Manifesto: XR will not cause lasting improvement in education
Photo by Dan DeAlmeida on Unsplash
I’ve received some questions on my video and transcript posted here: https://heatheredodds.blogspot.com/2022/09/xr-will-not-cause-lasting-improvements.html
So I’ll add some clarifications:
1. There are weak points in my argument:
A. I argue that the learner is the still as-yet undiscovered cause of the flat lining of learning objective results media to media. I have NO data to back that up. That is a supposition by me. I suspect the data will have to come from brain studies.
B. My argument that learners in previous generations were NOT dumb is a bit of low…err…high?…blow. Certainly, there were dumb learners in the past.
However, I do not buy the modernist argument that when technology gets “better”, learning gets better. Nope. No. As I mentioned in the video, humans appear to have a learning speed limit. Said another way, the neural pathways of learning in a human brain are set. (Yup, I’m referring to brain-based learning theory here. You might know it as neuroscience.) Short of something like “Lawnmower Man” or a “Flowers for Algernon” royal technology/drug-induced fuck up, I don’t see humans getting smarter.
2. Let me be clear on my argument about results flat-lining and there being no “lasting improvement”. The “lasting improvement” that I’m mentioning are ONLY learning objectives. So said another way, if there was an exam covering X taught with media Y where students score Z right now….in 10 to 30 years, learners will still score Z even if XR is the media. I’m sticking to apples to apples comparisons. I’m NOT talking about other things like XR affordances, which would introduce apples to kiwi to melon comparisons….which are not comparisons and are not fair.
So I’m not talking about XR doing things like increasing access to resources due to manipulations of time, space, geography, physics, etc. Those things are affordances, the characteristics that belong or sort-of stick to a media form.
The conversation about affordances is fascinating and I’d love to have it! As a designer, knowing the positives and negatives about each media is my specialty! (See my XR platforms writing.) However, I’m also bound as designer to not force any decision about the “best” media upon a client. The clients decides what they will select, what they will pay for, what they will invest in long-term and thus the client accepts both the positive and negative consequences of their decision, their “opportunity cost”. So by default, I almost never like to say this is “the best” when it comes to an XR platform.
3. Timeline = I used smartphones as an example in the video but I’m really brief about it. But it is in somewhat recent memory that smartphones went from a new technology to everyone having one. How long did that take? Hmm… lemme check:
First arguable smartphone: 1992.
2022: as shown in the video there are enough smartphones in the US for every adult to have one. Translation = the US market is saturated. Smartphones are ubiquitous.
1992 to 2022. So that took 30 years.
I’m fine with adding in Moore’s Law here. So the adoption of XR until the point of it being ubiquitous and saturated– how long will that take?
Hmm… I’m guessing but I’m more comfortable saying closer the 10 years from 2022 than 5 years. That puts my guess at 2032.
Now now, you pro-XR folks out there! I heard your cry! 10 years!! Don’t be sad. Remember what is between HERE and THERE: a great big increase, an expansion, a bubble, GROWTH. It will be a good 10 years. (Imagine what the first 10 years was like for smartphone manufacturers Nokia and Apple, whoohoo!)
