Embracing EdTech advances in Further Education

‘EdTech’ is an increasingly popularised catch-all abbreviation for ‘educational technology’.

Cards on the table, I am by no means the sector expert on EdTech. In fact, most Further Education Colleges (and other education organisations) employ expert staff dedicated to leading on any combination of digital, technology, innovation, and/or transformation functions, particularly post-pandemic.

The same could be said across many sectors. For example, with the emergence of similarly popularised terms: ‘MedTech’ and ‘FinTech’ in healthcare and finance respectively. Amid a new digital technological revolution, there is a universal requirement for sectors, industries, and organisations to innovate and transform to retain currency. With this, comes demand for new digital technological solutions and skills, which are illustrated by advances in technology, and the emergence of popular terms (or even subsectors), such as EdTech.

Without delving too far into the etymology or history of the relationship between education and technology, it’s fair to assume that they are natural and well-established bedfellows – from the invention of the printing press in 1440; through photographs and phonographs in the 19^th century; computers and the internet in the 20^th century; to the rapid progression of smartphones, Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), social media, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) over the past two decades.

Moreover, the Further Education sector is inherently linked to advances in educational technology through its origins in vocational, mechanical, and technical training, which are still present today. For example, through the definition of specific institutions as: University Technical Colleges (UTCs); Institutes of Technology (IoTs); and soon-to-be Technical Excellence Colleges (TECs – whatever they might turn out to be!)

Simply put – and you don’t need me to tell you this – EdTech, or the application of hardware and software technologies to learning and teaching (as well as pastoral, administrative, and leadership processes) is an increasingly influential and inevitable component of Further Education. The UK EdTech sector was worth £6.6bn in 2024, employing 40,000 people. It has tripled in size since 2017 and is expected to reach £9.6bn by 2026 at an annual growth rate of 5.5%. Any educationalist with an email inbox (or more so an active LinkedIn profile) will tell you that there is no shortage of new EdTech solutions out there, and that no-one is more persistent when it comes to inbox sales than EdTech salespeople…

Part-cynic, part-perfectionist (and of course, part-advocate): in my experience, the sheer quantity of EdTech companies and solutions out there makes it a difficult landscape to navigate:

1. I want to invest in the highest quality EdTech, not that which has been marketed most effectively.
2. I want to invest in practical, user-friendly EdTech that learners and staff will actually engage with.
3. I want EdTech solutions to be embedded strategically, solving real problems.
4. I want organisations and leaders to commit to their EdTech investments.

Assuming that such things exist consistently across the sector, EdTech strategies in Further Education Colleges appear to fall varyingly across a quasi-spectrum between:

• ‘Scattergun’ approaches: with multiple micro-investments in new, specific, specialised (even bespoke) EdTech solutions. Generally, some of these will stick and others will be short-lived; some will be embraced by some departments and might not be by others.

And at the other end:

• Leaning into ‘Big Tech’: consistent, strategic, often ‘branded’, sometimes exclusive alignment to the EdTech suites of ‘Big Tech’ companies, such as Google or Microsoft. These provide consistency, familiarity, and opportunities for recognition (e.g. as Google Reference Colleges; or Microsoft Showcase Colleges). On the other hand, they are high-cost and can lack flexibility and dexterity.

The cynic in me asks, “doesn’t Big Tech just swallow up any profitable micro-solutions anyway?” In any case, there are many pros and cons to approaches at each end of this spectrum. In reality, most colleges operate a blend of the two with varying degrees of success. For example, almost all colleges use Microsoft365 in some capacity. In many cases this includes Teams and Sharepoint, and in some cases, Copilot. Only a handful of UK colleges are Microsoft Showcase Colleges. Concurrently, many colleges use Moodle, Canvas, or other platforms to host VLEs. Teams, Moodle, and Canvas are all equipped to host Turnitin (submission and plagiarism detection service), which uses GPT-4, GPT-4o, Gemini, and LLaMA to support its AI detection functionality.

