Transcript Learners in the 21st Century: are they any different?

Scholarly Approaches to
using Technology in
Teaching and Learning
Linda Price
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Why?
• Why use digital technologies?
• What factors might influence us?
• Why do we need to be scholarly?
• What might we do to build capacity?
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3
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The Press gets it….
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The Politicians get it….
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Are we getting it?
“It is ironic that in the
so-called Information Age
we are still graduating
passive, solitary learners
poorly equipped to cope
with the explosion of information resources
competing for their attention”. (Sept, 2004,p. 49).
Students need to learn, unlearn and relearn as
professionals in the 21st century.
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Learning and
digital
technologies
• Misconceptions
– The extended classroom:
technology use allows replication of teacher-led
classroom-based activities
– Technology determinism:
introducing technology in and of itself will improve
learning
– Knowledge is molecular:
the teacher transmits this knowledge and the students
receive it
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Opinion-based practice or
evidence-informed practice?
Which is scholarly?
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Factor 1:
the influence of
historical models
• Designed for a context
in the 1920’s?
– Limited social interaction
– Limited integration of ICT
• Models of ODL - Separation of teaching and
learning activities
– High quality content-rich materials
– Passive learning activities
– Any technology use was passive, transmissive and
one-way
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Factor 2:
the changing environment
• Preparing tomorrow’s professionals for a digital world
– Its not what you know when you leave university – its
about what you can do in the future
– Teachers are not the ‘gatekeepers’ for information and
expertise in their field
– Learning, unlearning and relearning to find new
knowledge to solve new problems
– Life long learning and professional development
Students need discernment, analysis, evaluation,
and synthesis skills
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Factor 3:
current policies and practices
for technology adoption
• Technology deterministic
– Focusing on technology infrastructure, overlooking
pedagogy?
• Content-driven
– Focusing on content accessibility, content quality?
• Administration facilitation
– Trying to make administration easier?
• Communication facilitation
– Connecting students and teachers
without a clear purpose?
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Factor 4:
learners’ motivation
for using ICT
Course design influences students’ study behaviours
– Web resources and communications are little used when
added to existing course structures
– ICT use needs to be integrated into the overall course
design
– Didactic approaches are less effective than active
approaches to learning
–Assessment is the de facto curriculum
“Good teaching may overcome a poor choice in the use of
technology, but technology will never save poor teaching:
usually it makes it worse.” (Bates, 1995)
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Student Satisfaction and Perceptions of Technology
100.0%
90.0%
80.0%
70.0%
60.0%
50.0%
40.0%
30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
E100
E101
E105
E111
E112
E207
E210
U211
KPI 01: Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of this module.
Q20 I enjoyed learning through: Reading printed text
Q21 I enjoyed learning through: Reading text online
Q22 I enjoyed learning through: Listening to audio material
Q23 I enjoyed learning through: Viewing audio-visual material
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Student Satisfaction and Perceptions of Assessment
100.0%
90.0%
80.0%
70.0%
60.0%
50.0%
40.0%
30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
E100
E101
E105
E111
E112
E207
KPI 01: Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of this module.
Q33 Clear understanding of what was required to complete the assessed work
Q34 the assessment activities supported my learning
E210
U211
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Factor 5:
students’ expectations of
teaching and learning
• Students’ experiences of full-time school education
influences their expectations
• Few will have experienced self-directed or selfmanaged learning
“..students who commence higher education with
didactic/reproductive beliefs can find the process difficult
and even traumatic. They are uncomfortable with the
teaching approaches that do not correspond with their
model of teachers presenting information to be passively
absorbed by students .” (Kember, 2001)
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Factor 6:
professional development
• Are we focusing on developing ICT technical skills –
resulting in ICT being used to supplement existing
practices?
• Are we using transmissive approaches to teaching
leading to reproductive approaches to learning?
Technology may not be the sole problem – it
may be the pedagogical approach
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Scholarship
Ernest Boyer (1990) wrote his seminal
work on Scholarship Reconsidered:
Priorities of the Professoriate.
concerned that….
the function of a ‘scholar’ had become viewed as
conducting and publishing research such that research
came first followed by teaching.
As a result he attempted to ‘define’ or ‘redefine’ scholarship
articulating the full range of activities that professors
(academics) engage in.
