From introduction to mastery: Scaffolding student use of technologies

Why do we need to scaffold technology?

It is often a mistake to think of our students as ‘digital natives’ (Bayne et al. 2020). Firstly, students' everyday digital environment is very different to the educational environment. The platforms that most people interact with regularly ‘just work’. Platforms spend millions of pounds on optimising the user experience and working out what the most intuitive way of interacting with the software might be. Unfortunately, this is not the case with educational technology. There is a great deal of inconsistency between platforms, and some user interfaces are still more reminiscent of Windows 95 than anything from the 21^st century.

Moreover, digital literacy is more than a single skill or set of skills that can be easily boiled down to a convenient term. Being proficient with one type of technology or in one context does not necessarily mean those skills are transferable to another. Assuming that students will be able to adapt to technology because of an innate ‘native’ understanding risks leaving students behind as well as undervaluing our role as educators in digital spaces.

Affordances and situated practice

When we are thinking about how to scaffold the use of technology within our courses, it’s important to consider not only what the software allows you to do (often described as ‘affordances’) but also how and when they will be using it. For example, will they be using it with a constant internet connection or not? These types of questions allow us to consider not only what the key functionality of a technology is but also how students will be using it in practice and the additional scaffolds, such as advice about saving when offline, that we might need to include.  It is important to remember that while we may think about digital education as ‘anytime, anywhere’, in reality, learning is always happening for our students in a particular context, all of which require support (Bayne et al. 2015; Houlden and Veletsianos, 2019).

Fail often and fail early

Scaffolding effectively requires us to give students opportunities to experiment (and potentially fail) in safe, low-consequence environments. No matter how good a system is, there will always be issues. However, by creating effective low-stakes activities that make the learning visible (Hattie, 2012) we can see how students are struggling and help students troubleshoot well before any deadlines. Returning to the idea of situated practice, these activities can also help us identify the elements of our students’ situated practice that we hadn’t considered. Students use myriad modern and legacy devices and even simple tasks like transferring files between devices won’t be the same for all students. Activities that surface these intricacies are vital for both students and teachers so that we can scaffold and support the learning effectively.

Making it ‘academic’

It’s important to remember we are not just asking students to use a particular platform. We are asking them to use it for a purpose. This might be to help them study more effectively or to complete a particular assessment. Both of these types of activities need to be scaffolded. Biesta (2015), for example, discusses how our learners need feedback and instruction on how to be a student. This is true for any type of education, but scaffolding how they work with technology can be beneficial. For example, video lectures are a common technology, but scaffolding good active learning practices like taking notes, and considering prompted questions can all have a large effect on learning (Wong and Lim, 2023; Zhang et al., 2025). Similarly, Lea and Jones (2011) highlight that students may need guidance when drawing on the complex hybrid digital texts that they are asked to engage with.

When working towards a particular assessment, it’s also important to scaffold how the technology should be used for this purpose. This is especially true when introducing new modalities. As Kress (2005) highlights, moving from the text-based practices that students are used to, to more visual media like image and video requires an understanding of which ways of expressing meaning are gained and lost in the transition. Similarly, DePalma and Alexander (2015) highlight how students may struggle to transfer their written academic practice into different contexts, stressing our role as educators in helping them consider the audience for their work. This can help highlight to students the expectations and techniques needed for assessments they are not used to, such as portfolios.

Conclusion

As educators, our responsibility extends beyond selecting appropriate tools; it includes guiding students in how to use those tools meaningfully. When we foreground situated practice, provide low-stakes exploration, and support students in adapting to new modalities, we help them build lasting digital literacies.

References

Bayne, S. et al. (2020) The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Cambridge, Massachusetts London: The MIT Press.

Bayne, S., Knox, J. and Ross, J. (2015) ‘Open education: the need for a critical approach’, Learning, Media and Technology, 40(3), pp. 247–250. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2015.1065272.

Biesta, G. (2015) ‘Freeing Teaching from Learning: Opening Up Existential Possibilities in Educational Relationships’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 34(3), pp. 229–243. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-014-9454-z.

DePalma, M.-J. and Alexander, K.P. (2015) ‘A Bag Full of Snakes: Negotiating the Challenges of Multimodal Composition’, Computers and Composition, 37, pp. 182–200. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2015.06.008.

Hattie, J. (2012) Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. London: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203181522.

Houlden, S. and Veletsianos, G. (2019) ‘A posthumanist critique of flexible online learning and its “anytime anyplace” claims’, British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(3), pp. 1005–1018. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12779.

Kress, G. (2005) ‘Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning’, Computers and Composition, 22(1), pp. 5–22. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2004.12.004.

Lea, M.R. and Jones, S. (2011) ‘Digital literacies in higher education: exploring textual and technological practice’, Studies in Higher Education, 36(4), pp. 377–393. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075071003664021.

Salmon, G. (2022) Five Stage Model, Gilly Salmon. Available at: https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model1.html (Accessed: 17 October 2025).

Wong, S.S.H. and Lim, S.W.H. (2023) ‘Take notes, not photos: Mind-wandering mediates the impact of note-taking strategies on video-recorded lecture learning performance’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 29(1), pp. 124–135. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000375.

Zhang, Y. et al. (2025) ‘Active learning strategies in video learning: A meta-analysis’, Educational Research Review, 48, p. 100708. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2025.100708.