Pandora :: Humanity :: Technology Impact Cycle Tool

Experimental EdTech cycle

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Depending on the technology you are assessing, some categories are more important than others. Here you can indicate how important you think this category is for this technology.

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If this category is not applicable for this technology, please select 'Yes.'

How will this new technology affect Meaningful Contact in your institution?

Meaningful Contact was interpreted as an important and meaningful connection between students and teaching staff. The team discussed and found multiple points of consideration between meaningful contact and Pandora:
• The tool encourages more meaningful contact…
– … because it helps lecturers and teachers share their curriculum in new ways to students.
– … because it could contribute to students’ feeling of being included in the classroom in a new, more playful way.
– … because it boosts teacher-student interaction in the class by moving away from reading and instead to interactivity.

• The tool does not encourage more meaningful contact…
– … because the games may distract students from the learning process and become unguided by teaching staff.
– … because the games actually separate teacher from students and therefore are unable to guide the learning process or form a more emotional connection with students.
… because the teachers are not prepared to have all learning material changed to games. Moreover, it is not clear how these games would influence didactic changes in the classroom, possibly overruling teacher autonomy.

The following sub-questions will help you answer the main question!

Does encouraging meaningful contact currently in our educational institution require a technological device or application?
Are teachers and students understanding the goal of the curriculum?
Is this tool making this goal more clear to both parties?
What interactions between students and teachers have been disincentivized?
Is there a need for closer teacher-student interactions that are lighthearted?
What kind of curriculum is this tool not well-suited for? Will the tool separate students from their teachers digitally?
Can the tool be re-appropriated to bring them closer together?

How will this new technology affect Social Cohesion in your institution?

Social Cohesion was understood by the team as the social connections and trustworthiness that higher education institutions should promote amongst students and teaching staff. For Pandora, this means that the technology should not only enable more social cohesion, but should also be considered as a possible new way of bringing students and teachers together in a positive manner.
• The tool encourages more social cohesion…
– … through creating a more playful environment with learning materials.
– … because creativity and development are encouraged as this technology asks
students to think differently about the curriculum and unfamiliar problems.
– … it may relieve some social friction between students by mediating their interaction through games while still training a new topic.

• The tool does not encourage more social cohesion…
– … because teachers may not be interacting with students more and cooperation becomes less prominent with these games.
– … increased presence of mobile devices is leading to more disruption of communication between students, and can reduce the feelings of empathy and trust.
– … because AI methods in educational technologies should be assessed and reviewed before being placed in new courses; AI methods are not going to solve social challenges in the classroom .

The following sub-questions will help you answer the main question!

Does encouraging social cohesion currently in our educational institution require a technological device or application?
Do instructors understand how to work with both the EdTech tool in a social and technical way?
How might current socially driven educational practices suffer or become worse from the implementation of this tool.
Is it viable to increase screen-time in the classroom or lecture currently in a way that incentivizes socializing?
Is this technical solution needed to increase socializing effectively? How can our instructors obtain the right competencies

How will this new technology affect Well-Being in your institution?

Well-being was also part of the three focused points of humanity in the team’s discussion. Well-being as a term was narrowed down by the team to respect the vulnerabilities of students and avoiding causing harm to them. Well-being means seeing the technologies we procure in education as having a consequence for everyone involved. Meaningful contact and social cohesion can both benefit the well-being of students as well, showing the correlation and complexity of public values for education.
• The tool encourages well-being…
– By enabling students to learn more self-insight and self-sufficiency from being
able to view the curriculum in new ways.
– The games and leader board may contribute to student confidence which can boost well-being.
– Other students may be able to help with the curriculum and increase cooperation in course-work.

• The tool may impact well-being negatively…
– If teachers are unable to interpret game outcomes to their learning goals, impacting educational impact.
– If students feel that they always need to ‘win’ a game in order to learn or be a part of the classroom experience.
– If students and teachers feel monitored constantly by the system, privacy may also be threatened.

The following sub-questions will help you answer the main question!

In what ways can this tool enable students to be self-reflective?
How can instructors shape this interaction?
Are all the features within the EdTech tool needed?
Can some be removed for the benefit of our students’ well-being?
Does the tool have any pedagogical or didactic research behind its features or methods?
In what ways is competition between learners impacted by this application?
Is the impact beneficial to the learning environment?
Does this tool clearly communicate to students and teachers what data is monitored and recorded?

Now that you have thought hard about the impact of this educational technology (by filling out the questions above), what improvements would you like to make to the technology? List them below.

Our team concludes with mixed favour for the Pandora application. While weighing values has helped the discussion move along, the team feels that their answers are unstructured and need time to settle. Strong points were made after much reflection that adding this tool to the curriculum may not be necessary. It’s clear that there is a need for more discussion about how these values are impacted by new technologies in education.

If you think about how this new technology will affect Meaningful Contact in your institution? If you think about how this new technology will affect Social Cohesion in your institution? If you think about how this new technology will affect Well-Being in your institution?

If you think about all that, what improvements would you make? In technology? In context? In use? The answers on questions 1-3 help you to gain insight into the impact of this technology on society. The goal of these answers is not to provide you with a 'go' or ' no go' - decision. The goal is to make you think HOW you can improve the impact of this technology. This can be by making changes to the technology or making changes to the context in which the technology is used, or making changes in the way the technology is used.

How do you rate the quality of your answers? Not good Can be better Good enough Very good

Are you satisfied with the quality of your answers? The depth? The level of insight? Did you have enough knowledge to give good answers? Give an honest assessment of the quality of your answers.

LTFE

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