Teaching With Technology So That Students Learn With Understanding

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Teaching With Technology So That StudentsLearn
With Understanding
2003 Mid-South Instructional Technology Conference
Donald P. Buckley, Ph.D. Professor of
Biology Director of Learning Technology, School
of Health Sciences Quinnipiac University Hamden,
CT 06518 Apple Distinguished Educator
Smithsonian Computerworld Laureate
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The Information Age Has Changed the Educational
Landscape

• The meaning of knowing has shifted from being
• able to repeat and remember information
• to being able to find and use it
• Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate
• Bransford et al., 2000

Learning Goals Have Changed
Information Age
Industrial Age
1800s
1900s
2000s
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Student Preparation Standards May Be Lower Now

• Vocabularies of entering college freshman
• 1962 10,000 words
• Today 4,000 words
• The region of our brain most related to language
  has multiple duties
• Communication
• Synthesis
• Long term memory

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Educational Consequences e.g., Scientific
Literacy

• In the early 1990's...
• The United States ranked 13 out of the top 14
  industrial nations of the world
• By the late 1990's...
• The United States ranked halfway among the
  worlds nations

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Emerging Trends
today
A Revolutionary Opportunity Has Emerged
NRC 1995 - National Science Education Standards
Content Standards
1980s
1990s
2000s
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A Revolution in Education!
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What Is Our Greatest Challenge?Institutional
Transition to the Learning Paradigm
Learning Paradigm
Instructional Paradigm
emphasis on Delivery of Content
emphasis on Learning with Understanding
Barr and Tagg, 1995
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Current Practice Is Mismatched with the
Pedagogical Potential of Instructional Technology
Pedagogical Potential of Instructional Technology
Learning Paradigm
Instructional Paradigm
emphasis on Delivery of Content
emphasis on Learning with Understanding
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Bottlenecks to Transition to the Learning
Paradigm

• Problem Most faculty reside in the Instructional
  Paradigm
• Effective transition to the Learning Paradigm
  will require transformational faculty development
• Transformational faculty development must be
  coupled to institutional change processes to be
  effective

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What Should the Highest Priority of IT Be?

• Technology Integration?

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What Should the Highest Priority of IT Be?

• Technology Integration? No, a secondary goal
• Promoting Institutional Transition to Learning
  Paradigm
• How?
• Providing a Repertoire of Learning-Centered Tools
• Transformational Faculty Development
• Coupled to Institutional Change Processes

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Lets Consider

• How People Learn
• Pedagogical Feature Set of Learningware
• Transformational Faculty Development
• Institutional Change Process

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Lets Consider

• How People Learn
• Pedagogical Feature Set of Learningware
• Transformational Faculty Development
• Institutional Change Process

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What we need to learn before doing, we learn
by doing.
Aristotle
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But Where Do We Start?
Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.
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High Priority Educational Goals

• 1. Learning with understanding
• 2. Experiencing investigation

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Learning with Understanding

• Memorizing Facts Is Not Enough

Students Need to Construct Knowledge
Learn with Understanding
Transfer
Application to Later Learning Real World
Problems
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Learning with Understanding(Transfer) Results
FromStudent Construction of Knowledge
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Key Principles about How People Learn

• Learning must be reconstructive
• The path to expertise has cognitive structure
• Students must develop metacognitive skills

Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.
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Key Principles about How People Learn

• Learning must be reconstructive
• The path to expertise has cognitive structure
• Students must develop metacognitive skills

Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.
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Reaching Students Teaching Hamlet

• Jake's Pedagogy Passion for formal literary
  scholarship
• Linguistic flexivity
• Modernism
• In-depth analysis of soliloquies
• Memorization of long passages

• Steves Pedagogy Connecting with student
  emotions, asking
• How would you feel if your father died all of a
  sudden?
• and then your mother immediately remarried?
• and her new husband took over the family
  business?
• and the new guy may have murdered your Dad?
• and your Mom might have helped him to do it?
• How would your feel? How desperate would you be?
• What would you do? Would you be yourself?
• What circumstances might drive someone to
  extremes?

Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.
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Key Principles about How People Learn

• Learning must be reconstructive
• The path to expertise has cognitive structure
• Students must develop metacognitive skills

Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.
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Construction of Knowledge Novice versus Expert
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Constructing of Knowledge Requires Chunking with
Background Knowledge (schema)

• Train to remember digit strings
• From 7 to over 70 within 30 days

• Break big strings into smaller number of elements
  (chunking)
• Each chunked element was remembered with a trick
  races (background knowledge schema)
• 94100 9.41 seconds for 100 yards
• 3591 3 minutes, 59.1 secs for 1 mile

• Then same with letters back to 7 again, but no
  progress thereafter because there was no schema
  to organize letter strings

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Learning for Understanding Involves an Iterative
Construction of Knowledge
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Key Principles about How People Learn

• Learning must be reconstructive
• The path to expertise has cognitive structure
• Students must develop metacognitive skills

Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.
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Learning with Understandingis based onStudent
Construction of Knowledge
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the Barbara Johnson model Teaching so students
Learn with Understanding

• Barbara starts a unit by asking her students
• How does this topic relate to you?
• How do these issues relate to the world?
• Students connect with prior understanding
• Student groups identify and prioritize issues and
  seek themes

Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000.
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the Barbara Johnson model Teaching so students
Learn with Understanding

• Groups create a research agenda together
• In conducting research, they are constructing
  knowledge
• Students are surprised to discover that their
  interests were intermeshed with formal
  disciplines and that so many disciplines had been
  engaged
• In these investigations, students have
• engaged prior knowledge, interest, and emotions
• reconstructed previous knowledge
• constructed new knowledge on previous foundations
• developed critical inquiry skills
• assumed the authority of knowledge-making
• built a community of learners and team mates

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What enables Barbara to use this method?

• PEDAGOGICAL-CONTENT KNOWLEDGE
• FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
• guides individualistic student paths
• from their prior knowledge and interests
• to the her curriculum and their competencies
• Teachers model metacognition in formative
  assessment

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High Priority Educational Goals

• 1. Learning with understanding
• 2. Experiencing investigation

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The Process of Critical Inquiry
consider alternative explanations
jeopardize with evidence
understanding
Hypothesis A Hypothesis B
study
BELIEF
defer judgement
understanding
This is how the brain seems to be wired!
study
BELIEF
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Lets Consider

• How People Learn
• Pedagogical Feature Set of Learningware
• Transformational Faculty Development
• Institutional Change Process

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Technology can be an Enabler
COMMUNICATING
VISUALIZING
SIMULATING
COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS
DATA COLLECTION
ANALYZING
MODELING
BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium
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Pedagogical Feature Set of Instructional
Technology

• Interactivity
• fosters active-learning experiences
• Multimedia
• engages important cognitive processes
• Communication
• promotes social construction of knowledge
• Computing components
• experience with professional tools skills
• simulations to develop critical inquiry
  skills
•  authoring tools for construction of knowledge
• integration of powerful formative assessment
  tools

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Goals of Formative Assessment

• To improve the communication of learning goals
• To foster mindful engagement by promoting
  reflection and metacognition
• To construct learning cycles ...chunking
• To provide timely feedback
• To build incentive systems for competency-based
  learning
• To collect diagnostic clues about individual needs

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Instructional Technology Assessment Tools Vary
with Learning Goals
Open-ended assessment styles Structured
assessment styles
Utility of Competing Assessment Styles
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Examples
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Lets Consider

• How People Learn
• Pedagogical Feature Set of Learningware
• Transformational Faculty Development
• Institutional Change Process

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Current Practice Is Mismatched with the
Pedagogical Potential of Instructional Technology
Pedagogical Potential of Instructional Technology
Learning Paradigm
Instructional Paradigm
emphasis on Delivery of Content
emphasis on Learning with Understanding
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WE NEED TO SOLVE TWO PROBLEMS SIMULTANEOUSLYTran
sform faculty communities learning technology
savvy
Instructional Technology
Learning Paradigm
Instructional Paradigm
emphasis on Delivery of Content
emphasis on Learning with Understanding
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Is Traditional Technology Training Enough?

• Limited training model (e.g., slide show
  authoring)
• because
• faculty dont have the time to commit to deeper
  efforts
• a rising tide floats all boats what if we
  need to fly?
• Problem this training is not transformational
• Doesnt foster transition to learning-centered
  pedagogies
• Faculty wonder why spend the effort?
• Result faculty willingness to participate in
  training limited

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Faculty Development Is Key

• Authoring
• learning centered activities
• is a transformational experience

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Deep Authoring Works

• It was enormously stimulating to most
  participants to create learning environments that
  would enable them to teach things that they could
  not teach well before.

