16.1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the strategic thinking around the use of digital technologies to improve learning within diverse populations of students, focusing on these learning technologies and their relevance in the lives of diverse groups of learners (Slevin 2008; Stirling 2007). In particular, I explore technology utilization from the perspective of the learner, the educator, and the policymaker. The chapter provides ideas for effective engagement with lesson content, encouraging student ownership of their learning experiences (Stirling 2007) and identifying tools that enable teachers to leverage the benefits of student diversity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of learner expectations for technology engagement in service to their learning and how those expectations impact the teaching enterprise. Students expect technology to be integrated into their learning given the increasing diversity of these student populations; technology impacts a teaching enterprise desiring the development of more equitable ways of learning (Ertmer and Otenbreit-Leftwich 2013).

16.2 Overview

Educators and learners are in the midst of significant transformations in both the teaching and learning arenas. The first transformation involves the increasingly ubiquitous ways that digital technologies enable people to engage one another (Parson et al. 2009; Turkle 2005). Most of us expect to interact with technology at different times and in different ways as we move through our day-to-day activities. These digital technologies comprise the fabric of our everyday lives. The second significant transformation is driven by the increasing cultural and cognitive diversity within classrooms, globally and particularly within multiethnic societies like the United States (US Department of Education 2011; De Jaegher and DiPaolo 2007; Chan et al. 2006). Additionally, there is an increasing awareness of the existing diversity of students and learning styles (e.g., English as a second language or ethnicity). While this increase in diversity is technology-independent, there is an important role technology can play in promoting more equitable learning pedagogy practices for a growing learner demographic.

What is diversity? For the purposes of this chapter the term “diversity” is defined as the state of having a variety of human identities and characteristics. Consider the broad range of identities represented within any group of students, educators, and policymakers. This range of identities includes race, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, etc. Additionally, there is diversity in learning styles (intrapersonal, social, visual, verbal, etc.), teaching styles (lecture, flipped classroom, etc.), students’ previous educational experiences, native language, and physical and cognitive abilities. How such a diverse group of learners, educators, and policymakers engage with one another is critical—if they engage well, learning outcomes can be very productive, but poor engagement can lead to disaster (Gardner 2006; Bandura 2002). Educators must prepare themselves to teach in more diverse classrooms. They must utilize technology in ways that engage a broader variety of learners. They must pursue professional development opportunities to gain fluency with teaching a diverse population of learners.

Learning technologies are technological processes and resources that advance student learning (Kolodner 2004; Papert 1993). These technologies have blossomed from the early static systems with limited interactivity to the immersive and editable user-centric environments of today. Not surprisingly, most learning technologies have evolved in concert with other digital technologies (Slevin 2008), from early desktop computers and networked workstations to today’s wireless devices. These include hardware such as overhead projectors, laptop computers, calculators, smartphones and software such as gaming environments (both online and offline). Earlier technologies pressed into service primarily consisted of analog devices (e.g., CD players, tape recorders, overhead projectors, VCRs, etc.).

Within this early technology landscape the philosophy driving the development of these learning technologies was generally technology-centric, with the resultant learning technologies offering little in the way of user interaction or customization options. These early, mostly analog, technologies were later replaced by digital computer and multimedia technologies. This next wave of digital technologies included more complex online and electronic systems, such as desktop computers, modems, etc., offering user interaction capabilities. Some of their capabilities, such as person-to-person and person-to-group communications (e.g., email, chat rooms, and discussion forums), enabled users to communicate with one another, both synchronously and asynchronously. These interactive capabilities were at the heart of many early learning management systems (LMSs), web-based, online portals used to support and improve learning and teaching. These systems allowed teachers and students to share materials and resources, submit and return assignments, manage grading, and communicate online. Most LMS features included discussion forums, chat capability, file sharing, video conferences, shared whiteboards, weblogs (blogs), and wikis (editable websites). One of the strengths of LMSs was that users could access or contribute content. LMSs were the earliest learning resources for self-governed, collaborative activities and content. These early LMSs were the forerunners of more social, online systems. In recent years LMSs have expanded to include a variety of social software capabilities (often with features similar to those found in Facebook, Google+, and Twitter). Today teachers and students assemble their own LMS-type interactions using a variety of open-source social media software. For example, an instructor may choose to use a combination of Google Sites, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter to offer the interactive features offered by many LMSs. Whether using an integrated LMS (e.g., Blackboard, WebCT, or Moodle) or a collection of open-source tools woven tightly to serve a similar purpose, teachers are using technology to both manage their classrooms and facilitate richer interactions with their students. Early uses of LMSs were primarily for classroom management and content delivery purposes, with little impact on pedagogy, but the increasing integration of social media is transforming teacher pedagogy and classroom management technologies into tools that may better serve a broader range of students and teachers. This integration of social media enables more teachers and students to benefit from a more socially mediated construction of knowledge. As social network technologies not only frame the way individuals interact and learn, but actually impact a learner's thinking processes and development of future consciousness, new pedagogies are needed to effectively integrate these communication mechanisms into the learning environment.

