MA Digital Technologies, Communication and Education / Course details

The unit will combine a critical data studies approach with technology development skills to explore the ethics of educational technology design, development, delivery and evaluation with a central focus on socio-environmental sustainability. This course unit aims to enable students to critically engage with edtech tools used in their educational practice through exploration and experience of the development processes behind these tools.

Through designing, developing and evaluating their own edtech proof of concept, and considering the sustainability dimensions of that concept, students will contribute to their learning communities and extend their understanding and repertoire of edtech research methods. This will enable students to make informed selection of other educational technologies and related interventions and to perform robust evaluations as they encounter edtech tools as practitioners. This will develop a critical understanding of how the combination of commercial concerns and measures for edtech evaluation, including for example usability and learnability, inform the manifestation of designs for learning technologies.

The unit will provide a platform for students to contribute to broader debates with industry developers on sustainable edtech design and development. Working through technology development as a mediator of software, commercial and LXD (learning design) practices, students will explore and share the impacts at the intersection of edtech for sustainability and sustainability of edtech.

The unit will combine a critical data studies approach with technology development skills to explore the ethics of educational technology design, development, delivery and evaluation with a central focus on socio-environmental sustainability. This course unit aims to enable students to critically engage with edtech tools used in their educational practice through exploration and experience of the development processes behind these tools.

Through designing, developing and evaluating their own edtech proof of concept, and considering the sustainability dimensions of that concept, students will contribute to their learning communities and extend their understanding and repertoire of edtech research methods. This will enable students to make informed selection of other educational technologies and related interventions and to perform robust evaluations as they encounter edtech tools as practitioners. This will develop a critical understanding of how the combination of commercial concerns and measures for edtech evaluation, including for example usability and learnability, inform the manifestation of designs for learning technologies.

The unit will provide a platform for students to contribute to broader debates with industry developers on sustainable edtech design and development. Working through technology development as a mediator of software, commercial and LXD (learning design) practices, students will explore and share the impacts at the intersection of edtech for sustainability and sustainability of edtech.

• Enable students to better understand the constraints and possibilities of educational technologies through designing and making their own
• In designing for educational interactions through sustainable frameworks, to make better choices about the tools they select to use or design and build as educators and learners

Students will develop a range of practical skills that are required to work in learning design and technology roles and which will enhance any teaching practice. Students will be able to identify digital software, apps and tools used in a range of educational roles and to investigate the provenance of these in relation to investment and sustainability practices which will allow them to make informed recommendations to leadership, fellow practitioners and their own students in a highly complex and little understood but critical field. Students will be able to analyse and respond to technological changes in the current market and express informed opinions on how these changes may impact future practices in work, home, school, social and public life in relation to sustainability. 

This unit will be conducted such that full time/part time and on campus/remote students can engage together through interactive technologies. Synchronous activities will consist of practical development work with reading discussions and expositions provided asynchronously via a range of relevant channels. Industry representatives and alumni will be invited into the learning community to act as informal mentors and to support the co-creation of materials as the unit evolves, to include contemporary case studies.

The practical work will focus on the design, build and evaluation of an educational technology prototype via wireframe tools and a no-code platform. Appropriate tools for the design and development projects will be selected prior to the run of the unit depending on available functionality and costs, in consultation with the eLearning team. Communication tools will be selected based on the ability to include Industry representatives and programme alumni on a rolling basis.

Students will work in teams where the focus of their prototype has similar functionality but the work for assessments will be individually produced and graded, assuming student numbers remain commensurate with the pedagogic design of the unit.

• Demonstrate understandings of progressive web apps, wireframing and code-free development tools
• Demonstrate understandings of technology development practices and frameworks
• Demonstrate knowledge of a comprehensive range of ethical, social and environmental implications of approaches to developing and evaluating technology for educational purposes

• critically evaluate academic literature and edtech tools from a sustainability perspective
• critically reflect on their own design, development and evaluation practices with technology for learning and education
• critically reflect on the intersection of data, code and design practices in relation to sustainability and flourishing frameworks

• use the humane design framework and flourishing canvas to gather requirements in relation to educational problems, including user and environmental needs
• design an educational technology prototype in response to user and environmental needs
• build a database structure and interface to test an educational technology prototype
• design a robust evaluation of a proposed educational solution
• perform data analysis skills in relation to sustainable edtech design, development and evaluation
• present proposed solutions and evaluations persuasively, ethically and authentically

• extend interpersonal and intercultural communication through teamwork and collaboration with industry practitioners 
• understand and engage with ways of living and relating in the World which are sustainable
• support decisions and actions that favour socio-environmental transformation
• understand the decisions and actions that favour socio-environmental transformation  

Assessment 1 – Design and Build journal

Reflective development journal developed from week 3 to week 12 describing experience of the design and build period. Students explore the processes they have been engaging with during each week and will explain their understanding of the relationship between the gathered data and the design features/functionality of the prototype, along with what, how and why changes have been implemented. They will increasingly draw on the literature to reflect critically on the processes they are engaging in.

Assessment 2 – Annotated Sustainability/ Flourishing Pitch Deck

During the final weeks of the unit, student teams will present a ‘pitch’ deck for future funding and/or support for their prototype, drawing on findings from evaluation of the prototype in concert with the socio-environmental needs analysis. Students will submit an annotated deck to demonstrate a critical perspective on the included elements and process of designing, building, evaluating and pitching. The annotations will refer to journal entries and will include their plan for future development and evaluation.

Via Blackboard

• Bapna, A., Nicolai, S., Myers, C., Pellini, A., Sharma, N., & Wilson, S. (2021). A Case for a Systems Approach to EdTech. EdTech Hub. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5651995
• Blevis, E. (2007, April). Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 503-512).
• Blevis, E., Preist, C., Schien, D., & Ho, P. (2017, June). Further connecting sustainable interaction design with sustainable digital infrastructure design. In Proceedings of the 2017 Workshop on Computing Within Limits (pp. 71-83).
• Bolmsten, J., Manuel, M.E. Sustainable participatory processes of education technology development. Education Tech Research Dev 68, 2705–2728 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-020-09803-3
• Hansson, L. A. E. J., Pargman, T. C. and Pargman, D. S. (2021). A Decade of Sustainable HCI: Connecting SHCI to the Sustainable Development Goals. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan.  https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445069
• Harper, S. UX from 30,000 ft. Available at: https://leanpub.com/UX/
• Hoveskog, M., Halila, F., Mattsson, M., Upward, A. and Karlsson, N. (201