Page 42 - EngineerIT AugustSeptember Issue 2026

EDUCATION

When the technology works but

the system fails

A platform can perform exactly as designed and still fail the person using it.
Learning scientist Oliver Dick examines what technical measures miss when
technology is built and evaluated without a clear understanding of the human
being inside the system.

learner spends a year using an educational platform. They can log in, When he later saw the learning
navigate the system and complete the required actions, and the usage science role at Injini, he recognised
a
d
A ta may suggest consistent engagement. Yet the learner has become the culmination of work he had
proficient at using the platform without learning what it was built to teach. The already been doing without having a
technology has functioned, but the intended outcome has not followed. name for it.
It is an example learning scientist Oliver Dick uses to expose a failure that “I’ve been doing learning science for
reaches far beyond education. Organisations often measure what a system the majority of my life,” he told me.
can readily record: logins, completion rates, time spent, tasks processed or “It just hasn’t been codified.”
features used. Those measures can tell us whether people are
interacting with a product. They cannot, on their own, tell us That makes sense once you hear
whether the product has created the change for which it him explain how he thinks. Dick takes
was introduced. things apart. He wants to know how
they work, which parts create value,
The distinction is particularly important as organisations and whether those parts can be
invest in digital platforms, workplace learning systems transferred elsewhere. He is equally
and automated processes. A technically sound solution interested in what can be removed
may still be poorly matched to the people, environment or without losing the outcome because,
problem around which it has been built. as he puts it, “removal of process is,
in essence, innovation”.
When that happens, it is easy to blame
adoption, resistance or user error. He does not begin with a model
Learning science asks us to pause and work out how to make people
earlier: what conditions did the fit it. He begins with the person,
system assume, and were those the problem and the conditions
conditions ever present? surrounding both.

A name for the questions he “Seek first to understand, then to
had always asked be understood. Learning science,
Dick did not arrive in learning in principle, codifies the steps in
science through a neat academic between.”
pathway. His working life has
moved through technical repairs, In practice, that means defining
early childhood development, what success actually is, examining
teacher training, marketing, how people are currently trying
educational technology and to reach it and identifying the
product development. He entered conditions required to make it
early childhood development possible. It is a disciplined way of
partly because he wanted to understanding what is happening
understand children and become before deciding what should
Oliver Dick a good father. happen next.

42 | EngineerIT August/September 2026