Integrating Student Tablets Into Lectures

Over the spring semester and a week in the summer I completed a professional development course at Fresno State for an initiative known as DISCOVERe.  The purpose of the DISCOVERe program is to support faculty in redesigning their courses to leverage the benefits of tablets, so that students can improve their conceptual knowledge while also developing their technology skill-set.  I will be teaching my tablet-supported General Chemistry class starting next week with over 100 students.  I hope to share some of the things I learn over the course of the semester through blog posts and to gain insight from others.

Before taking the DISCOVERe course I was a little skeptical about students using tablets within a lecture-based approach.  From my research, I know many ways that educational technology benefits students' learning.  However, using tablets in lectures presented me with a mismatch of what is typically a teacher-centered approach and the student-centered approach that using tablets would require.  I realized that DISCOVERe was asking me much more than to simply use tablets.  DISCOVERe was asking me to question my role and my students' role within my classes in order to effectively leverage the benefit of tablets.

In terms of Chemistry Education, there are great and open-source simulations that help explain many microscopic concepts such as the atom, concentration or pH.  Such concepts are difficult for students to grasp given that such phenomena cannot be seen with the naked eye.  Some examples of helpful simulations to support students include PhET simulations, Molecular Workbench, and Chemcollective. Before the DISCOVERe program, I was using these resources in a mostly didactic manner through demonstrations, despite a Predict-Observe-Explain (POE) approach.  Students would make predictions about a phenomenon through iClickers, I would demo the simulation, and then I would call on individual students to offer explanations. 

The prediction part of my POE approach was fine, but the advantage of using tablets this semester is that my students can now simply follow a link to observe and explore the simulations, as opposed to being bored by observing me do a demonstration.  My role can now switch from demonstrating to ensuring all students are able to use the simulation on their own.  Further, through the DISCOVERe program, I had the opportunity to trial Socrative, which allows for students to submit open-ended responses.  I previously had obvious difficulty in getting a response from all students in a large lecture class given time constraints, but through Socrative all students have an opportunity to participate and share their ideas on the simulations.  I will be able to view student responses in real time to get a much broader sense of their understanding than before and know what conceptual challenges to target.

I am looking forward to thinking about other ways to take advantage of tablets in my course throughout the semester.  I can already see from the activities I am developing that there will be better opportunities for student engagement.  I think what might be challenging is if students are ready to see their role as taking more ownership.  Much of this responsibility can reside with individual students, but I can help this process by setting clear expectations of students' role at the beginning of the semester and by consistently using activities that align with such expectations.

Research Brief on Power Relations in Inquiry-Oriented Classrooms

Relating Research to Practice is a website that contains a set of research briefs summarizing recent peer-reviewed educational research. James Forrest from the Exploratorium in San Francisco recently wrote a research brief on an article from my PhD research about power dynamics in inquiry-oriented classrooms.  Relating Research to Practice is a National Science Foundation funded project that is led by the Exploratorium through collaboration with researchers affiliated with the Center for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS) at the Exploratorium, the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center at the University of Washington, King’s College London, and the Afterschool Alliance.  Follow the link below to check out the research brief!

Forrest, J. (2014). Obstacles or opportunities? Identifying power dynamics surrounding inquiry in the classroom: An ISE research brief discussing Donnelly, McGarr, & O’Reilly, “’Just be quiet and listen to exactly what he's saying': Conceptualising power relations in inquiry-oriented classrooms.” Retrieved from http://relatingresearchtopractice.org/article/369

Teacher Engagement in Technology Use

The integration of technology in school classrooms commonly focuses on teachers, as they are ‘naturally’ the first person to consider (Zhao et al. 2002).  Zhao et al. (2002) explicate three features that influence technology integration related to teachers: technology proficiency, pedagogical compatibility, and social awareness. 

Firstly, in terms of technology proficiency, Schibeci et al. (2008) present a four stage framework that explains teacher progression in proficient technology use.  The first stage (Where’s the ON button?) relates to technical aspects of the technology and developing confidence in using it.  The second stage (Black line mastery) encompasses the use of the technology for tasks within current curricula.  The third stage (Routine student use) focuses on frequent use of the technology such that the technology becomes a transparent part of the learning process.  Finally, the fourth stage (What’s in the curriculum?) moves towards looking at the bigger picture of curriculum development and educational change that is prompted from using the technology.  These stages have similar characteristics to phases described by Mandinach and Cline (1994): survival, mastery, impact, and innovation (See Steve Wheeler’s blogpost ‘Shock of the new’ for more detail).  In a study of 12 schools, involving 200 teachers it was found that teachers demonstrated characteristics related to the first and second stages, a decreased number of teachers reached the third stage, and there was no concrete evidence to suggest any teachers had reached the fourth stage (Schibeci et al. 2008).

Secondly, pedagogical compatibility refers to how compatible a technology is with a teacher’s pedagogical beliefs.  Pedagogical compatibility could be encompassed as an intermittent stage between the second stage (Black line mastery) and the third stage (Routine student use).  If the technology does not agree with a teacher’s pedagogy, it is unlikely that the technology would reach routine use in the classroom. 

Thirdly, social awareness relates to a teacher’s ability to negotiate through the different intricacies of the school culture and could be viewed as underpinning the process towards the higher stages of technology proficiency.  Such social awareness can relate to factors impacting technology use such as perceptions of assessment and teacher empowerment (Donnelly et al. 2011), that teachers can feel are beyond their control and do not have time to address within hectic schedules.

The factors above focus on the teacher, but there are of course other factors that teachers can have little control over in relation to technology integration that have been alluded to above.  Zhao et al. (2002) describe two domains outside of the teacher that influence technology integration: the innovation itself and contextual factors.  Factors in terms of innovation relate to its distance from the status quo and how much it depends on other people or resources.  Factors in terms of contextual factors relate to organisational support, current resources in schools, and social support from other staff.

What factors most influence your incorporation of technology in the classroom?  Is it personal factors or external factors?  Is it both?

References

Donnelly, D., McGarr, O. and O'Reilly, J. (2011). A framework for teachers' integration of ICT into their classroom practice. Computers & Education, 57(2), 1469-1483.

Mandinach, E. and Cline, H. (1994). Classroom dynamics: Implementing a technology based learning environment. Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Schibeci, R., MacCallum, J., Cumming-Potvin, W., Durrant, C., Kissane, B. and Miller, E.-J. (2008). Teachers' journeys towards critical use of ICT. Learning, Media and Technology, 33(4), 313-327.

Zhao, Y., Pugh, K., Sheldon, S. and Byers, J. (2002). Conditions for classroom technology innovations. Teachers College Record, 104(3), 482-515.

Image taken from the following link.