Elements of Educational Technology

After reading The Meanings of Educational Technology, I believe that the three elements I feel are most important are Creating, Facilitating, and Learning.

To start with the Creating element:

In a former life, I taught French at a university for more than ten years. The concept used in the teaching of a foreign language is that of N+1, where N is the learner’s current level of production in the target language, and +1 represents a step just beyond that level. The idea is that if the material is too far above the learner’s understanding of the material, there is nothing to “latch onto,” and no new material will be learned. If the material is too easy, though, there is no reason for the learner to make an effort to learn new material, and they will never advance. This means that each lesson is just a little more difficult than the previous lesson. It also means that each lesson includes material from previous lessons--both to reinforce that material, and to provide a platform for the new material.

This means that teaching a foreign language is a very deliberate path that starts with some basic vocabulary (so the learning has something to stand on), and which moves toward more complicated goals little by little, in well-defined steps, regardless of the language, with a very recognizable objective for each lesson along the way.

When I moved into teaching Computer Science classes in 2001, though, it seemed like most of those ideas were completely abandoned. I was given a syllabus and a textbook, and told to make sure that the students learned the material. Textbooks were divided into chapters, where each chapter presented a specific topic, but I found that there was often no sense of continuity from one chapter to the next. I got the impression that the student was just expected to start over again from scratch as they started each chapter, instead of building on material already learned. There were no clear objectives for the course or for the topics, and the concept of N+1 was completely absent.

I have since redesigned several of the courses I have taught over the years, and taking the experience from teaching languages, I have always tried to start with a set of objectives--both for each course and for each lesson in the course. The objectives serve multiple purposes:

1. They define the goals of the course, based on what the student should know by the end of the course, regardless of the textbook used or the instructor leading the class.
2. They help new/adjunct instructors understand the goal of the course, which should help with the instruction process.
3. They allow the students to see where they are going and to get a sense of what they will learn from the class early in the quarter, as well as along the way.
4. They make the course design much more straightforward, since a good list of objectives will lend themselves to good lessons and instructional content.

Once the objectives for a course are laid out, it is easier to arrange them so that the students can move easily from one topic to the next, with each new lesson building on material covered in a previous less.

For the Facilitating element:

According to The Definition of Educational Technology (2004), “Facilitating includes the design of the environment, the organizing of resources, and the providing of tools.” (p 3) In a traditional class, this typically means making sure that there is a room available, and that the students have the textbook and other materials they need in the classroom. For online classes, it means having a central site available through a browser, and making sure that the students know how to use the site and how to get the course materials.

In practice, though, facilitation is much more complex. The instructor’s role is primarily that of leading the students through the course material, and helping students overcome obstacles to the learning process. In this day and age, students face many obstacles. In any group of students, there will be some who don’t understand how to use the resources required for the class, or who have challenges in getting those materials.The school’s network may be unreliable over a period of time, making it difficult to complete the planned projects and assignments. And there are almost always a certain number of students who have problems outside the classroom that affect their ability to participate in the learning process when they are in school.

Finally, on the topic of Learning:

This is the most challenging part of teaching, I think: getting students to understand that their role is something more than just sitting in class, taking notes, and opening the textbook the night before an exam. I struggle again and again with students who come to class unprepared, and the term “unprepared” includes a wide variety of things. The most obvious is just not looking at the textbook before coming to class to see what the topic is for that day--much less actually looking at the assigned material. Many students believe that they have “learned” something if they have written it down in their notes somewhere, but when they are asked to use that information for a class discussion or project, they spend more time looking through their notes than actually participating in the assignment. There are also a certain number of students (and this percentage is growing) who believe that they can learn new material while doing something completely different, like sending/receiving text messages, or catching up on email and Facebook during a class activity.

Another thing that I learned from teaching a foreign language is that young children learn new skills instinctively--babies don’t need to memorize verb conjugations when learning to speak their native language, for example, and toddlers don’t need a manual to learn how to walk. This kind of learning extends through childhood, where the young learner simply learns by experimenting and making mistakes in most cases.

Adolescents and adults are much more uncomfortable with learning through experimentation, even when that truly is the best way to learn a new skill. When learning a new language, for example, they want to understand what is being said *NOW*, and they want to be able to express themselves easily in that foreign language immediately, just as easily as they do in their native language. Many adult learners are frustrated by the process of learning just because it does take time and effort on their part. It seems much easier to memorize complicated verb conjugations up front than it is to internalize when each verb form should be used based on subject, tense, and situation, even if the end result is not as good. Adults in particular do not like to admit when they have made a mistake, and many adults fail to see the learning opportunities that can come as a result.

I believe that technology can be both a hindrance and a help in the education process. As a hindrance, it can get in the way if the technology is too difficult to access, or if it becomes more important than the information the student is expected to learn. It can be a help, though, because it allows every student 24/7 access to the material, as well as new ways to practice and learn the material.

Kim Weiss

June, 2013