The Importance of Student Buy-In When Adopting New Tech

I recently had a conversation with a colleague who shared that though they loved a particular technology product, “the students weren’t bought in…they don’t see the value.” This got me thinking about how infrequently we engage students in the process of change when it comes to new technology.

Implementing a technology product in any organization is complicated. There are multiple stakeholders, processes don’t always convert neatly and people usually resist change.

To overcome these challenges, organizations go through varying levels of change management work. This work is focused on preparing people for change by documenting procedures, building coalitions within the organization, and working out the hiccups of the new system during its infancy. Change management makes sure everyone is one the same page and nothing breaks during the transition.

In edtech change management takes on various flavors because many products are soiled into certain divisions or functions. With products that have a larger reach the management of change will depend on various things like which executive sponsor is at the table and the level of community input.

A group of stakeholders that undergo less formal change management during technology adoption is students. From the onset, students rarely have a full seat at the decision-making table. When they are invited, its usually for minor decisions like whether feature X is better than feature Y or to help administrators build a stronger case for why they need a particular product.

To compensate for the lack of student representation, districts pull in teachers, family and others to speak on students’ behalf, but I’m not convinced that this is enough. Not only do today’s students have different expectations of technology (digital natives grew up with Amazon Prime and YouTube) but keeping students afar makes it so that they don’t feel a part of the process and in turn lack of buy-in.

Anyone in the change management world will tell you stakeholder buy-in determines the success in software implementation. I think my colleague understood this fact. Students should be active participants in technology adoption otherwise we run the risk of accumulating tools and resources that students see no value in.