Table 16.1 lists several kinds of technology tools that are either explicitly designed as learning technologies or are commonly adapted to serve that purpose.

16.3 Learning, Culture, and Digital Technologies

Culture is the collection of practices and values particular to a group or network of people (Gollnick and Chin 2008; Banks 2005). Culture plays a critical role in mediating new knowledge development, and imbues context and relevancy into the learning experience (Vygotsky 1978). The variety and malleability of today’s technologies present an opportunity for students to make visible and leverage the particular learning affordances of their cultures. Educators can successfully couple learning technologies and student cultural affordances to deepen student engagement, efficacy, and persistence (Wulf, Pipek, and Won, 2008). The learner’s experience of a technology will be influenced by whatever cultural assumptions influenced the design of that technology. It is for this reason that the role of policymaker is broadened in this chapter to include learning technology designers and developers as their decisions about learning technology functionality and design effectively enact policy. Culture is a significant influencer of how underlying philosophies impact the development of learning technologies. This developer philosophy often impacts who derives the learning benefits of a particular technology. A critical area is that of the policymaker and the cultural influence of policymaking. Developer decisions are informed by culture, whether personal, discipline-specific, organizational, or along other identities of the particular technology developers (Lee 2003). Learning technology designers need a deeper awareness of how to create technologies that leverage and support a diversity of cultural values and practices.

What frameworks might software developers utilize to support their development of more inclusive learning technologies? One notable framework for more inclusive technology design is the culture-based model (Young 2008), which is a roadmap for developing learning technologies that are malleable and accessible enough to support a diversity of cultural content and learning styles. Learner engagement and persistence is motivated by lesson content and objectives that reflect their individual experiences, identities, and perspectives. Young argues that learning technologies should permit users to incorporate cultural artifacts and cues, and culturally relevant content related to lesson objectives. The student might use images, vocabulary, and culturally relevant content from online sources to customize the technology. In this way, the learner may engage with objects that reflect personal experiences, identities, and perspectives. In addition to the influence of a learning technology on the learning activity, culture is a significant determinant in how we appropriate and assign relevance to learning technologies. Early learning technology design was grounded within a homogenous cultural context and rarely provided a richer treatment of cultural diversity (Lee 2003; Eugene and Gilbert 2010). This homogeneity was a result of the almost exclusively male, white demographic employed as software designers and programmers. The field is expanding now as efforts are made to increase staff diversity in the technology development industries.

16.4 The Convergence of Digital Technologies and Learning Spaces

The learning space is a sacred domain within the teaching enterprise. Many of us have memories of the learning spaces of our formative years—most conjure up images of classrooms with rows of desks, and the teacher and blackboard as fixtures at the front of the room. This “traditional” classroom represented the singular place where learning happened. Today, digital technologies often dictate what places we associate with learning, and create new and sometimes disruptive learning spaces (Vygotsky 1978) by providing virtual or physical learning spaces and novel forms of engagement. What constitutes a classroom is more often replaced by or shared with online, virtual spaces, and educators are challenged to expand and reimagine notions of “classroom” in ways that were unimaginable in past decades. In addition to new, virtual learning spaces, digital technology has revolutionized how teaching and learning happens in these spaces (Slevin 2008; Talent-Runnels et al. 2006), whether virtual (learners are distributed geographically), physical (learners share physical location), or blended (mix of virtual and physical). Across this expanding spectrum of learning spaces, choices range from traditional classrooms to museums and community centers (Kafai, Peppler, and Chapman 2009), to novel online spaces such as 3D virtual environments (Turkle 2005).

