FAILURE TO DISRUPT.

BY JUSTIN REICH

RELEASED NOW!

Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education

A leader in educational technology separates truth from hype, explaining what technology can—and can’t—do to transform our classrooms.

Check out our Failure to Disrupt Book Club Podcast

Over the Fall of 2020 Justin Reich, guest presenters and students from MIT hosted a book club exploring themes in Failure to Disrupt and implications for remote learning. Now he has taken those discussions to a his TeachLab Podcast.

About The Book


Proponents of large-scale learning have boldly promised that technology can disrupt traditional approaches to schooling, radically accelerating learning and democratizing education. Much-publicized experiments, often underwritten by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, have been launched at elite universities and in elementary schools in the poorest neighborhoods. Such was the excitement that, in 2012, the New York Times declared the “year of the MOOC.” Less than a decade later, that pronouncement seems premature.

In Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education, Justin Reich delivers a sobering report card on the latest supposedly transformative educational technologies. Reich takes readers on a tour of MOOCs, autograders, computerized “intelligent tutors,” and other educational technologies whose problems and paradoxes have bedeviled educators. Learning technologies—even those that are free to access—often provide the greatest benefit to affluent students and do little to combat growing inequality in education. And institutions and investors often favor programs that scale up quickly, but at the expense of true innovation. It turns out that technology cannot by itself disrupt education or provide shortcuts past the hard road of institutional change.

Technology does have a crucial role to play in the future of education, Reich concludes. We still need new teaching tools, and classroom experimentation should be encouraged. But successful reform efforts will focus on incremental improvements, not the next killer app.

Key Themes in the Book Covered: Genres & Dilemmas of Learning at Scale

  1. Instructor-Guided Learning at Scale: Massive Open Online Courses
  2. Algorithm-Guided Learning at Scale: Adaptive Tutors and Computer-Assisted Instruction
  3. Peer-Guided Learning at Scale: Networked Learning Communities
  4. Testing the Genres of Learning at Scale: Learning GamesII. Dilemmas in Learning at Scale
  5. The Curse of the Familiar
  6. The Edtech Matthew Effect
  7. The Trap of Routine Assessment
  8. The Toxic Power of Data and Experiments

About the Author

JUSTIN REICH

Justin Reich is a learning scientist interested in learning at scale, practice-based teacher education, and the future of learning in a networked world. He is an Assistant Professor in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab.

More about Justin

Join Justin at any upcoming event. Virtual events are open to the public.

What people are saying


In The Media


Watch or listen to recent interviews with Justin Reich…

Listen

June 30, 2021

Reich, a professor at MIT, is the veritable definition of a straight shooter. Both ed-tech evangelists and skeptics (like me) should be interested in his exploration of how and why technology has failed to live up to the promise of fundamentally upending how we teach. I’d describe Reich as someone who believes in the power of technology as a tool of instruction who is also disappointed in how this potential gets treated at the institutional level. As a skeptic, I wound up warmer to the possibilities of ed tech after reading Reich. I think an evangelist would (hopefully) feel somewhat chastened.

June 30, 2021

Reich, a professor at MIT, is the veritable definition of a straight shooter. Both ed-tech evangelists and skeptics (like me) should be interested in his exploration of how and why technology has failed to live up to the promise of fundamentally upending how we teach. I’d describe Reich as someone who believes in the power of technology as a tool of instruction who is also disappointed in how this potential gets treated at the institutional level. As a skeptic, I wound up warmer to the possibilities of ed tech after reading Reich. I think an evangelist would (hopefully) feel somewhat chastened.

April 30, 2021

Alexander, Bryan. (April 30, 2021). How much has technology changed higher education? Future Trends Forum 

April 8, 2021

The pandemic gave the education technology industry the opportunity to FINALLY deliver on the bold promises it has been making for decades. What happened instead was just another failure to disrupt, says MIT’s Justin Reich.

March 11, 2021

For TeachLab’s tenth and final Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Kevin Gannon, professor and director of the Teaching and Learning Center at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa.

March 11, 2021

For TeachLab’s ninth Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Candace Thille, director of Learning Science at Amazon and former researcher and faculty member at Stanford University and at Carnegie Mellon. Together they discuss Chapter 8, The Toxic Power of Data and Experiment.

February 25, 2021

For TeachLab’s eighth Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Courtney Bell

February 25, 2021

From Joshua Kim: Why you should read Justin Reich’s essential new book before planning your school’s next big educational technology-related initiative.

February 1, 2021

For TeachLab’s seventh Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Antero Garcia.

Read

June 30, 2021

Featured in Edutopia May 2021

Written by Marissa King

June 30, 2021

Featured in Inside Higher Ed, June 2021

Written by John Warner

April 30, 2021

Featured in How much has technology changed higher education?

Written by

April 8, 2021

Featured in Have Your Heard Podcast with Jennifer Berkshire

Written by

March 11, 2021

Featured in Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Kevin Gannon

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March 11, 2021

Featured in Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Candace Thille

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March 11, 2021

Featured in Majority Report with Sam Seder

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Resources from the Author


Reich, a professor at MIT, is the veritable definition of a straight shooter. Both ed-tech evangelists and skeptics (like me) should be interested in his exploration of how and why technology has failed to live up to the promise of fundamentally upending how we teach. I’d describe Reich as someone who believes in the power of technology as a tool of instruction who is also disappointed in how this potential gets treated at the institutional level. As a skeptic, I wound up warmer to the possibilities of ed tech after reading Reich. I think an evangelist would (hopefully) feel somewhat chastened.

Reich, a professor at MIT, is the veritable definition of a straight shooter. Both ed-tech evangelists and skeptics (like me) should be interested in his exploration of how and why technology has failed to live up to the promise of fundamentally upending how we teach. I’d describe Reich as someone who believes in the power of technology as a tool of instruction who is also disappointed in how this potential gets treated at the institutional level. As a skeptic, I wound up warmer to the possibilities of ed tech after reading Reich. I think an evangelist would (hopefully) feel somewhat chastened.

Alexander, Bryan. (April 30, 2021). How much has technology changed higher education? Future Trends Forum 

The pandemic gave the education technology industry the opportunity to FINALLY deliver on the bold promises it has been making for decades. What happened instead was just another failure to disrupt, says MIT’s Justin Reich.

For TeachLab’s tenth and final Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Kevin Gannon, professor and director of the Teaching and Learning Center at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa.

For TeachLab’s ninth Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Candace Thille, director of Learning Science at Amazon and former researcher and faculty member at Stanford University and at Carnegie Mellon. Together they discuss Chapter 8, The Toxic Power of Data and Experiment.

For TeachLab’s eighth Failure to Disrupt Book Club we look back at Justin’s live conversation with regular Audrey Watters and special guest Courtney Bell

From Joshua Kim: Why you should read Justin Reich’s essential new book before planning your school’s next big educational technology-related initiative.

Virtual Book Club Guests