Technology is moving at an ever-evolving pace, exponentially increasing the access and availability of information in the world around us. These changes have created a variety of different avenues where we can share our thoughts and ideas, but while creating more avenues for us to share, also limits that ability for us to be understood clearly. As a learning designer, I have more tools than ever before to be able to communicate my content with the learners I support. However, the tools I have access to and utilize are very different from the tools that my learners use on a daily basis to interact with their peers, friends, and families.  So, while I have more avenues to share my content, and my learners have more ways to interact with my content, there is still a disconnect with how they use technology for purposes of learning and social interaction. This is an issue that my peers and I run into constantly when designing learning experiences as we attempt to share information and assess learners’ knowledge in ways that we feel are intuitive to our learners. Still, we inevitably get feedback about issues or confusion in the processes that limit the ability of some learners to be successful. This has led us to explore different ways to provide supporting materials and instruction to successfully use the technology for learning so that the learner can communicate effectively and demonstrate their learning throughout the process. I know we are not alone in this struggle, as the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted these struggles on a scale most of us were unprepared to deal with, especially with older adults (Li et al., 2021).

Having a clear understanding of the struggles and divides that our learners face with technology they use for social purposes and for learning can help us design better learning environments and practices. When approaching these design changes, we should consider how we can better understand the technologies our learners are using outside of the learning environment, how we can incorporate similar experiences, and what differences in the experiences we need to address to ensure learners can be successful. Utilizing this approach can help us expand and build on the learning theories we already use in our learning development practices but take a more critical approach when addressing technology use in the design process. Developing better support structures and a clear understanding of our learners’ technology proficiency will allow educators and learners to communicate more effectively, further supporting the instructional design, pedagogical practices, and assessment methods utilized.

Reference

Li, W., Ornstein, K. A., Li, Y., & Liu, B. (2021). Barriers to learning a new technology to go online among older adults during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS), 69(11), 3051-3057. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.17433