Final Assignment

1. Develop your personal vision of educational practice and/or learning design practice.

For this final assignment for the course EDCI660 (Fall 2007), I first define key terms for this assignment: educational practice, learning design practice, and learning. Based on the definitions, I develop my personal vision on inclusive educational practice with respect to human learning, universal civic responsibility, research, communication, and equity.

I define educational practice as instructional and research activities concerning education. Instructional practice is to design, create, and implement formal and informal learner activities that are helpful for learning. Research activities are to discuss instructional activities in a variety of organized, academic manners to disseminate research findings to enhance effectiveness of educational practice. Educational practice traditionally refers to practice in formal education, but educators can also create informal learning environments where learners are expected to use their own personal styles of learning. As a human being becomes mature, he/she develops his/her own style of learning design, that is, the “process of conceiving and selecting the structure, elements, arrangement, materials, steps, or procedures” of learning activities (Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors, p. 86). Learning is defined as a change in performance or performance potential (Driscoll, 2003).

I talk more about learning because educational practice should respect the nature of human learning and make use of its characteristics for the best learning outcomes. I think that meaningfulness is the construct that is the most important in learning. Meaningfulness is discussed in both learning theories and motivational theories. I find the importance of meaningful learning throughout all learning theories including behaviorism, cognitive-information processing theory, schema theory, situated learning theory, constructivism. Keller’s ARCS model and Malone’s motivation theory cannot be discussed without meaningful learning. I believe, also from my experiences both as an instructor and as a student, learning is facilitated both cognitively/intellectually and attitudinally when there is an element in learning objectives that is meaningful to the learner’s life.

My personal vision of inclusive educational practice stems from my belief that there is universal civic responsibility. It means a global citizenship regardless of what country you live in. I think the ultimate goal of formal education is to help people become good citizens for the society. All teachers probably would not like to help anti-social people learn anti-social activities. However, difficult part of this multifaceted world is that it is not the case that all societies have the same political position. Yet, I personally believe that there is a universal type of global citizenship that would transcend what any particular political or religious position designates. Given this belief, I discuss in the following my personal vision of inclusive educational practice for all students regardless of age, skin color, or native language backgrounds and for all students with or without special needs or disadvantaged backgrounds.

I think that research, communication, and equity are the most important to make inclusive educational practice really happen. Research is important to convey important messages to educational practitioners, educational administrators, and people who have power to influence educational policies and other decisions in education. Teachers should conduct research on their instructional experiences and disseminate their research findings to the world. Communication has to be promoted among all constituencies (school, community, industry, students, etc.) that pertain to any student learning. I personally believe that educational methods such as service-learning and authentic learning should be promoted. Service-learning involves school, community, clients, and students. Students can learn through real-world experiences that are meaningful to their own lives in that their experiences are linked to all other constituencies. Learning is thus situated and students increase academic understandings and civic engagement from social interactions. The last thing I want to emphasize is equity. All students should be treated in a fair manner in that no one would feel they are under-privileged in terms of educational well-being because of their special backgrounds with respect to age, skin color, native language, special needs, etc. In order to address this issue of equity, I believe that evaluation should be researched further in terms of its nature of fairness. I think scale-based evaluation should be abandoned. I don’t think there is any objective method of quantifying student performance and performance potential. Qualitative methods such as portfolio assessment should be reconsidered as a form of evaluation. In order to increase communication and social interactions and make a fairer form of evaluation, what educational technology can do is significant, which I will discuss in the next section.

2. Identify the relationship of educational technology to the broader field of education and to other disciplines as well.

First of all, it is crucial to note that technology is continuously advancing. The impact of the continuously-improving technology could be comparable to the invention of block printing in China (AD 800) and modern printing in Europe (AD 1440). Considering what technology can do as a communication tool in order to enhance educational effectiveness, the mission of the field of educational technology (Ed Tech) is enormous. Ed Tech is the field to keep up with the advances in technology and find the best use of technology for all areas of education and other disciplines. In the following, I discuss aspects of research, communication tools, and limitations of technology.

Researchers and instructors in Ed Tech should carry out research on educational use of technology and contribute to construct the world knowledge of what computer-assisted activities can do to suit various factors of education.

The field of Ed Tech should pursue and promote the best use of the Web as a communication medium in education and in other disciplines. This medium includes e-mal, list-serves, chat rooms, bulletin boards, discussion boards, video conferencing, wikis, blogs, Blackboard, Web-CT, etc. These tools can be a powerful device to connect diversified population including groups of people from different races, cultures, language, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, and with or without special needs. Communication between such different groups of people who are with various backgrounds helps them to understand each other. Constructivist ideas of collaborative learning, situated learning, communities of practice are congruent with the role of communication for mutual understandings among people. Also, coming back to the issue of evaluation discussed above, I think electronic portfolio is a powerful method for evaluation. E-portfolio is considered a type of communication and assessment tool between the teacher and student and this tool will be another communication and assessment tool for the future employer to use to learn about the student.

The field of Ed Tech should also be aware of the limitations of the computer-based communication. There are factors that people cannot do with computers as opposed to real-life fact-to-face interactions. The essential role of such interpersonal communication cannot be diminished because face-to-face communication is a better way to convey affective messages, such as empathy, emotions, caring, etc.

In short, the field of Ed Tech should relate to the broader field of education and other disciplines by contributing to increase knowledge about the use of technology in education. The field of Ed Tech should concern both continuously-advancing technology and its educational use AND universal human nature of human learning and affective aspects of human communication.

