[quoting Collis' paper] How should we design the curriculum of faculties involved with educational/instructional technology to include applications of telecommunications for learning and instruction?
We (myself and my esteemed colleague Martyn Wild) find ourselves compelled to add to the discussion. We are at odds with some of the responses that have so far been posted to the ITForum. For example, some responses have described instructional approaches that teach ABOUT technology when there is, in fact, more instructional benefit to be had by teaching those same courses WITH and ALONGSIDE the technology.
At Edith Cowan University, Martyn and I have experimented over the years with courses in instructional technologies and we have found that the best design by far is one that models the technologies about which it aims to teach. For example, when we introduce pre-service teacher education students to instructional technologies, those very technologies are used in the development and delivery of the content. Students are compelled to use the technologies as instructional aids in much the same way as we expect these students to use the technologies in their own classrooms when they graduate. The outcome of this form of teaching is students well versed in the technologies themselves but also well versed,through personal experience, in meaningful applications.
The conditions that characterize this instructional approach (model) are varied and include student ownership of both product and processes (including software and software tools); the extensive use of teacher modeling; provision of tasks that situate student cognition in realistic circumstances; student reflection on task performance; scaffolding devices (such as peer and teacher interventions); and student-based action research.
This model of teaching was recently applied to a telecommunications course delivered to students studying a course in rural education at Edith Cowan University. The aim of the course was to teach students about audiographics: the technology, its applications, instructional opportunities, and instructional design considerations. The course we designed was delivered by audiographics to these students despite the fact they were all on-campus. We just hid ourselves from them and delivered from one campus to another.
The students assembled in a receival room and were supplied with a set of resources for the course. The course consisted of four audiographic lessons over a four week period interspersed with a similar number of independent and collaborative student activities. The audiographics lessons aimed to provide students with the feel for teaching and learning through this medium. Our instructional strategies modeled best practice. Students were provided with videotapes of telematics and audiographics teaching, collections of readings, software and software manuals for the communications software, and manuals for all computers and audioconferencing equipment.
The course required students to complete a range of independent activities to learn the software, to investigate teaching applications, and to design lessons. The course culminated in the students creating and delivering small lesson modules via the audiographics system. By all accounts the course was very successful and we are in the process of gathering data to create a comprehensive report on the project. I still haven't met face-to-face the bulk of the students in this class. This is what audiographics is about. Independent learning at a distance mediated by several technologies.
This course could have been delivered in a traditional mode with students sitting in a classroom listening to descriptions being given by the teacher about the technology and associated teaching strategies. Our project needed none of this, however, since it was an integral part of the whole learning experience.
So in summary, we are suggesting that if and when you need to teach a course in instructional/educational technologies, design your course so that you apply the technologies as aids to your own teaching and learning processes. After all, technology is a tool. If you can't apply the particular technology meaningfully in your own course, perhaps you should reconsider whether you are the best person to do the teaching or whether the technology is worth showing to your students after all.
Oliver, R. (1994) Factors Influencing Beginning Teachers' Uptake of Computers. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 2(1), 71-89.
Oliver, R. (1994) IT courses in teacher education: The need for integration. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 3(2), 135-146.
Wild, M. (1993). Why pre-service information technology programmes often do not make a difference to the teaching practices of education students. Paper presented at Australian Association for Research in Education Conference--Educational Research: Making a Difference, Fremantle, Western Australia, 21-25 November, 1993.
Wild, M. (1994). How to make IT work: a study into the effectiveness of courses in information technology for pre-service education students. In M. Ryan (Ed.), Asian Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education Conference, APITITE '94, 2 (pp. 687-694). Brisbane, Australia: APITITE '94.
Wild, M., & Oliver, R. (1995). Pre-service teacher education in IT: A critical perspective. Paper presented at Liberating the Learner--Sixth IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 23-28 July, 1995.