Smart, Digitally Enhanced Learning Ecosystems: Bottlenecks to Sustainability in Georgia

Eka Jeladze,Kai Pata

doi:10.3390/su10082672

Abstract

This paper stems from the need to identify the sustainability bottlenecks in schools’ digital transformation. We developed the conceptual model of the smart, digitally enhanced learning ecosystem to map transformation processes. We posit that the notion of sustainability is central to conceptualize learning ecosystems’ smartness. The paper presents the mapping results of Georgian public schools’ data using the interviews from 62 schoolteachers, ICT managers, and school principles. The qualitative content analysis revealed that even the schools with comparative digital maturity level could not be considered as smart learning ecosystems that are transforming sustainably. The findings call for the design of technology integration in the school as a dynamic transformation that balances two sustainability intentions—to stabilize the current learning ecosystem with its present needs, while not compromising its pursuit to test out possible future states and development towards them. We suggest schools build on the inclusion of different stakeholders in digital transformation; nourishing their resilience to ruptured situations; widening the development, testing, and uptake of digitally enhanced learning activities; weaving internal networks for sharing new practices; conducting outreach to change the socio-technical landscape; and developing feedback loops from learning, data, and information flows to manage the changes.

Highlights

Technology is considered a powerful driver of educational change and innovation [1,2,3] while bringing new requirements to schools [4]
We introduce the context of our case study where we used the conceptual model of smart, digitally enhanced learning ecosystems for discovering the bottlenecks to sustainability
We identified three categories in the data using the unstructured matrix of the deductive content analysis (Table 3): (a) “Adoptive responsiveness to external environment”, which includes sub-categories of: External environment dictates digitally enhanced learning goals to the schools, event-orientedness, and implicit goals and ideas on a school level; (b) category “limited fitness of human agents’ needs to learning niches” include sub-categories of: Learning niches designed by Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) requirements, and organizing and controlling mode; (c) “nonsufficient flow for the change” includes: One-way vertical communication for change, and different perspectives for success

Summary

Introduction

Technology is considered a powerful driver of educational change and innovation [1,2,3] while bringing new requirements to schools [4]. In the dynamically changing and technology-enriched environment, important questions are how schools operate efficiently within the new requirements, what the bottlenecks that impede digital transformations are, or whether the digital innovations are sustainable there. The Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) of Georgia centrally equips school with computer technology, Internet, digital tools, and teacher training in technologies. Out of 2160 schools and educational resource-centers, 569 are provided with 100 mb/s optical Internet connection, the rest 1591 use radio-technology with 256 kb/s–2 mb/s. Schools have teacher notebooks and projectors for the use in classroom setting to present digital resources. Oftentimes, teachers prepare these resources in the form of PowerPoint presentations

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Discussion

Conclusion