This paper will discuss how teaching lecturers about ‘Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching’ (TELT) can improve the inclusivity of their teaching practice. While TELT provides opportunities to reduce inequalities in the university classroom and can be particularly suited for students with caring responsibilities or disability (JISC digital analysis, 2024), it is also known to increase inequality by using inaccessible tools (Fichten et al., 2020) and requiring expensive, high-end devices (Jisc Digital analysis, 2024). Access to suitable devices needed to engage with technology enhanced learning was limited for a third of UK university students in 2024, with numbers rising to almost 50% for students in ethnic minorities (Jisc data analytics, 2024). These issues are not unique to the UK, and internationally there is a lack of felt responsibility of lecturers to make digital learning materials accessible to all students (King et al., 2020). 

We know that developing university lecturers' pedagogy and inclusive technology practice could help overcome issues with lack of inclusive practices in TELT (King et al., 2020). Formally teaching TELT to teachers is still uncommon, and this paper hopes to contribute to the exploration and potential development of this teaching practice internationally by providing insight into the added value of these courses. We also hope it encourages colleagues across Europe to review the opportunities that teachers’ TELT development could provide for more inclusive education.  

At our institution, lecturers with a learning & teaching focused contract are required to enrol on a Postgraduate certificate in Academic Practice (PgCap). As part of this programme, lecturers need to learn about technology as part of the Advance HE Professional Standards Framework. In the course 'Debates in Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching’ we model inclusive TELT practice through innovative and inclusive practices to about 35 lecturers each academic year. For the assessment, the students submit work discussing the value of learning technology in their teaching practice and suggest how a technology could help a specific challenge they have in their teaching, including how they will evaluate its value for student learning and how they ensure it is inclusive and accessible to all students.  

To evaluate to what extent this course contributes to the inclusive teaching practice of the lecturers, we set up a research project with the following research question. How does teaching university lecturers about Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching contribute to more inclusive education? 

For answering this research question, we will use the framework of entangled pedagogy created by Fawns (2022). This framework describes that designing or evaluating either technology or pedagogy without understanding their entanglement and the importance of the social, material, and digital aspects that influence both, will not give a true understanding of their effect and influence in education (Ibid.). Therefore, we will answer our research question by looking at a wide range of concepts that could have influenced the lecturers TELT development towards inclusive education. This includes the TELT adoption curve (Rogers, 2003; Dale et al., 2021). In the TELT course, the participants typically split into two categories, one of avid enthusiasts of TELT, while the other category, generally the majority, find technology intimidating and do not know how to use and teach it and how it could support their teaching practice (Dale et al., 2021). We expect this to be similar in other institutions on the spectrum of formal education throughout Europe. The extent to which lecturers envision themselves as innovative frontrunners in TELT could influence their approach to developing inclusive education.  

A qualitative approach will be taken, using a survey with open prompts related to inclusive TELT use in the participants’ teaching practice. Research participants will be asked to share a written contribution in the survey, reflecting on their engagement with Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching. The following prompts will be provided. Please reflect on: If and how engaging in the TELT course has changed your TELT practice; How you have continued the development of your TELT practice after the course; Your designed TELT solution. If you implemented this, reflect on the evaluation of the TELT solution. If you have not implemented your TELT solution, reflect on what challenges or barriers you encountered; The accessibility and inclusivity of TELT in your teaching practice; The other dimensions of TELT use, e.g. barriers you encountered or GPDR/ copyright; Your ongoing TELT challenges and development needs. Research participants are university lecturers who have been participants in the course ‘Debates in technology enhanced learning and teaching’ the year prior to this research project. The participants must have finished the course 10 months prior to participation in this inquiry, ensuring the course was fresh in their minds, while also having enough time to (have considered) implementing what they learned in practice. All students from the 2023/24 cohort are asked for a contribution, with an expected 10 to 15 lecturers providing said contribution. The survey answers will be thematically analysed. The answers will be coded using NVIVO. Data analysis will focus on the connections between all the elements that shaped the lecturers’ development in TELT and its application towards inclusive education.

Several lecturers were planning on implementing and evaluating their TELT solutions after the course finished. We therefore expect to hear about the (un)successful results of this on student learning, as well as students’ feedback on this. It is expected that at least some lecturers will have received more negative feedback on their TELT practice after making changes, and we will discuss why this might be the case. We will also focus on the extent to which accessibility and inclusive design was important in the lecturers TELT development. It is expected that at least some improvement will have been made but also assumed that some of the lecturers will have encountered issues with ensuring their solution is truly accessible to all. We will discuss how and why this made be the case, and suggestions for overcoming this in the future. Lastly, it is expected that some course participants will not have implemented their designed TELT solutions or done much conscious development in TELT. Reasons for this could be resistance by colleagues or line managers, a high workload and therefore lack of time to re-design part of their teaching materials, or administrative barriers, such as finding out that the technology is not compatible with university devices or issues with copyright or privacy. Lastly, we expect to be able to present on designed TELT solutions that upon reflection, were expected to not actually improve the teaching practice or inclusivity of their course and therefore were not implemented. To conclude, in the presentation, we will discuss the lecturers’ opportunities and challenges that arose after engaging with a course on TELT, and how TELT could (not) make their educational practice more inclusive. We also aim to discuss teachers’ needs for further developing their TELT expertise and how this could be facilitated.

Dale, V., McEwan, M., & Bohan, J. (2021). Early adopters versus the majority: Characteristics and implications for academic development and institutional change. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 9(2), 54-67. Fichten, C., Olenik-Shemesh, D., Asuncion, J., Jorgensen, M., & Colwell, C. (2020). Higher education, information and communication technologies and students with disabilities: An overview of the current situation. Improving accessible digital practices in higher education, 21-44. Jisc data analytics (2024). 2023/24 UK higher education students digital experience insights survey findings. https://repository.jisc.ac.uk/9646/1/DEI-2024-student-he-report.pdf King, L., Burgstahler, S., Fisseler, B., & Kaspi-Tsahor, D. (2020). New perspectives on stakeholders: who needs to step up to the plate and how?. Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education: Challenges and New Practices for Inclusion, 73-97. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed. ed.). New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster.