‘Innovation’ – creating or trying something new – is a term that is frequently used in the rapidly changing field of educational technology. For an online educator, innovation might involve trying a new technology or teaching method. It might also involve applying an existing technology or teaching method to a new context.

Innovative online educators who want to enhance their teaching need to navigate some bold claims about online education’s transformative power as a force for good. Innovation in online teaching is often framed within an ‘education is broken’ narrative that has become widespread, especially in the US. Farrow (2015) notes that ‘analyses which emphasize a state of crisis in education are often accompanied by the idea of some sort of salvation through technology’ in the form of disruptive innovation.

The term ‘disruptive innovation’, coined by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in 1995, has its roots in business administration. It has since been appropriated by educational technologists and commentators to represent the replacement of ‘stale’, traditional models of teaching and learning with more effective practices – an ‘educational apocalypse’ that will change teaching and learning forever.

MOOCs – ‘massive open online courses’ that are free to study, accessible to all, and typically attract large numbers of learners – were frequently the object of this type of discussion. Speaking at the 2012 Digital Life, Design conference Udacity’s founder Sebastian Thrun, recalled being ‘blown away’ by the mass engagement with open education made possible by the Khan Academy, suggesting that education could change the world.

A year later, in 2013, Clayton Christensen gave an interview at the Startup Grind global event and made a prediction that seems increasingly unlikely to come true - that by 2028 over half of universities would be bankrupt due to innovations in educational technology – a prospect he said he was excited about.

In 2023, the claim was repeated (with some scepticism) by Baroness Kidron in the UK Parliament:

For more than a decade, Silicon Valley, with its ecosystem of industry-financed NGOs, academics and think tanks, has promised that edtech would transform education, claiming that personalised learning would supercharge children’s achievements and learning data would empower teachers, and even that tech might in some places replace teachers or reach students who might otherwise not be taught (Hansard, 2023).

Many people have challenged the idea that education is ‘broken’, and that disruption is its salvation. Martin Weller voiced three reservations:

i) It’s just lazy – saying something is broken (or dead) avoids having to do any subtle analysis and appeals to a simplistic viewpoint.

ii) It frames technological change as a crisis and not an opportunity… a negative problem to be fixed.

iii) It’s suspicious – those who peddle the “education is broken” line usually have something to gain from its acceptance. Either they are directly selling a solution that will mend it… or they have individual prestige in being seen as someone who can at least see the means of fixing it.

The notion of disruptive innovation as a force for good has proved to be enduring in education. It underpins many of the claims that are made about developments in educational technology. However, the idea also has its detractors, including technology journalist Audrey Watters, who identifies it as a myth. Next, you’ll explore Watters’s views and consider whether online teaching really is education’s saviour.

© The Open University. © The Ed Techie (2012) Education In ‘Not Broken’ Shock, 5 December 2012. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/