Leveraging the benefits of digital technologies for teaching requires a more nuanced view of learning spaces. How do educators decide what will best serve a diverse group of students? How might digital learning spaces become more equitable in terms of learner access and engagement? Expanding the notion of what constitutes learning spaces may be a significant first step. These spaces, whether virtual, physical, or blended, provide a variety of ways for learners to connect and create new patterns of learning and social interaction. These interactions often include collaborations across cultures, geographic borders, learning styles, and other differences (Chapman 2009, 81–89). Learning technologies can serve to broaden traditional barriers between learners, educators, and often resources, both literally and figuratively. One example, the MIT iLabs online portal (http://icampus.mit.edu/projects/ilabs/), is a learning space where learners from around the globe collaboratively conduct lab experiments using online controls to manipulate remote-controlled laboratory equipment in real time. As software and hardware increasingly share the ability to interact more seamlessly, users can more easily assemble combinations of these digital tools to suit their particular learner needs and preferences. Increased variety and flexibility of technology offers options for users to engage in a learning experience where they have increased control over content, customization of features, modes of access, pacing and sequencing, and flexibility to create content.

16.5 Diversity, Learning Technologies, and Teaching

By the year 2020, over 40% of school-aged children in the United States will be students of color (US Department of Education 2011). These changing student demographics are inevitable and in some regions of the United States have already occurred. At the same time, across the globe students have increasing access and use of digital technologies (Nugroho and Londsale 2009). Such richness of learner cultures is a powerful resource for students, teachers, and policymakers. The growing diversity in classrooms and other learning spaces where learners and teachers meet requires the development of teaching strategies that are responsive to each unique student. It is important to disaggregate assumptions about the various ethnic groups that comprise our students’ identities. For example, in the United States, African-Americans are viewed typically as a single ethnic group, but there are distinct subgroups and each has its own culture that has been formed, in part, by that subgroup’s history throughout the diaspora. The same is true for Asian-Americans, another group often mistakenly viewed as homogenous. When teachers and policymakers generalize across these groups, erroneous assumptions can undermine attempts to meet the learning needs of these students. Teachers’ background and training may not adequately prepare them to recognize and work with a diversity of students. Therefore, educators must intentionally seek professional development opportunities that address issues of equity in their teaching styles, pedagogies, and teaching materials. Another consideration is how teaching styles are influenced by educators’ cultural diversity and values, cultural profile created from the mash up of academic disciplines, specific norms and expectations, personal backgrounds and experiences, and cognitive styles and preferences (Eugene and Gilbert 2010; Banks 2005). This rich sourcing of educator culture plays out in the classroom as educators engage with students. It is critical that educators develop the ability to engage and teach a student body whose backgrounds and life experiences diverge from assumed norms. Teachers will need tools and training for inquiring into the cultures, groups, and individuals represented in their classes.

Educators promote critical thinking when they use this training to better enable their students to compare and contrast cultures, and other cross-cultural skills. To promote such critical thinking, educators must focus on how digital technologies can support inclusive teaching practices and curriculum design. What must seem like an endless wave of technological innovation and “technology creep” that may seep into every aspect of teaching practice can be overwhelming as teachers struggle to make sense of how it all fits into their work and relationships with their students. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of technology and pressures to adapt pedagogies creates a perfect storm of both opportunity and peril for educators. The familiar tasks of lesson planning, determining course content, and selection of pedagogical techniques must be reimagined in ways that engage a diverse student body. Lesson activities should encourage students to share their cultures and other aspects of their identities, as well as achieve lesson objectives. Their goal must be to use digital technology as an ally in their teaching (Hofstede and Minkov 2010; Lee 2003). For example, teachers might use technology to identify digital resources for culturally relevant lesson content and examples. They may decide to have their students create culturally relevant artifacts or learning examples as part of a lesson learning objective.