Meanwhile, at the more specialised end of the spectrum:

• Pearson’s HN Global and HN Flex, and Skills and Education Group’s ‘Ready to Go’ Access to HE Diplomas in partnership with Pearl Tech offer ‘off the shelf’ online solutions allowing learners to learn and achieve traditional credit-bearing qualifications entirely online.
• TeacherMatic’s AI functionality allows teachers to create schemes of work and lesson plans in seconds.
• HOW2 provides personalised, on-demand micro-CPD solutions for busy teachers. An example of good practice using HOW2 includes assigning micro-CPD on specific learning or teaching strategies as a quick, constructive, and practical means of feedback from learning walks or observations.
• Kahoot and Menti facilitate immediate, visualised learning interactions and assessment opportunities.
• Prezi and Canva offer intuitive and dynamic design solutions, supported by AI, suited to the aesthetic tendencies of digital natives (e.g. smartphone optimisation).
• Companies such as Immersive Labs and Bodyswaps develop and deliver hardware and software infrastructures to both immerse remote learners in classroom settings, and to immerse all learners in ‘real life’ or ‘world of work’ situations.
• FE Associates’ recent venture FEA-I will expand on their AI Quality Improvement Assistant, designed specifically to enhance quality assurance and improvement processes for Further Education and skills providers.
• Cognassist is an assessment, learning, and personal development platform designed to identify and support hidden learning needs and neurodiversities. I (or one of those experts I mentioned up-top) could write an entirely separate article on the wealth of innovative EdTech solutions specific to additional learning support and accessibility for learners with additional, special educational, and high needs, and/or disabilities.

As a sidenote, I’m excluding Management Information Systems (MIS) from this binary explanation. There are a handful of big players in Further Education MIS (e.g. Advanced, Tribal). These are both specialised and strategic (and essential). To an extent, it goes without saying that effective MIS operations are fundamental to effective management of modern Further Education. Colleges’ levels of investment in MIS are generally significantly higher than that in EdTech solutions for learning and teaching.

Inevitably, there are cost-benefit conundrums here. EdTech is expensive. Even free EdTech takes time to learn and implement, and time is money. Focusing on benefits:

• Efficiency is King. Good EdTech solutions deliver efficiency at sector, organisational, institutional, departmental, and individual levels.
• Day-to-day media consumption is hyper-personalised. Learning and teaching approaches must cater to the way modern brains consume and exchange information.
• Similarly, we exist in an age of immediacy. Apps, smartphone optimisation, and AI chatbots allow learners to access the information they need, the second (or even the second before!) they need it.
• Online streaming, conferencing, and VR platforms allow for blended, flexible, remote, distance, and globalised learning. Broadly (and particularly post-pandemic), Universities, in their often-global contexts, are way ahead of most colleges on this (though not always to the benefit of the student experience). Other than small pockets of good practice, for example colleges delivering training for Engineering apprentices based offshore, one could argue that Further Education Colleges’ local, community contexts, do not lend themselves to the online and blended delivery models that Universities have embraced wholeheartedly post-pandemic. Perhaps the college sector needs a watershed moment for online and blended learning…
• Digital learning resources provide accessible, sustainable alternatives to age-old paradigms of textbook education.
• If there’s no data, it didn’t happen. As digital solutions increase, so too do digital footprints, and opportunities for performance analysis. Developments in AI have allowed for much larger, more detailed, and more accurate data analyses, and we are increasingly dependent upon these as evidence of impact.
• More broadly, Generative AI, Large Language Models, and machine learning present an infinite wealth of opportunity for Further Education, with slightly less existential threat than that posed to research-focused Universities.

On increasingly tight budgets and in the context of real-terms funding decline, it is imperative that we invest in and embrace EdTech solutions that pay their way by delivering on efficiency, capacity, growth, accessibility, and sustainability. Similarly, we must not invest in EdTech which provides solutions to problems that don’t exist or expects people to run before they can walk.

FETech are the “Trusted Learning Technology Marketplace” for the Further Education sector. They work in partnership with most of the companies mentioned prior (and many more), offering expert guidance, consultation, events, and packages to help Further Education providers navigate and identify fit for purpose EdTech solutions. FETech and EducationScape are hosting an imminent Training and Tech Summit, dedicated to learning technology in the Further Education Sector – what better place than here to start your journey embracing advances in Further Education EdTech?!

Similarly, you should keep your eye out for next year’s Bett UK Exhibition and Jisc’s annual Digifest. It’s worth subscribing to both Bett and Jisc all year round for updates on all-things-EdTech in Further Education and beyond.

Using Technology In Teaching

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