When the frequency of certain terms in political and institutional discourse suddenly increases, it serves as a significant alert to identify ready-made ideas and an invitation to deconstruct them.
Digital education is no exception to these « buzzwords, » and we recall, among others, computer-assisted instruction, interactivity, and e-learning from the 1980s. Then, in the 2000s, there was more talk about digitization, and more recently about hybridization. Today, artificial intelligence and virtual reality are in the spotlight.
Two expressions have gained prominence in recent years in the lexicon of education public policies, as well as among all education stakeholders: « digital transition » and « innovation ecosystems, » both often mobilized together. Thus, educational and academic institutions would be engaged in a digital transition largely based on the dynamics of ecosystems, often territorialized and favorable to innovation.
Although this assertion may seem obvious, it deserves to be confronted, on one hand, with scientific literature and, on the other hand, with field realities. It is this perspective that the various partners of the REVE project, supported by the Directorate of Digital Education of the Ministry of National Education, worked on between January 2021 and December 2023. And it is largely based on their work that this article was written.
Digital transition of the school: setting clear objectives
From a conceptual point of view, the use of the term « digital transition » is less straightforward than it seems at first glance. If we stick to a classic definition, transition is a process, more or less continuous, that characterizes the evolution of a system between two stable states.
However, concerning the evolution of educational institutions in connection with digital technology, it seems very difficult today to identify what the stable state to be reached could or should be, nor the timeframe for achieving it, let alone the trajectory to get there. Without this horizon, the nature of the transition changes.
One could hypothesize that the use of the concept of transition reflects more a latent ideology that legitimizes the continuous increase in the use and stakes of digital technology in the fields of education and training, without being able to inscribe it in explicit transformations.
One can also flex the concept of transition to consider it either retrospectively, where the transition allows us to understand the path traveled up to today, or prospectively, where the principle and the project of change serve as the horizon. One can also see it as a wish for resilience, with transition being the permanent process of adaptation to contextual evolutions and their constraints.
The main lesson from this conceptual approach is undoubtedly that it is necessary to construct a horizon or, at a minimum, a purpose for this announced transition. This would notably allow field actors, especially teachers, to give meaning to their practices and to include their pedagogical choices in an overall dynamic.
In educational technology, interdependent actors, between competition and cooperation
The concept of an ecosystem characterizes any stable system consisting of living beings that interact in a specific environment (biotope). It is often used metaphorically to refer to all human organizations acting in the same sector of activity or the same physical environment and sharing infrastructure and services, as is the case for digital education.
This concept is useful for analyzing what is at stake in the digital transition of educational institutions but also for conducting this transition. Mapping the actors of the ecosystem (at its different territorial scales) is important. It allows us to verify if all the necessary skills are well gathered, available, and mobilized.
However, it is in the dynamics of interactions between actors that everything plays out. Collaboration and cooperation among actors, often within the framework of projects in privileged partnerships, are cited as a major contribution to the effective school appropriation of digital techniques. Scientific research, however, shows that these processes, often virtuous (but not always), do not occur spontaneously.
Moreover, in the sphere of educational technology, we find other types of interactions typical of ecosystems such as symbiosis, competition, predation, or parasitism, whose value can sometimes be positive and sometimes negative. Everyone can easily find examples…
Like the transition, the ecosystem can be considered as an operative metaphor for digital education. It reminds us of both the interdependence of the actors involved and the need to organize its components and support its dynamics.
Four conditions to support the dynamics of ecosystems
In the framework of the REVE project, several case studies (field projects), two surveys, and numerous individual and group interviews with all types of actors in digital education (students, teachers, educational system executives, local government officials, entrepreneurs in the EdTech sector…) confirm that the concepts of transitions and ecosystems can be mobilized to describe and analyze the uses of digital techniques at school.
Through the analysis of the expression that field actors propose from their experience and expectations, these studies suggest conditions that could allow digital school ecosystems to foster processes of invention and innovation. Four conditions appear practically systematically and directly respond to the contributions of the analysis of the concepts of transition and ecosystem.
- Massively cited, the first thing that stands out is everyone’s aspiration for more stability in public policies, in order to have the necessary time for building projects and implementing new practices.
- Next comes the thorny issue of information. Many of the teachers encountered, for example, express their lack of knowledge – or even their incomprehension – of the institution’s expectations regarding the use they can or should make of digital techniques. Many ecosystem actors also ignore the existence of others, their roles, and their potential contributions.
- Knowing the ecosystem is not enough; one must also have the skills to activate it, often through projects. Training everyone in project engineering methods and tools is seen by many as a necessity, especially since many field achievements are contingent upon successful responses to competitive project calls.
Finally, the digital transition of schools, inherently based on changes, relies on initiatives from ecosystem actors. This requires a clear definition of each one’s scope of action and respect for these prerogatives, with systemic solidarity in both successes and failures.
Jean-François Cerisier, Professor of Information and Communication Sciences, University of Poitiers.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
