Supporting science teachers to select quality edtech learning solutions for their context

Abstract

There has been a surge in the development and use of education technology (edtech) learning solutions in the past decade. Amidst the pandemic, teachers were compelled to incorporate edtech into their instructional approaches. While there are several frameworks, standards, or guidelines available for implementing these edtech solutions, few address the problem of selecting good quality edtech solutions. The ones that address the problem of quality edtech solutions fail to cover all criteria that are needed for effective edtech solutions. In addition, they are not easily usable by the teachers for the selection of an edtech solution. For an edtech solution to be effective it is crucial that it aligns with the context of the learner such as their grade range, their subject of interest, language comprehensibility, etc. Also we found that there are no standards that are available specifically for science teachers in the Indian context. In this paper, we present a validated, reliable, and research-based, Edtech Tulna Index designed to support science teachers in India to select quality edtech learning solutions for their classrooms. We conducted a study to understand the challenges that teachers face and to test the usability of the tulna index and its usefulness to mitigate teachers’ challenges pertaining to the selection of edtech. We found that teachers found the tulna index easy to use. This paper contributes to the research of evaluation of edtech solutions by listing the criteria required for science teachers to select the edtech product, while it also provides the practice community with a usable tool that can be used to select effective learning solutions and potentially enhance their teaching- learning.