Scholarly Approaches to using Technology in Teaching and Learning

1. Scholarly Approaches to using Technology in Teaching and Learning Linda Price

2. Why? • Why use digital technologies? • What factors might influence us? • Why do we need to be scholarly? • What might we do to build capacity?

5. The Press gets it….

6. The Politicians get it….

7. Are we getting it? “It is ironic that in theso-called Information Agewe are still graduatingpassive, 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.

8. 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

9. Opinion-based practice or evidence-informed practice? Which is scholarly?

10. Factor 1: the influence of historical models • Designed for a contextin 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

11. 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

12. 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 teacherswithout a clear purpose?

13. 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)

14. Student Satisfaction and Perceptions of Technology

15. Student Satisfaction and Perceptions of Assessment

16. 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 self-managed 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)

17. Factor 6:professional development • Are we focusing on developing ICT technical skills – resulting in ICT being used to supplementexisting 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

18. Ernest Boyer (1990) wrote his seminal work onScholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Scholarship 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.

19. Teaching Discovery Integration Application

20. 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?

21. 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).

22. 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)

23. Building a strategy, for building SoTL capacity for using ICT? Understand our students' context and learning needs Understand how our teaching and learning innovationswith 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 http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoneysteiner/5713704415/sizes/o/in/photostream/

24. The corner stones of SoTL approaches to using ICT Organisational change Quality enhancement Continuing professional development Curriculum development Student development

25. 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

26. 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

27. Continuing Professional Development Framework

28. 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’. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoneysteiner/5713704415/sizes/o/in/photostream/

29. 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.

30. The success of tomorrow’s students will be built upon the education we design today. Let’s use technology effectively to build that future.