Deciding what technology or suite of technologies will best support particular learning objectives must be an intentional act. Using a design methodology to determine student learning and cultural needs aids the teacher selection of the suite of technologies that best suit this learning objectives or activities. Educators should consider the design criteria of the learning technologies they decide to utilize. For example, for a given learning activity the teacher might need a technology that can support multiple modes of engagement (e.g., student blogs, electronic journals, or other media artifacts). Other design criteria might be customizable user preferences (National Center on Universal Design for Learning 2012; Liu 2012; Parson et al. 2009; Pinkard 2000). Some commercially produced learning technologies may offer flexibility that meets design criteria posed by more inclusive pedagogy design. Educators will be pressed to select technologies that minimally give students some control over their learning and experience. If available, teachers should connect with their school or organization technology support staff. These professionals can be important partners in identifying and advocating for appropriate and flexible technologies for working with diverse students.

For many students, technology is something that has always been around and readily available. For those learners who have grown up in a time when digital technologies are socially pervasive, there is a high level of comfort interacting with technologies. These digital natives expect their technologies to be malleable, accessible, and ubiquitous. It is because digital technologies have these properties that they are so fully integrated into our students’ daily activities. The quantity of everyday technology-mediated interactions is staggering. Many students use technology throughout the day, although usually not for learning purposes. Many do not view technology as a learning tool. To ensure technology is functional as a learning support for the greatest variety of students, we must assure the technology is accessible in the ways they expect. Students are accustomed to on-demand access to digital content and the flexibility to customize how and when they interact with that content. This would be the expectation for any technology functionality and digital learning content, and students’ expectations are no different in how they expect learning technologies to mediate their learning experiences. In the past, content was often parceled out in “content blocks” from a singular source (in the form of a book, CD, video, lecture, etc.). Lesson content today is readily available to learners as streams of disaggregated, on-demand information in an assemblage of “content threads” from varying sources and in varying formats. Students move through content like the human gatherers of nuts and berries of the past foraged through ancient forests. They then interweave these collected content threads—a process that is usually mediated through their interactions and negotiations with others (Wilson 2008, Kafai, Peppler, and Chapman 2009). This is, in fact, the ideal way of socially engaging with data as far as students are concerned. Educators need to guide learners in piecing together a concise and meaningful understanding of what they are learning. They must become curators rather than merely gatherers of content. One suggestion is to incorporate into our classrooms ways for students to think about those digital resources. For example, what is a valid reference? How would you summarize what you have learned from the digital content? What variety of viewpoints is represented? What is missing? Supporting emergent knowledge creation is a critical feature of any learning technology that will be viable and relevant to today’s learners, therefore emergent knowledge creation becomes an important design objective for these technologies. One pedagogical strategy that leverages diverse ways of learning and processing information is to encourage students to identify personally relevant content and knowledge examples. This positions the class activity within the familiar practice of foraging and constructing knowledge.

The savvy educator will help students hone their explorer skills and become more discerning connoisseurs of discourse content. Such activities have the collateral benefit of exposing students to diverse cultural perspectives and examples, and the creating and sharing is often a powerful motivator for deeper engagement in learning activities (Kafai, Peppler, and Chapman 2009; Furberg and Arnseth 2009). This presents a professional development gap for many educators. The following are promising practices for teaching diverse students with technology:

• Ensure lesson plans are accessible to a diverse group of students. Determine how the learning technology interfaces with students’ learning styles and preferences, for example does the activity support collaborative teamwork or personalized activities, etc.?
• Review and revise course materials to identify any cultural and linguistic biases toward certain learning groups.
• Assess how a diverse group of students will experience your syllabus. How are culture and other identity dimensions represented in your examples and materials? What is missing? How might a learning technology help fill in the gaps?
• Collaborate with colleagues to identify more diverse sources, references, and examples for lesson plans and learning activities.
• Include work activities that encourage student reflection on the lesson topic or concepts. For example, blogs, electronic journals, or other technologies may be used by students to capture their reflections and/or for sharing with others. This provides multiple ways for students to demonstrate their learning.
• Ask your students to use technology tools to author some of the lesson content. Encourage them to explore multiple perspectives on a class topic, in addition to their own individual perspectives. For example, students could incorporate other viewpoints, examples, and content different from their own into class content and projects.
• Use technologies such as Skype or web conferencing in the classroom to host diverse educators and speakers who represent a variety of backgrounds.
• Ask your students to provide feedback about the learning technologies they are using. Have them rate the “diversity fitness” of the technology’s features for relevance of examples, software flexibility, etc.
• Encourage students to learn more about software design. Have them create and share designs for their ideal learning technology.