Advanced Educational Computing Project, FIPSE
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Core Training Concepts

• Focus on Pedagogical Innovation
• Keep the Technology Transparent
• Build Collaborations - Faculty Mentors
• On-going Development Cycles with Scalable Tools
• Seek the Eager-Beavers

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Lets Consider

• How People Learn
• Pedagogical Feature Set of Learningware
• Transformational Faculty Development
• Institutional Change Process

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Problem with Authoring As Training Scalability

• Authoring LearningWare is a deep experience
• Faculty do become sophisticated consumers of
  LearningWare and explore learning principles
• Problem very effort intensive
• We need another kind of authoring experience to
  provide transformational faculty curriculum
  development
• Course Management Systems
• Coupling Transformation Scalability?

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Institutional Transition Process
Hartman, NLII 2001
Local RD, Mentoring, CMS
1-on-1 Authoring
Boutique Phase Transformation Scalability Early
Adopters
Systemic Phase Transformation Scalability Career
ists
Lone Rangers Entrepreneurs
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Course Management SystemsThe Enabling
Technology Infrastructure?
Student Experience on the Web
Content
Comm Tools
Assessment
Faculty
Student Portfolios
CMS Database
Registrar
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Some Emergent Goals for Utilizing CMS
TechnologyTechnology-assisted Facilitation of
Learning-centered Teaching Styles
CMS Pedagogical Tools
Teacher-centered
Learner-centered
Lecture Content delivery
Activities Problem-based Project-based Case-based
Content Delivery
Episodic
Pervasive Situate learning in social interactions
Communication
Assessment
Summative
Formative
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A Model for Coupling the Feature Set of Course
Management Systems to Learning Centered Principles
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Constructing Knowledge
Revision of Content Delivery (Lecture)
Complementing lectures with Discovery
Activities
Smart Tutor Web-based Homework for foundational
information
Research Simulation Emulating the Process of
Professional Investigation
Mitigating the Coverage Dilemma
Developing Epistemological Skills
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A model for coupling the feature set of course
management systems to learning centered
principles.
--
Mitigating the Coverage Dilemma
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The Coverage Dilemma
Coverage
Emphasis on Content Delivery
Currently
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Solving The Coverage Dilemma
Learning Paradigm
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Can we use technology to mitigate the Coverage
Dilemma?
Routine Online Assessment
In Class
Traditional Approach
smart tutor homework
Web Assisted
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S U M M A R Y
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S U M M A R Y

• GOAL Institutional Transition to the Learning
  Paradigm
• This will require Transformational Faculty
  Development
• coupled to Institutional Change Processes.

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S U M M A R Y

• Studying Facts Is Necessary,
• But Memorization Is Not Enough

Students Need to Construct Knowledge
Learn with Understanding
Transfer
Application to Later Learning Real World
Problems
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S U M M A R Y

• We must foster pedagogies that are
  learning-centered and inquiry-oriented.
• Interactive, sensory-rich, assessment-rich
  technology learning environments can foster these
  pedagogies.
• especially when coupled with authoring
  experiences that promote the students
  construction of knowledge.
• Communication technology and authoring tools can
  promote cooperative learning experiences and help
  students to build meaning, when coupled with
  pedagogies such as case-based and problem-based
  learning activities.
• Research simulations promote student experience
  in the process of investigation.
• The Coverage Dilemma poses a major obstacle that
  technology can mitigate.
• New course management systems will provide an
  enabling technology. A three-tiered model is
  suggested to make them more learning-centered.

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Teaching With Technology So That Students Learn
With Understanding
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Buckley, D. 2002. EDUCAUSE Review 37(1) 28-38.
(Jan/Feb) http//www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm02/er
m021w.asp
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don.buckley_at_quinnipiac.edu

• http//faculty.quinnipiac.edu/health/biology/buckl
  ey/welcome.html
• http//faculty.quinnipiac.edu/health/biology/buckl
  ey/MSITC_2003.ppt
• http//faculty.quinnipiac.edu/health/biology/buckl
  ey/MSITC_2003.pdf