By Christiane Martinez and Claire Guiot
Introduction
Digital learning environments (DLEs) have significantly transformed the work of educators over the past several decades. While digital technologies have increased flexibility, collaboration, and access to education, they have also changed educators’ responsibilities, intensified workload, and introduced new pedagogical challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated many of these shifts, which made digital learning central to education systems worldwide. As Bates (2015) explains, education is experiencing a period of “fundamental change” due to digital technologies. These changes have altered how educators teach, communicate, assess learning, and engage with students.
Negative Impacts of DLEs on Educators
While digital learning environments have expanded educational possibilities, they have also introduced significant challenges and pressures for educators.
- Educators experience increased workload and “always-on” communication expectations.
Online teaching expands educator workload with discussion boards, emails, learning management software (LMS) messaging, troubleshooting technology, and continuous student support. Dron and Anderson (2014) explain how digital communication creates “many-to-one” interaction pressures that blur boundaries between work and personal life.The Manifesto for Teaching Online (Centre for Research in Digital Education, 2016) argues that online teaching includes a great deal of invisible labour, such as moderation, emotional support, and technological management. As a result, digital learning environments have intensified both the technical and emotional demands placed on educators. - Digital learning environments require continuous professional development.
Educators are now expected to acquire and maintain skills in online facilitation, digital tools, accessibility, learning analytics, and more recently artificial intelligence. UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for Teachers (2024) highlights the rising expectation that teachers understand both the pedagogical and ethical implications of the use of AI technologies in education. Teaching in digital environments has become a process of continuous adaptation and professional learning. - Educators must adopt a critical awareness of technology.
Researchers emphasize that digital technologies are not neutral tools, but platforms that reflect the assumptions and values of those who design them. Veletsianos (2016) argues that digital environments determine participation and influence whose voices are prioritized or marginalized. Selwyn (2021) highlights that educational technologies promote surveillance, commercial interests, and data extraction practices. Educators are therefore increasingly responsible for recognizing issues such as inequitable access and privacy concerns. - Academic integrity and assessment practices have become more challenging.
Educators are now required to monitor authenticity, reconsider traditional evaluations methods, and educate learners on the ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in response to plagiarism and AI-generated work. Selwyn (2022) notes that generative AI challenges conventional understandings of authorship and originality. In the same way, Bozkurt et al. (2023) argue that AI technologies are redefining educational practices and creating uncertainty around assessment and knowledge production. Educators are having to balance the opportunities offered by AI tools with the responsibility of maintaining academic integrity and developing meaningful approaches to assessment, with some educators favouring a regressive return to supervised, hand-written physical examinations.
Positive Impacts of DLEs on Educators
At the same time, digital learning environments have also created new opportunities for flexibility, collaboration, inclusion, and more student-centred approaches to teaching and learning.
- Digital learning environments expand flexibility and professional collaboration.
Despite the challenges, digital learning environments have created important opportunities for flexibility and collaboration among educators. Online or hybrid teaching formats have allowed educators to teach across geographical boundaries and, in some cases, work with multiple institutions simultaneously. Educators can collaborate more easily through professional learning networks and online academic communities. Teaching materials, open educational resources, course content, and instructional strategies can be exchanged and adapted across institutions and countries, which increases the opportunity for innovation in teaching practices. Veletsianos and Holden (2019) note that digital learning has expanded possibilities for flexible and networked forms of education beyond traditional institutional contexts.
- Digital learning environments increase access and inclusion for students.
DLEs have also expanded access to education for many students. Features such as recorded lectures, captions, asynchronous participation, screen readers, and multimodal learning resources can support students with varied learning needs, schedules, and geographic locations. Bates (2015) argues that digital learning can improve access to education for learners who may not thrive in traditional classroom settings. Similarly, during the pandemic, these digital tools helped maintain continuity of learning for millions of learners worldwide. Although inequities in access to technology and digital skills remain, DLEs have created more flexible and inclusive opportunities for participation in education. - Educators have shifted from content deliverers to facilitators of learning.
Digital learning environments have also created opportunities for educators to move away from the pressure of being viewed as all-knowing experts. In more collaborative learning environments, instructors can share the responsibility for knowledge creation with learners, and encourage them to become active co-creators of the learning process. As a result, educators can devote more attention to mentoring, guiding discussion, building trust, and supporting meaningful collaboration. Dron and Anderson (2014) suggest that online learning environments allow educators to facilitate communities of learning where knowledge is developed collectively through interaction and participation. This shift can create more engaging and student-centred educational experiences.
Conclusion
Overall, digital learning environments have shifted the work of educators in both positive and challenging ways. They have transformed educators from content providers into facilitators of learning, expanded expectations around communication and professional development, and required greater critical awareness of the ethical and social implications of education technologies. At the same time, DLEs have created opportunities for flexibility, accessibility, global collaboration, and more inclusive forms of participation that were previously difficult to achieve in traditional educational contexts. Interestingly, both the literature and our own discussions made it easier to identify challenges than benefits, as many conversations surrounding digital learning focus on issues such as workload, surveillance, inequity, and academic integrity. Nevertheless, the positive impacts demonstrate that digital learning environments can also support more collaborative, adaptive, and accessible approaches to learning and teaching. The impact of digital learning on educators is therefore complex and dynamic, involving both significant opportunities and important challenges.
Footnote: AI was used to improve the language in the final draft of this reflection. All ideas are authentically ours.
References
Bates, T. (2015). Chapter 1 Fundamental Change in Education. In Teaching in the digital age. Contact North. https://teachonline.ca/teaching-in-a-digital-age/teaching-in-a-digital-age-second-edition
Bozkurt, A., Xiao, J., Lambert, S. R., Pazurek, A., Crompton, H., Koseoglu, S., Farrow, R., Bond, M., Nerantzi, C., Honeychurch, S., Bali, M., Dron, J., & others. (2023). Speculative futures on ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI): A collective reflection from the educational landscape. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 18(1), 53–130. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636568
Centre for Research in Digital Education. (2016). Manifesto for teaching online. University of Edinburgh Blog
Dron, J., & Anderson, T. (2014). Teaching crowds: Learning and social media. AU Press.
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2–3), 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6
Selwyn, N. (2021). Ed-tech within limits: Anticipating educational technology in times of environmental crisis. E-Learning and Digital Media, 18(6), 496–510. https://doi.org/10.1177/20427530211022951
UNESCO. (2024). AI competency framework for teachers. UNESCO
Veletsianos, G. (2016). Social media in academia: Networked scholars. Routledge.
Veletsianos, G., & Houlden, S. (2019). An analysis of flexible learning and flexibility over the last 40 years of distance education. Distance Education, 40(4), 454–468. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2019.1681893
Vincent-Lancrin, S., Cobo Romaní, C., & Reimers, F. M. (Eds.). (2022). How learning continued during the COVID-19 pandemic: Global lessons from initiatives to support learners and teachers. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/bbeca162-en