16.6 Diversity, Learning Technologies, and Policymaking

Policymakers are those individuals involved in the formulation of policy. Their decisions can impact access to resources, programs, and people. Policy determines if programs will be designed to equitably benefit a broad diversity of participants. The history of learning technologies and policymaking has mostly focused on providing equitable access to learning technologies, albeit with less focus on teaching efficacy, equitable learning outcome assessments, and accountability. Over the last decade, policy decisions have included programs to better integrate learning technologies with more emphasis on teacher professional development (Huysman and Wulf 2006; Culp, Honey, and Mandinach 2003). These policies should describe a vision and set of values that will inform learning technology decisions and practices. Policymakers should establish a vision that incorporates the growing relationship between the digital technologies, diversity, and educational enterprise. The goal of any policymaking venture is to learn from past policy decisions and funnel those lessons into improved policies and initiatives. This will facilitate implementation and refinement of learning technology programs that achieve more equitable learning outcomes.

Within a dynamic, evolving technology climate an effective policymaker must engage in continual learning both of new technology innovations and inclusive practices. Determining how to leverage student and educator diversity is now a requisite skill for education policymakers. This includes the capacity to recognize a given technology’s potential for mitigating structural, political, and social barriers to equitable learning opportunities. Policy aimed at increasing access to technology is not sufficient to bring about equitable learning. Policies must reach beyond requiring educators to use new technologies in their classrooms. It is essential that the policy also addresses pedagogical training and assessment of teacher efficacy with new technologies. An illustrative example is the case where teachers may feel that iPad use is being forced upon them, with no direction on how to use that technology to support student learning. There must be explicit policy measures for teacher professional development and establishing ongoing collaborations with technology support staff. Additionally, policymakers must include an assessment strategy for determining the appropriateness of a particular learning for intended learning outcomes.

Ongoing teacher professional development is critical to the successful integration of digital resources into the learning enterprise. Professional development should include sessions on learning to operate the learning technology. It is essential that instruction on how to incorporate the technology into lesson planning and lesson delivery activities is part of any professional development efforts. This richness of training equips educators to reap the benefits of technology as they are able to explore how to incorporate the technology into their teaching practice. For example, one policy-supported program gives small technology grants to teachers with ideas for incorporating digital technology into the classroom in ways that support a diversity of student learning styles or cultural references. Some teachers elect to make use of software tools that are freely available online and not mandated by school policy. For example, teachers may choose to supplement a learning technology they are training on with an open source online software tools (e.g., YouTube, wikis, Twitter). This “layering” affords a richness of experimentation and aids teachers in adapting a proscribed learning technology for practical use. A collateral benefit of engaging first with the bridge technology is that educators may design more creative, flexible lesson plans and learning options for their students (Ciampa and Gallagher 2013; Ertmer and Ottenbriet-Lefwich 2010). This coupling of known technologies with new technology tools again offers a richness of experimentation and teacher confidence. The goals of teacher professional development include (1) achieving teacher agency by using new technologies, (2) successfully integrating new technologies with current pedagogy, (3) ensuring use of digital technologies to support real learning outcomes, and (4) incorporating bridge technology with new technologies.

