Questions to Consider

Will This Technology Expand Student-To-Student Communication and/or Collaboration?

• Research continues to underscore the importance of discourse in student learning. When students can communicate with others about their ideas, their understanding deepens. Luckily, new technologies offer far more avenues for classroom communication than we’ve ever had before. Students can use their devices for digital writing and editing, composing photos or videos, or responding to polls. Unfortunately, the way we leverage technology in classrooms doesn’t always spark communication between students. In fact, sometimes it even blocks communication

Will This Technology Expand Possibilities For Student Choice and Creation?

• By expanding students’ access to new technologies, you can open up learning possibilities that were previously unavailable. Now, digital technologies expand the topics that our students can investigate and allow them to share knowledge through multimodal compositions. However, in many classrooms, we’re integrating technology in ways that narrow students’ options for engaging and participating rather than widening opportunities for student choice.

Will This Technology Enhance Assessment?

• New technologies can offer us access to incredible amounts of data about our students. Ideally, we can use this seemingly infinite information about our students to adapt our teaching to better meet their needs.

Will This Technology Offer Opportunities for Critical Thinking or Problem Solving?

• Reflection activities provide students with opportunities to track their learning and demonstrate their progress throughout the semester. 

• Peer review activities enable students to demonstrate communication skills by giving feedback on each other’s work, expose students to alternative perspectives, and allow students to question what they are reading.

• Discussion forums allow students to communicate with their peers, answer questions that require them to demonstrate both lower-level and higher-level critical thinking skills, and analyze course content.