Sustainability and Scalability in Educational Technology Initiatives: Research-Informed Practice
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Sustainability and Scalability in Educational Technology Initiatives: Research‑Informed Practice Dale S. Niederhauser1 · Sarah K. Howard2 · Joke Voogt3 · Douglas D. Agyei4 · Therese Laferriere5 · Jo Tondeur6 · Margaret J. Cox7
© Springer Nature B.V. 2018
Abstract Although a positive impact of technology interventions on educational practice and student outcomes has been shown in many previous research settings, the use of technology in classrooms and schools is still often superficial and not meeting the potential of technology as envisioned by education reformers and researchers in the field. However, when technology projects have been implemented successfully in educational practice and shown valuable impacts, sustainability within similar contexts is not guaranteed—let alone scaling the initiative to other broader contexts. This article builds on the discussions of the EDUsummIT 2017 Thematic Working Group 9 (TWG9) and the summary report that captured the outcome of those discussions. The goal of TWG9 was to help inform policy and practice by providing insights into key factors that contribute to scalability and sustainability of educational technology integration and impact. Keywords Technology integration · Sustainability · Scalability · Cases
1 Introduction The education sector has been engaged in 30 years of educational technology initiatives, venture funding for educational technology has been rising (Koba 2015), and expenditures for educational technology have topped $6.5B in 2015 for the US alone (McCandless 2015). Yet many would agree that there have been limited returns on these * Dale S. Niederhauser [email protected] 1
College of Education and Human Services, West Virginia University, P.O. Box 6122, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA
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University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
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Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
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Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
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King’s College London, London, UK
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substantial financial investments, with regard to positive impact on learning (Cuban 2002; Kirkwood and Price 2013; Reeves and Reeves 2015). Specifically, the sustained efforts to motivate teachers to integrate digital technologies and develop effective uses of technologies in learning have not lived up to popular expectations. The desire of many technology-related change initiatives has been to encourage reform-oriented technology integration grounded in inquiry and drawing on cognitive and constructivist learning principles (see Fishman et al. 2004; Jonassen 1995). This would include features like online communication and social interaction, collaboration, use of authentic contextualized activities, and reflection on learning. These aspects of digital technology use are important parts of effective integration, as technology integration is more likely to have a positive impact on learning when these are taken into consideration in
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