Enabling Learning Through Technology

Abstract

From the Ontario Tech course catalog: This course forms part of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) specialization in the BA in ESDT program. Students in this course critically evaluate opportunities and challenges in promoting equitable technology-enabled education. With the advancement of educational technologies, new affordances have emerged to enable learning to be more adaptive, personalized and embedded in everyday devices. These affordances need to be matched with pedagogical approaches that support equitable opportunities for the successful realization of educationally meaningful learning outcomes including motivation, engagement and achievement for every learner. Students will examine current research and policy for the use of technology to support inclusive education including Universal Design for Learning (UDL), accessibility and differentiation. With a focus on group work, learners will analyze how these EDI concepts and their related policies promote meta-learning competencies such as collaboration and metacognition for all students.

This course encouraged students to apply equity and anti-racism/anti-oppression lenses to policies, practices, programs, and initiatives in technology-enabled education. I wanted to encourage students to view these not only from a theoretical perspective, but from their own lived experiences as well. To that end, students selected their own topics in the area of technology-enabled learning and used positionality to lend their own unique voice to their chapter. As part of open pedagogy, the students also engaged in a peer-review process before editing and submitting their final chapter. It is my hope that we can continue to build on this resource each year, to further highlight the amazing journeys that the students in this program have engaged in.