Research: Assessment and Evaluation
I am doing some reading for the Assessing Technology class I am going to take this semester. The book is Evaluating Educational Technology: Effective Research Designs for Improving Learning. It is a collection of ‘articles’ on research methods as applied to technology. Over the weekend I read the 3rd chapter: Achieving Local Relevance and Broader Influence. Did you ever read something and just come across so many statements that were true and relevant? Well, this was one of those readings - chock full of unbelievable quotes. The writers worked for something called the Center for Children and Technology. I looked for it on the web, but couldn’t find much. Wonder why… What I want to do is pull some of the things from the chapter that struck me, and then comment on them down the road in a later post. So here goes…
We have learned that when student learning does improve in schools that become technology rich, those gains are not caused solely by the presence of technology or by isolated technology - learner interactions. Rather, such changes are the result of an ecological shift and are grounded in a set of changes in the learning environment that prioritize and focus a district’s or school’s core educational objectives.
...technology enhances the communicative, expressive, analytic, and logistical capabilities of the teaching and learning environment.
Past research has made it clear that technologies by themselves have little scalable or sustained impact on learning in schools.
...to be effective, innovative and robust technological resources must be used to support systematic changes in educational environments. This equates to...administrative procedures, curricula, time and space constraints, school-community relationships, and a range of other logistical and social factors. Our approach to evaluation must respond to, rather than control, these complex aspects of schooling.
...numerous factors influence a school’s ability to use technology effectively for student learning: (1) leadership and vision; (2) expectations for the use of technology in the classroom; (3) school culture and climate; (4) teacher beliefs about students and their potential for learning; (5) professional development; (6) teachers’ prior experience with technology; (7) availability of resources (infrastructure and human).
And my favorite from the whole chapter: A set of beliefs about how learning occurs and about how technology can support learning: learning is understood broadly, as the ability to use one’s mind well in framing and solving open-ended problems in original ways and in coordinating complex activities with others. Collaboration among students is privileged; students help each other to learn, and they share data and knowledge in ways that model the work of real scientists and other communities of learners. Teachers play crucial roles in selecting goals and materials and act as guides and intellectual coaches to students. Teachers make broad subject-matter decisions, but students, who also play a role in determining performance criteria, make more local decisions. Technology’s role in this context is to serve as a catalyst and support for an extended classroom inquiry that is open ended and “messy,” involving guessing, debate, and multiple materials. It is integrated with other tools and media, as students learn using many different resources—including books, libraries, museums, videos, and adult experts—in the school and beyond.
Wow...much food for thought. Comments to follow in future posts.
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