The widespread criticisms of the recent LSE and OECD reports are poorly founded and do nothing but undermine the argument for serious edtech

Those of us who complain that edtech gets too little attention in the national press should perhaps have been beware of what we wished for. Two recent studies to have hit the headlines both say that the general impact of technology on learning is negative.

Advocates of technology enhanced learning have tended to brush this research aside. Various online commentators have said that the reports were “flawed”, “confused” and “tosh”, and those who reported them were guilty of “lazy and irrelevant journalism”.

The two reports are:

Communication: Technology, Distraction & Student Performance

• written by Louis Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy
• published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics
• in May 2015
• which I will referred to as “the LSE report”.

Students, Computers and Learning—Making the Connection

• published by the OECD under the direction of Andreas Schleicher
• in September 2015
• which I will refer to as “the OECD report”.

In this post I will:

• review what the reports say and why they said it,
• assess the arguments put forward for dismissing them,
• and suggest some conclusions to take away.

At over 14,000 words, I cannot pretend that this is anything other than a long article—but the length is unavoidable given the nature of the topic. What is more, I believe that the reaction of the edtech community to these reports is sufficiently important to justify the effort of writing it. I thank you in advance for making the effort to read it and hope that by the time you finish, you will also think that it was worthwhile.

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