Placing Technology into Modern Educational Practices

Ewa EL BERGUI, Head of Digital Technology for Learning, ICN Business School

In today's fast-moving and technology-driven world, successful digital transformation in education is becoming a key factor in the validation of prestigious accreditations that attract students, especially for business schools. However, faculty are torn between the goals of research excellence and digital teaching excellence, while being challenged by new teaching methods, including technology for learning, and at the same time facing the learning demands of evolving students.

It's obvious that you can't teach the way you used to and students don't see the role of the teacher the way they used to. The teacher who masters pedagogical engineering thus becomes an orchestra conductor, a parallel to the orchestration that has proven successful in DevOps, in modern technology that combines the knowledge of Dev and Ops teams and creates automated IT solutions in the form of higher-level workflows, so that individual tasks can perform a specific function or process together.

DevOps enables organisations to be more efficient and agile in their day-to-day practices. In education, it's the teacher-educational engineer and the techno-pedagogical unit, that deploy digital tools and make them available to the faculty, these two skills form an essential duo that makes it easier for the teacher to orchestrate the teaching and together enable the delivery of in-class, hybrid or blended learning units, all interconnected and aggregated in one place. Integrating various nuggets, interactive resources and formative assessments, available to the students who can draw on them for adapted and engaging learning, while remaining guided by the teacher. This makes learning much more effective, as students become the leaders of their own learning and it also makes schools more agile, as they constantly adapt their content to meet pedagogical expectations and deliver high-value teaching.

Technologies have thus become indispensable and closely linked to teaching. They now allow us to teach differently and to adapt to the times. Providing the same quality of teaching in several distant locations and making it accessible to all in the same way; are just a few of the strategic educational challenges faced by the schools. But technologies also enable innovation in pedagogy and ultimately become a lever for improving pedagogy itself.

To give just a few examples, flipped classrooms are becoming increasingly popular thanks to technologies that facilitate the implementation of this pedagogical model. Tools for analysing learning data make it possible to identify learners' individual needs, adapt teaching strategies, evaluate the effectiveness of pedagogical tools and propose personalised interventions. Alternatively, schools can implement adaptive learning strategies or experiment with VR modules for realistic hands-on learning situations to further enhance the quality of teaching and learning.

Recently, another technological revolution has entered schools, with widespread access to generative AI. New solutions are emerging in digital tools for teaching and learning. Generative AI brings with it numerous challenges, not least the challenge of assessment and related anti-plagiarism, but also a host of opportunities. AI will become a teacher's assistant, capable of assisting in the preparation, creation and distribution of lessons. It is even capable of replacing or even taking over the teacher when students are learning autonomously. AI acts as a virtual knowledge assistant via a chatbot, allowing students to ask questions related to the content being studied and within the permissible limits of what the teacher himself proposes.

“Whatever the digital tools or IT solutions, it's the teacher who is the master of the content and who articulates learning in the best conditions for these students, all based on learning objectives.”

AI is already widely used to produce learning nuggets, prepare video capsules for asynchronous sessions, generate subtitles or ask a personalised avatar to stand in for the teacher, interact with him/her, simulate a situation, coach or even use AI to generate a question/answer session that is read directly by the avatar.

Within this range of possibilities, pedagogical models are adapting and evolving (hybrid, blended or HyFlex) and rapid adaptation by the teacher is becoming virtually indispensable.

What's certain is that, whatever the digital tools or IT solutions, it's the teacher who is the master of the content and who articulates learning in the best conditions for these students, all based on learning objectives.

The teacher's pedagogical engineering skills and comfort with learning technology, supported by a techno-pedagogical entity and the ability to transform its modules in the classroom, will therefore become the key to the success of digital teaching. Supporting teachers in this overall change to digital teaching is therefore essential and takes place at several levels, adapted to the individual digital maturity of each teacher. Workshops and roundtables are just one example of the actions taken, which also include the identification and involvement of teacher ambassadors for new solutions and the development of new best practices in digital education and teaching. From a pedagogical point of view, the digital transformation of teaching is not a pedagogical innovation in itself but offers new opportunities for teachers to shake up their teaching practices and innovate to deliver high-quality teaching.

DevOps

Agile

Digital Transformation