Name: H. Willis Means and Mary S. Love
Type of Session: Presentation
Preferred Track: Track 2
Abstract: Preservice elementary education teachers enrolled in an educational technology course participated in a semester-long collaboration with technology. The course provided them with the opportunity to apply previously learned theory, assess, design, develop, and implement solutions to educational problems. The course culminates in the student identification of an educational problem: the design and development of a piece of hypermedia software to enable a learner to work with the technology to arrive at a potential solution.
Description: There are three basic ways technology may be used in a classroom: (1) as an instructional resource, (2) as a learning tool, and (3) as a storage device (Perkins, 1992). The proposed presentation will report on a semester-long collaboration with technology designed to provide preservice elementary teachers with the opportunity to apply the educational theory presented in other courses to design, develop, and implement a piece of instructional technology that enables them to see how each interacts with others. The course culminates in the identification of an educational problem: the design and development of a piece of hypermedia software that enables the learner to work with the technology to arrive at a solution.
The philosophical foundation for the course is constructivism. Constructivists believe learners to be active seekers and constructors of knowledge and they come to the classroom with innate curiosity and goals (Brooks & Brooks, 1993; Fosnot, 1989). A course having constructivism as its philosophical base is a problem-solving course featuring the use of authentic tasks, complex real-life problems, and the integration of knowledge and skills from a variety of resources in the search for the problem's solution. Schön (1987) suggests one way to accomplish this is first to introduce the student to "...classroom theory, then a practicum in its application (Schön, 1987, p. 158). Students learning to use instructional technology "must practice in order to learn to design" (Schön, 1987, p. 158) and any "designlike practice is learnable but not teachable by classroom methods. And when students are helped to learn to design, the interventions most useful to them are more like coaching than teaching-as in a reflective practicum" (Schön, 1987, p. 157).
The reflective practicum is best described as a studio session where students "design" developmentally appropriate instruction using various types of instructional technology under the direction of an instructional design professional. Students experiment with various solutions to a variety of instructional problems. Each proposed solution is critiqued either formally in critique sessions or informally during conversations with the instructor during the reflective practicum.
After practicing on a series of assigned educational problems students identify a "real" educational problem. Working in teams they design, implement, and test a hypermediated learning environment that permits a learner to work in collaboration with technology to define, explore, refine, and synthesize information relevant to the educational problem.
The course is now being taught for the first time. Student interest and product quality appears higher than in previous semesters. A student survey will be administered at the end of the course to assess student reaction. Samples of student projects from this semester as well as prior semesters will be presented to three judges who have or are teaching comparable courses at other universities. They will be asked to judge each of the projects on design, implementation, esthetics, and instructional effectiveness. The results will be included in the conference presentation.
Length: 30 minutes
Audience: College Faculty
Audience Level: All
On-Site Equipment Requirements: Windows-Based Computer, projections system, PowerPoint
Contact Information: H. Willis Means Department of Elementary/Special Education Middle Tennessee State University P.O. Box 69 Murfreesboro, Tennessee 3713 Phone: 615-904-8075 E-Mail hmeans@mtsu.edu FAX: 615-898-5309
Mary S. Love Department of Elementary/Special Education Middle Tennessee State University P.O. Box 69 Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37132 Phone: 615-904-8075 E-Mail msl2a@mtsu.edu FAX: 615-898-5309
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