What Is an Innovation in Learning?

What’s new? Americans have a penchant for the new. Always expecting a better tomorrow, we are not ones to look back. Thomas Paine wrote, and we have forever believed, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” We are innovators.

Seeking innovations in learning, we inhabitants of the Information Age reflexively turn our eyes to technology. Rightly so, given the vast improvements technology has brought to our lives. But an innovation is a different way of doing something that is also a better way of doing something. In education, an innovation is a deviation from the standard practice that achieves greater learning outcomes for students than the standard practice given equal (or lesser) amounts of time and resources. Innovation does not always involve a mechanical, electronic, or digital device. To condense a few historical narratives, we might say that Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, and John Travolta danced to innovative disco lights. Or, more to our point, Alan Turing discovered computing, Steve Jobs invented the iPad, and educators made use of the iPad in blended learning. If proved more effective than the standard practice of teacher-directed, face-to-face instruction, blended learning (with an iPad) would be an innovation in learning. So, any new device is really just an invention, and only the successful use of it—its application—for a specific purpose, in a specific context, makes it an innovation. The innovation may be methodological, technological, or both.