16.7 Technology Designers: The Invisible Policymakers

Most of us envision policymakers as government or administrative officials. Similarly, we envision the same for policy administrators who forward policy focused on digital technologies and learning. I propose expanding this notion of policymaker to a more inclusive model that includes learning technology designers and software developers. They are often the invisible but significant players in policymaking as it relates to inclusive learning technologies and diversity. The cultural and learning assumptions of developers drive their design decisions. As we saw earlier, these decisions are informed by culture, whether personal, discipline-specific, organizational, or along other identities of the particular technology developers (Lee 2003). Informed by their own cultural programming, learning technology designer and developer decisions enact equity policy when they select particular technology designs and program functionality. Functional features and interface metaphors designed into the final product are culturally driven, with the potential to aid or hinder the effective use of learning technologies (Reis and Kay 2007). As discussed earlier in the chapter, culturally relevant and universal design methodologies like those proposed by Pinkard (2000) and the National Center on Universal Design for Learning (2012) provide guidance for designing software that is accommodating to a broad array of learners.

The diversity of the design staff of a software vendor is an important area for policy consideration. Staff ethnicity, gender, and other identity dimensions should be taken into consideration when designing software for a diverse group of learners. Adequate levels of staff diversity and the interactions among that staff often result in software content and underlying learning models that support diverse learners (Gilbert et al. 2007). Digital technologies must be accessible, flexible, and relevant to learners. The technology should support multiple modes of engagement and representation, provide multiple means of action, expression, and engagement, and permit customization of user preferences, both cultural and otherwise.

Supporting a broader diversity of learners will require a move from the prevalent trend in software homogeneity and instead movement toward an increase in software malleability. Through informed contract negotiations where policymakers communicate their expectations for software flexibility and vendor diversity, software vendors will be motivated to design for diversity (Roberson 2006). This level of scrutiny of learning technology vendors should be incorporated into policy to ensure that resultant initiatives and programs are using technologies designed to appropriately support a diverse collection of learners. Below are policy-specific issues to consider when crafting policy for learning technologies and programs for supporting a diversity of learners.

16.8 The Ecology of Diversity and Learning Technologies

I use the label “ecology” to describe the active and evolving relationship between actors and their environments. Learners, educators, policymakers, and technology-mediated learning spaces are components of such a fertile and vibrant learning ecology. This ecology is characterized by interplay between these components. A healthy learning ecology fosters the academic success of all learners, whatever their identity, culture, or background. Educators can create learning spaces that validate users’ cultural and other knowledge by strategically harnessing the flexibility and adaptability of digital technologies to accommodate the diversity of perspectives, talents, and aspirations in our learning environments. We are asking teachers to use these digital tools to mediate learning in positive ways for a broader range of learners than ever before and we must equip them to do that well. Our students hold expectations for how teachers will engage with them and with technology. These learners bring their numerous identities to the learning enterprise. Their backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures are part and parcel of the learning experience, for them and for their peers. Today’s students expect to have access to digital technologies that are collaborative, distributed, and immersive. They want the flexibility to choose their own ways of constructing knowledge. They expect a high degree of interactivity and personalization. They want spaces for experimentation with different ways of knowing and gaining knowledge. They expect to engage both with technology and with diversity. They want access to a diverse array of people, perspectives, and experiences. Educators and policymakers should consider the following as they devise strategies for supporting diverse learning communities:

• What are effective ways to map a technology-informed curriculum design to the diverse identities and talents of our students?
• How might culturally relevant teaching pedagogies be instituted in our classrooms?
• What are important elements to consider when evaluating the appropriateness of the technologies we employ in the learning enterprise?
• What technology affordances permit us to benefit from student diversity?

For all of its apparent flexibility and malleability, technology remains a disruptive innovation. Teaching with technology is more than knowing how to use that technology. The weaving together of technology and pedagogy requires rethinking how we teach. Teaching with technology requires our turning of fresh eyes toward pedagogies that tap student diversity. We must gain fluency in mapping technology affordances to learning objectives. We will have to form partnerships with policymakers to ensure diversity-friendly technology policies are enacted. This is a compelling challenge. Some who find comfort and familiarity with blackboards, lecture halls, and similar tools may be reluctant to venture into this new digital frontier. However, one thing remains certain: transformations within the teaching and learning arenas are already underway. Ubiquitous uses of digital technologies are here. The diversity of identities of our students and colleagues are now clearly visible. Educators and policymakers must use the opportunities digital technology tools provide as part of an overall strategy to meaningfully engage diverse learner populations.

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