Artificial intelligence (AI), mobile devices in the classroom and digital literacy: school boards, ICT coordinators and teachers struggle with these themes on a weekly basis. The Education Digitalization Monitor of the PO-Raad, VO-raad and Kennisnet gives schools insight into their own digitalization scores and allows them to compare themselves with the national average. Pim de Vente (PO-Raad) and Manel van Kessel (Kennisnet) discuss the relevance of the monitor.
"With little knowledge, wrong images are created." de Vente, project leader Education Digitization Monitor deliberately puts the importance of the monitor in sharp focus. "In the debate, in the news and in conversations between schools, it is often insufficiently clear where digitization in education stands. This makes sense, because the topic is innovating at a rapid pace. With the monitor, we provide the insight that is currently often lacking and provide a good basis for discussion. The ambition is for a large proportion of schools and school boards to complete the monitor by 2025."
That this conversation can take place at different levels is also agreed upon by van Kessel. As a researcher and educational consultant, she is involved in the monitor. "Besides providing knowledge and insights for the national debate, the monitor is also of added value for schools. They immediately see how they stand in relation to the sector. Now schools often have to gather information from various separate internal surveys or base themselves on assumptions. The monitor gives schools the full picture that is often still missing. This is not only about the actual hard data, but also about the attitude schools have towards certain data. For example, are schools positive or negative about the deployment of AI?"
To get this complete picture, it is important that schools within primary, secondary and specialized education complete the monitor. On average, filling out the monitor takes about thirty minutes. And that can take some getting used to, van Kessel knows. "It may seem like filling out the monitor takes a long time, but that's because schools now often fill out multiple questionnaires that all take several minutes apiece. With the monitor, we ask everything at once. That may take a little longer, but after that, you as a school therefore have a clear picture immediately in the longer term." de Vente adds: "We offer the monitor free of charge, by the way. Schools that are not members of the PO-Raad or VO-Raad can also fill in the monitor and compare their own results with those of the entire sector."
The goals of the Education Digitization Monitor go beyond providing insight to schools. It is also an important tool for developing policy. And that in turn benefits the schools. De Vente clarifies; We find it important that the Digitalization Monitor not only gives school boards, but also public partners a better picture. Where does education stand on digitization, for example on current and important themes such as cell phones in the classroom, AI, privacy and digital literacy?
If a large proportion of schools the monitor in 2025, this will provide a clear picture of the total education sector. Besides a fixed set of questions, there is also the possibility to ask very specific questions about how the sector thinks about a particular topic. De Vente clarifies this with an example. "Questions about AI are very relevant and topical now, but that may be very different in the future. Maybe five years from now AI will be standard in all education software packages and it will have become commonplace. Then you won't have to ask that out separately anymore."
In conclusion, de Vente and van Kessel emphasize that the monitor is there above all for the schools and school boards is van Kessel: "In all conversations I have now but also when I worked in education myself, looking at the neighbors was always a hot topic. All administrators are curious how other schools are doing. The Education Digitalization Monitor gives exactly that insight into the sector that they are looking for."
