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.
Join our Failure to Disrupt Virtual Book Club this Fall
Join Justin Reich, guest presenters and students from MIT for a ten week book club exploring themes in Failure to Disrupt and implications for remote learning this fall. Every Monday from 3-4pm ET, starting September 21.
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
- Instructor-Guided Learning at Scale: Massive Open Online Courses
- Algorithm-Guided Learning at Scale: Adaptive Tutors and Computer-Assisted Instruction
- Peer-Guided Learning at Scale: Networked Learning Communities
- Testing the Genres of Learning at Scale: Learning GamesII. Dilemmas in Learning at Scale
- The Curse of the Familiar
- The Edtech Matthew Effect
- The Trap of Routine Assessment
- 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.
Join Justin at any upcoming event. Virtual events are open to the public.
What people are saying
In The News
If all the adults in the house lose their job and the only person who can work is in high school and is assigned shifts during the day, it’s not that schools are totally powerless to address that situation,” he said. “But you’re asking schools that are already under tremendous strains to take on responsibilities that are probably better addressed by other forms of social policy.
Resources from the Author
“Amid the intense pressure to get remote learning right, right now, it may seem inconceivable to devote scarce resources this May to imagining handwashing routines in September. But experienced crisis managers in many other settings have learned the hard way that in the midst of emergencies, the future has a way of crashing down more quickly than could be expected.”
"Publish good projects and learning resources. Make them accessible. Disseminate widely. Check in with students. Solicit feedback. Plan for re-entry. Schools that do a few simple things well, listen to stakeholders, and plan for the future will likely be in the best position on the other side of this crisis.”
Virtual Book Club Guests
September 21
Chris Gilliard
Professor of English at Macomb Community College concentrating on privacy, institutional tech policy, digital redlining, and the re-inventions of discriminatory practices through data mining and algorithmic decision-making, especially as these apply to college students.
September 21 & Nov 16
Audrey Waters
Founder of Hack Education and author of The Monsters of Education Technology and (soon!) Teaching Machines.
September 28
George Siemens
Writer, theorist, speaker, and researcher on learning, networks, technology, analytics and visualization, openness, organizational effectiveness, and complexity in digital environments.
September 28
Elizabeth Losh
Gale and Steve Kohlhagen Professor of English and American Studies at William & Mary specializing in Rhetoric; Digital Publishing; Feminism & Technology; Digital Humanities; Electronic Literature.
October 5
Christina and Neil Heffernan
Husband and wife duo Neil and Cristina Heffernan are the co-founders of ASSISTments
October 12
Natalie Rusk and Mitch Resnick
MIT Media Lab Researchers developing creative learning technologies and co-creators of Scratch.
October 19
Scot Osterweil
Creative Director of the Education Arcade. He has designed award-winning games in both academic and commercial environments, focusing on what is authentically playful in challenging academic subjects.
October 19
Constance Steinkuehler
American professor of Informatics at the University of California–Irvine.
October 26
Dan Meyer
Former high school math teacher and Apple Distinguished Educator now Chief Academic at Desmos.
November 9
Courtney Bell
Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) focused on teacher evaluation, the measurement of teaching, and its relationship to student growth and development.
November 16
Candace Thille
Founder of Open Learning Initiative (OLI), former Stanford professor and currently Amazon’s Director of Learning Science.
