Educational Technology Tool Selection

Educational Technology Series: Topic Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Educational Technology Series
Part 3:
Educational Technology Tool Selection

Overview

Selecting the right technology tool to enhance teaching and learning requires careful thought and intentional planning. There are a multitude of factors to consider, such as situational context, accessibility, and pedagogical theoretical frameworks and methodologies. 

Faculty education and training is an essential element of effectively integrating educational technology tools. Faculty should have support and guidance in how best to select the right tool for their teaching, especially regarding how their choice aligns with the course learning objectives (Schlosser et al., 2022). It is important to keep in mind that the educational technology personnel on campus, such as instructional designers, are experts in tool review, and the campus-supported tools have already been vetted for use. This present resource is designed to help instructors understand the process with which technology tools are selected to support teaching and learning so that they might employ the same process in their own teaching practices. Appendix 3A presents the tech ecosystem of UC Davis to help instructors conceptualize the various resources, campus-supported tools, and who to contact on campus for educational technological support. 

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Teaching Context

Selecting the most appropriate technological tool for your teaching and learning purposes requires carefully considering several factors and first answering a few questions about your teaching context. 

Situational Context

What is the format of your class? Is it blended, hybrid, or fully remote? Are you teaching in a flipped classroom? What is the level of your students? What is the physical setup of the classroom? What are the characteristics of the students? How many students are in the class? How long and frequent are the class meetings?  

Pedagogy

From what teaching and learning theoretical frameworks are you drawing your teaching methods? What teaching methods are you already using? What activities are you facilitating to support your learning objectives? 

Purpose

What is the purpose of the learning activity? Are you disseminating information? Is that through lectures or active learning? Are you communicating non-content related information?  Are you assessing your students? Are you community building? Are you grading or providing feedback? 

Tool

How does the technological tool support the purpose of the activity and the learning objectives? How do the learning objectives align with pedagogical research and methods?  What is the function of the tool? 

Accessibility

What is the cost of the tool you are considering? What are the limitations (if any)? What devices are required to use the technology tool? What other resources may be required to leverage the tool? Is the tool equitable? 

Once the instructor has a clear understanding of all of the components which comprise the context of the course, they may choose to select a technology tool to support an element of the course, whether it is a lesson, activity, project, or long-term tool. 

Asking yourself the following three questions is an excellent place to get started for effective technological tool selection: 

• What teaching challenge am I trying to solve? 

  What is the purpose of the activity (i.e. student engagement, content dissemination, assessment, etc.) and how does that align with the learning objectives? 

  For example, an art history instructor is challenged to make lecture content, which is content heavy with dates, names, and images of historical pieces of art, more engaging and interactive. This specific content is necessary to achieve the course objective that students will be able to identify famous works of art and the artists and understand how the works of art fit into historical social and political movements. 

• What tool can support this? 

  Once the teaching challenge has been clearly identified, instructors are encouraged to 1) investigate tools that learners may have already have available to them, and those with which they may already have some familiarity, 2) consider how pedagogy, content, and technology are working together (and independently) to create a cohesive environment (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), and 3) evaluate the tool and determine how it supports the learning objectives. This final step can be done either through a checklist or rubric. Table 1 illustrates an example checklist. 

  Table 1. Examples of checklist for technological tool selection. 

A detailed rubric which also might be helpful is The Rubric for E-Learning Tool Evaluation from Educause Review (Anstey & Watson, 2018). This rubric offers educators a framework, with criteria and levels of achievement, to assess the suitability of an e-learning tool for their learners' needs and for their own learning outcomes and classroom context. This rubric example features the following areas: Functionality, Accessibility, Technical, Mobile design, Privacy, Data Protection & Rights, Social Presence, Teaching Presence, and Cognitive Presence. See the full rubric here. 

Once the tool is selected, careful and intentional thought and planning should be taken to effectively implement the tool. 

• How can I best implement the tool? 

  Instructors should take into consideration that this concurrence of human learners, content, and technology is a complex system, which may require new frameworks (i.e., TPACK, Mishra & Koehler, 2006), and theoretical perspectives (i.e. Complex Systems Theory (Chapelle, 2009) or an Ecological Perspective (Godwin-Jones, 2021)). It is also necessary to remember that “In the same way that learning assessments and activities are selected to support the learning objectives, technology tools and abilities should be selected based on how they enhance and support the assessments and activities. Technology should enhance and support, not just garnish the dish” (Stanford Teaching Commons). 

• Acknowledgement
• This resource was developed by Lillian Jones (PhD Candidate, Spanish and Associate Instructor) while working as a Teaching Assistant Consultant in the Center for Educational Effectiveness, UC Davis.
• Citation
• Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE). (2024). Educational Technology Series: Just-in-Time Teaching Resources. https://cee.ucdavis.edu/JITT
• References
• Anstey, L., & Watson, G. (2018, September 10). A rubric for evaluating e-learning tools in higher education. EDUCAUSE Review. https://bit.ly/3ML43h0
  
  Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE). (2022). Course design series: Just-in-Time Teaching Resources. https://cee.ucdavis.edu/JITT
  
  Chapelle, C. (2009). The relationship between second language acquisition theory and computer assisted language learning. The Modern Language Journal, 93, 741–753.
  
  Godwin-Jones, R. (2021). Evolving technologies for language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 25(3), 6–26.
  
  Henshaw, F. (2021, February 24). These are a few of my favorite tools: Choosing the right tech for the right task. FLTMag. https://fltmag.com/favorite-tools-choosing-tech/
  
  Miller, M. (2022). How to make smart choices about tech in your class. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://bit.ly/3BL4QJX
  
  Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017–1054.
  
  Schlosser, L., Hood, C. E., Hogan, E., Baca, B., & Gentile-Mathew, A. (2022). Choosing the right educational technology tool for your teaching: A data-privacy review and pedagogical perspective into teaching with technology. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 51(2), 236–251.
  
  Stanford Teaching Commons. (n.d.). Technology integration framework. Teachingcommons.stanford.edu. https://bit.ly/3oDq9dq