Invisible Constraints in the Classroom

Constraints expose the workings of technology. Errors and failures are invitations for critical assessment. Even if the technology does not work perfectly, the ways in which it failed, the exposing of invisible constraints, can prove successful.

I have a perverse love of technological constraint. Constraint can give rise to innovation, inspiration, and, in the aesthetic of minimalist computing more generally, elegant solutions. But there are plenty of times where technology has constraints that we can't see. A lot of edtech is like this, from the user side, because the marketing is almost always about automating and making things easier. Edtech marketers constantly hide the constraints of their products from users.

This is a mistake and a missed learning opportunity.

Some problems of digital tools we take for granted in teaching emerge as side effects of usage; others are due to mis-using the tool. Auto-grading and quiz (in)capabilities of modern LMS-es fall into both categories: side effects and encouraging bad test design habits.

These past months have been a stress test for academic technologies. Videoconferencing tools and LMS systems have had to do the maximum, especially for remote or hybrid learning, but across the board as things that might have been done face to face were offloaded to technology. Both in my own teaching and in watching my kids' experience in K-12, there are some common threads of failure.