention of technology must follow the specific needs of the educational setting, rather than the other way around.

Third, this reinvention of technology must also be a global and not a local one. In a related manner, while it is clear that technology can remedy or mitigate the impact of some of these inequalities in education, a realization of these goals must also be pursued within specific institutional and political structures.

In sum then, critical discourse on the role of technology in education must identify the goals of education and the pitfalls obstructing these goals from being reached. This may, in turn, spur technological development that is specifically aimed at reaching these goals.