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Teaching
Integration
Application
Discovery
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The Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning
He was concerned about the quality
of student education
He argued that universities were being called upon to
educate previously unimagined numbers of students.
‘Professors then have the pressure of publishing and the
pressure of increased student class sizes…
Many did a conspicuously ‘bad’ job of teaching as there was
no penalty.
Is it ethical to enrol students and not
give them a good quality education?
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The Scholarship of Teaching
and Learning
• SoTL movement sprang out of Boyer’s Scholarship (of
Teaching) work around 1999.
• What constitutes SoTL?
– not the same as excellent teaching - ongoing ‘cumulative
intellectual inquiry’ about teaching and learning
– requires a public demonstration - typically investigating
students’ learning experiences.
– applications of results to practice
– self-reflection, and peer review
Brew, 1999; Clegg, 2008; Darling, 2003; Draeger & Price, 2011;
Hutchings & Shulman, 1999; Kanuka, 2011; Kreber & Cranton,
2000; Richlin, 2001; Trigwell & Shale, 2004).
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Do we need cultural change?
Asking a colleague about a problem in his or her research is
an invitation;
Asking about a problem in one’s teaching would probably
seem like an accusation.
Changing the status of the problem in teaching from
remediation to on-going investigation is what the SoTL
movement is all about.
How might we make the problematization of teaching a matter
of regular communal discourse? How might we think of
teaching practice and the evidence of student learning, as
problems to be investigated, analyzed, represented, and
debated? (Bass, 1999)
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Building a strategy, for building
SoTL capacity for using ICT?
Understand our students' context and learning
needs
Understand how our teaching and learning
innovations with ICT affect our students
Building theoretical models
Collecting evidence and USING it to improve our
courses and our students’ learning experiences
Constant reflection,
Constant development
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoneysteiner/5713704415/sizes/o/in/photostream/
The corner stones of SoTL
approaches to using ICT
Organisational change
Quality enhancement
Continuing professional development
Curriculum development
Student development
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Organisational change,
Organisational learning
Must have a holistic institutional approach
–Developing appropriate policies and reward
structures for staff and students
–Developing appropriate infrastructure and
policies to support that infrastructure
–Developing holistic and collaborative
approaches to curriculum development
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Quality
enhancement
• Quality enhancement – not quality
control
• Tying to improve what students
experience – not maintain the
status-quo of the teaching quality
• Embed robust data collection across the institution
• Embed robust quality enhancement that improves the
quality of the student learning experience
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Continuing Professional Development
Framework
Aim
Group
Role
Purpose of CPD
Senior
University
Managers
University
policy and
decision
making on the
use of ICT
To develop fuller
understanding of the effects of
university ICT policies and
strategies on students, staff
and resources
To promote strategic decision
making that embeds the
necessary support structures
and resources to support policy
decisions
Middle
Managers
Faculty/
/department
level policy
making on the
use of ICT in
the overall
curriculum
To understand the implications
of faculty/school/department
level ICT policy and strategies
on students’ learning and its
implications for staff and
resources
To promote strategic decision
making that supports the
coherent application of
faculty/school/department level
policy in course programmes by
providing the appropriate and
student and staff support
structures and resources
Individual
teaching
and
learning
staff
Curriculum
development
(T&L) using
ICT
To develop an understanding
of the pedagogical rationale of
using ICT in their courses and
what the implications of their
choices are on students, staff
and resources.
To promote contextualised
reflective practice and tactical
choices on pedagogically driven
ICT use, aimed directly at
improving the quality of the
student learning experience. 27
Curriculum
development
Holistic approach to curriculum
design
• Built around the aptitudes a student will
require as a professional in the 21st
century
• Conceiving the award as a whole – and what is needed to
develop students as 21st century professionals - NOT about
what courses can be put together to make up a degree
or other award
• Working in teams – NOT slicing courses up into
individual components that different practitioners
‘deliver’.
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoneysteiner/5713704415/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Student
Development
• Find out WHO your students are
• Find out why some might be
dropping out or failing
• Find out what can be changed in either the institutional
approach to teaching and learning – or in the individual
course that can improve the student’s chance of success
• Reflect on your beliefs about teaching
– passing on your knowledge
– or helping the student to develop their knowledge, skills
and abilities to learn, unlearn and relearn.
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The success of
tomorrow’s students
will be built upon the
education we design
today.
Let’s use technology
effectively to build
that future.
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