Educational Technology
Products & Services Overview
What is Educational Technology?
Education technology is the physical hardware or software applications purpose-built to facilitate or support learning. As computing power increases, more richly interactive, immersive, and adaptive educational technology is increasingly coming to the market. For educators, educational technology represents a great leap forward, providing more “tools” in the educator’s tool chest to help students learn more efficiently and effectively.
Today, educational technology is expanding rapidly into new areas such as virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) and learning analytics. Beyond hardware and software, educational technology also includes E-learning, M-learning, and distance learning:
“E-learning”, or electronic learning, is the use of computers and the internet for learning purposes.
“M-learning”, also known as mobile learning, is the use of mobile tech, such as mobile phones and tablets for educating.
Distance learning, which uses the the internet to educate across often large geographic distances, utilizes both m-learning and e-learning.
Courseware
Courseware is a type of software that’s used to aid instruction in a particular course of study. Courseware can include drill and practice, tutorials, simulations, and problem-solving activities.
Drill and practice software is most often used for simple skill development and most often emphasizes response accuracy, speed, etc. Tutorial software is sequenced, interactive, and often functions much like a human tutor in providing hints and targeted feedback based on user input. Simulation courseware attempts to provide lifelike decision-making scenarios. Problem-solving courseware is often used to develop logic and reasoning skills, similar to the activities you might find on an IQ test.
Learning Analytics
George Siemens defines learning analytics as, “the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for the purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which is occurs.”
Learning Management Systems
Learning management systems are computer software applications that allow educators to administer, track, and deliver instruction. Today’s sophisticated learning management systems are largely cloud-hosted, simplifying ongoing maintenance and upgrades.
Assessment Software
Assessment software is purpose-built to enable educators to develop and deliver online assessments to better understand student performance. Some assessment software comes with pre-developed “items” or questions, while other types of software focus on the authoring process and simplify the process of assessment writing and development.
Online Lab Tools
Lab software is an emerging educational technology that aims to reenvision the traditional higher education science lab experience as an online set of activities. Lab software includes open-end investigations where students practice skills and perform experiments.
Open Educational Resources
Open Education is a collective term used to refer to practices and activities that have both openness and education at their core. Within the open education movement, Open Educational Resources are defined as teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.
The most common type of OER resource is open textbooks or textbooks that are open and free to access by educators and students.