The Digital Learning Imperative

The Alliance for Excellent Education recently released an issue brief, “The Digital Learning Imperative: How Technology and Teaching Meet Today’s Education Challenges.” The brief highlights several major issues in education and argues that they can be addressed with innovative, technology-based solutions.

One challenge facing high schools is graduating students who are competitive in a changing global workplace. Too few students are graduating high school, and of those who graduate, many fail to meet college and career readiness benchmarks.  At the same time, more and more jobs require more than a high school diploma. The brief argues that increased digital learning remedies this problem both by providing students greater access to content, as well as hands on experience with emerging technology.

A second challenge facing schools is providing all students access to quality instruction. The brief reports that teachers have, on average, only one to two years of teaching experience, and argues that these teachers are less skilled at personalizing instruction for students, which is critical to keeping them engaged and on track. The Alliance suggests that digital learning is well suited to addressing these shortages. Digital content is more easily customized to a student’s learning style, speed or interest.  It also provides greater access to credit recovery options.

For more information on digital learning, as well specific examples of implementing digital and blended learning, check out the full brief and the Alliance’s recent Digital Learning Day Webinar.

Note: This blog post was originally authored under the auspices of the National High School Center at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The National High School Center’s blog, High School Matters, which ran until March 2013, provided an objective perspective on the latest research, issues, and events that affected high school improvement. The CCRS Center plans to continue relevant work originally developed under the National High School Center grant. National High School Center blog posts that pertain to CCRS Center issues are included on this website as a resource to our stakeholders.