The challenges (and opportunities) posed by designing virtual classrooms

Considerations and advantages of designing Educational Technology.

Designing a classroom experience that meets the needs of all students presents a slew of challenges, even without the added learning curve of operating in a remote environment. For educators and designers of educational technology, not only are there many of the same considerations of an in-person classroom in the virtual space — such as taking into account diverse learning styles, social dynamics, and appropriate assessment methods — but a new batch of questions arises: how will students with different types of devices participate? What about varying access to wifi connectivity? Or varying home environments?

With more demand than ever for tools that allow us to work, learn, and stay connected remotely, the work of designers has been informed by a continuous stream of new and evolving considerations, and particularly for products that cultivate an environment which will define our future — the classroom.

While designers have long been at work to develop digital learning tools, which classrooms have been moving to implement in recent years, the onset of the pandemic pulled the rug out from under most remaining analog methods. Teachers were left to identify ways to keep their students on track in an entirely new setting, and rapidly acclimate to new tools for doing so. Like in many other fields, suddenly, the need for EdTech designers to respond to their users’ needs became more urgent than before.

So, how can designers assist in developing tools that support the needs of both educators and students? What considerations must be held at the forefront, and what opportunities exist?

Screen time

We know that many kids living today have some of the highest digital fluency of our population, with tapping, swiping, and clicking on screens among the functions of the world that they learn in their most formative years. We also know that many kids today are facing severe challenges due to an over-saturation in the virtual world, and that screen time has been found to have harmful effects on physical and mental health. This means that the bar is incredibly high for designing digital interactions for this audience of digital experts — but also that the amount of time they’re required to spend on devices is a crucial factor to consider, and possibly strive to reduce.

Audiences

When we think about the audiences we’re designing for, we consider their goals that we can support, needs that we can meet, and pain points that we can address. When designing educational technology, that audience includes teachers, students, and parents — all of whom have their own set of unique goals, needs, and pain points.

Additionally, educators from different subjects and grade levels will also have their own set of considerations: the functions that a 3rd-grade art teacher needs to perform will differ from those of a 12th-grade math teacher, or a university literature professor.

Not to mention, the diversity that exists among students in different age groups, from Pre-K to K-12, trade schools to universities, add much more complexity to creating tools that serve and can grow with students throughout their academic careers.

Privacy & Integrity

When it comes to privacy, not only is it essential to keep students’ personal information secure but with digital tools, the unwanted sharing or use of academic content has increased in its ease. When developing educational technology that delivers digital exams, quizzes, and assignments, it’s important to keep academic integrity in sight of the learning experience that’s designed. However, this consideration also adds a vector to the existing conversation pointing toward the relevancy and effectiveness of traditional assessment methods.

While the considerations surrounding security in a virtual learning environment do pose a challenge, they also offer an opportunity for both educators and designers to develop strategies for assessing learning that are better suited to students’ learning needs.

Opportunities

In a blog post written for Kiddom, an e-classroom platform, one educator described how some of the challenges that come with implementing a differentiated assignment approach were significantly reduced when delivering assignments digitally. Since the logistical aspect of handing out individualized assignments to different students (which causes discomfort for some students) is removed in the virtual space, with a tool like Kiddom, this teacher has found leveling the classroom more possible than before.

This is just one example of how lifting the constraints of a physical classroom can benefit students, but I wonder: how else can we take advantage of the constraints that do and do not exist in remote learning environments to produce more meaningful and innovative learning experiences?

Research for this article came from the following sources:

1. Educational App Design: 6 Challenges to overcome, Adam Fard
2. 2. Leveling an Unleveled Classroom: Differentiated Instruction, Sara Giroux
3. What do we really know about kids and screens?, Stephanie Pappas, American Psychological Association
4. Standards, Grades And Tests Are Wildly Outdated, Argues ‘End Of Average’, Anya Kamenetz, NPR