3. Relate presentations in this class or others you have taken this semester to this vision.

In the section 1 above, I developed my personal vision on inclusive educational practice with respect to human learning, universal citizenship and also with respect to research, communication, and equity. In the section 2, I discussed Ed Tech’s contribution for the broader field of education with respect to research, communication tools, and limitations of technology. I also pointed out that Ed Tech should concern both continuously-advancing technology and cognitive and affective aspects human learning that are of unchanging nature. In the following, I discuss how these main points of my personal vision are related to the EDCI 660 presentations of this semester.

Continuously-advancing technology and human learning
During the Envision Center tour, I witnessed the most advanced technology including Haptics and Visual Reality Theater. Interestingly, the facilitator was talking a lot about human learning. There are a number of research topics about such advanced technology and its educational use for us. Ed Tech professionals deal with the use of technology to enhance instruction and human learning. Dr. Kim’s case study on hard and soft scaffolding was actually an example of how to use technology to enhance human learning. Her conclusion was that peer- and teacher-scaffolding and technology-enhanced scaffolding have to be considered together in a holistic way.

Inclusiveness and equity
Regarding inclusive educational practice, Dr. Lehman’s presentation on his study “Assessing the Use of Video Conferencing for Linking Teacher Preparation Programs with K-12 Schools” discussed a disadvantaged group of children who were observed in the study. A pre-service college student in the study commented that all children (including a disadvantaged one) were equally capable of learning materials through technology. Dr. Campbell’s presentation on Course Management Systems of Purdue was also about inclusiveness and equity of education. A high rate of attrition has been a common problem for e-Learning in general (Clark & Mayer, 2002). Dr. Campbell’s study dealt with attrition. It is not surprising that many college students feel uncomfortable studying with computers for a variety of reasons. But Ed Tech professionals should find out a solution for this problem. During Dr. Campbell’s presentation, some students pointed out that face-to-face communication, encouragement, and care by students’ academic advisors would be important. This comment touched upon a limitation of technology.

Global citizenship
Dr. Strobel’s presentation, “Interaction Design: Integrating Scaffolding into an Interactive Game for Children” would be congruent with my idea that the overall rationale of Ed Tech should be based on global citizenship. The important assumption behind his study is that educators are interested in teaching children to become good intelligent adults regardless of what country they live in. Dr. Strobel’s project considers 140 countries and involves UNESCO.

Social communication
Dr. Richardson’s presentation on her study, “Peer Feedback in Online Discussions” exemplified the importance of social communication in a learning context with computers. The topic of Dr. Ertmer’s presentation, “Strategies for Facilitating PBL in the Middle School Classroom” was problem-based learning, which also requires learner collaboration, authentic learning, and problem solving. Situated learning with social interactions is important for problem-based learning. Dr. Schaffer’s presentation, “Activity Theory as the Basis for Developing Blended Learning in the Workplace” was also about social interaction. What Activity Theory supports are collaborative learning, problem-solution outcomes, involvement of experts, authenticity in learning, and use of technology with an abundance of resource. All these seemed to be important features of constructivism.

Mission of Ed Tech research
Dr. Watson’s presentation was about systemic change. Systemic change is the entire change in education that involves large educational systems. This systemic change can be discussed at the school district level and also at the ecological level. Systemic change has to occur due to the historical, societal paradigm shifts from Industrial Age to Information Age. I think that his research is a good example of research in Ed Tech where Ed Tech professionals talk about their mission to the world. With the idea of systemic change, some Ed Tech researchers recommend a fundamental change should happen in education instead of piecemeal changes during the historical paradigm shift.


References
Clark, R. C. & Mayer, R. E. (2002). e-learning and the science of instruction.
Hoboken: John Wiley.
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Pcychology of learning for instruction. Boston: Pearson Educatoin.
Houston, J. E. (2001). Thesaurus of ERIC descriptors. Westport, CT, The Oryx Press.

Dr Richardson's Peer Feedback in Online Discussions

This presentation was about peer feedback in online discussions on Web-CT that happened in 2004 at Purdue. There is Ertmer et al. (2007) already published about this study.

It is true that there are a lot of benefits from online discussions for students: Creating interactive online community, scaffolding learning, enhancing feedback, increasing social skills, increasing satisfaction, strengthening persistence in distance programs, strengthening teamwork. Most of these are supported by social constructivist viewpoints. These benefits are possible from student’s active participation (students cannot hide), exposure to diverse perspectives and chances to compare viewpoints. However, there are some “costs” from instructor’s perspective. He/she has to monitor and supervise activities and give corrective feedback. Peer feedback does not “scale” for courses. In short, it implies a lot of work for the teacher, and it is valuable to consider student feedback for teachers’ purposes.

One conclusion from the study is that students’ giving feedback is a good learning process for students rather than receiving feedback from peers. (When receiving feedback, it seems that students do not really care what other people think about them.) This finding supports establishment of validity of peer feedback.

But my comment is that their feedback includes peer evaluations on the scale. I think without the performance scale, students’ reactions to the study might have been different. Peer feedback is not a normal activity in every day life. The evaluation scale (poor, neutral, and good) might have made this peer feedback an even more unusual activity for participants.

As my personal experience of participating “online discussions,” I know they were motivating and scaffolding activities. So, in the future as a teacher, I would like to use peer feedback in my teaching class. I think I learned how to explain benefits of online peer discussions or feedback to others from this presentation. Also, I think it is important to be aware that, as Dr. Richardson said, online discussions may be useful as a “supplement” to other main activities.

Shigetake