For Alfred North Whitehead the art of life is “to
live, to live well and to live even better” (The Function of Reason,
1929). For educators the art of teaching is to teach and to teach well
and to teach even better. This motive is the driving engine to pedagogic
research and experimentation and for development and reform. Pedagogy and
the “technology” employed by educators have changed over time as much as
the basic techniques and delivery mechanisms in many other fields have
changed But, we are now at a point in education where we have a unique
set of technologies that is driving pedagogic development as much as being
employed by it. PowerPoint, the internet and course management programs
are causing some fundamental reflections on what educators do and how best
to do it more than any curriculum based or pedagogically based initiatives
whether it may be writing in the disciplines and across the curricula or
collaborative learning or problem solving approaches that are intended to
impact pedagogy in essential ways to increase the efficacy of
instruction. The educational technologies are often offered as an aside
to the efforts of pedagogic development, but lo and behold, those tools
are now impacting the tool wielder in ways unimagined by the creators of
those tools. Who knew? The teaching tools are changing how we teach. We
may have reached a point where along side of looking for a tool to do what
we do better, we have tools that make us think about and then do what we do
better.
There are several recently emerged and ongoing
threads in the discourse of the community of educators concerning the
value of using educational technology-the newest toys of teachers from K
to 12 and then on into higher ed settings. There are serious
conversations over where financial resources are to be directed and often
it appears to be that funding must go either to the toys or to more
serious pedagogical development and basic teacher training. Another
thread in the myriad of conversations has to do with concerns over the
potential loss of what has been valuable in non-electronic modes of
instruction in light of what appears as the continuing advance of an
irresistible wave of adoptions of technologies as soon as they become
available. But it just may well be that there are false dichotomies and
exaggerated concerns at play in the discourse. This may be so because, if
and whenever the adopters of the technologies stay focused on the
pedagogy, it is more often, and almost always, the case that technologies
both permit and encourage more effective instruction and little or no loss
in what was most valued in the more traditional mode of instruction.
Educators have probably used tools along with
techniques from the very first attempt to teach something. From gesturing
hands, to sticks scratching in the dirt, to rocks scratching on cave
walls, to boards and chalk, and then to better boards and better chalk, to
even more boards and even better chalk-dustless-who would have imagined!
Then comes along grease pens and whiteboards and still more boards and
pens and of course, Xerographs and dittos and photocopies and the print
shop! Communication technology is constantly evolving and teaching
institutions are making it available to faculty. This will continue, as
we will not be asking to regress any time soon. Already there are many
faculty members who could not conceive of doing what they do with their
learners without the use of certain technologies that they have very
quickly come to take for granted whether that be chalk or website
presentations.
What is significantly different now is that with
electricity there came slides and projectors and then overhead projectors
and PowerPoint ! PowerPoint, the transitional phase, the transforming
device. But why? Well, for PowerPoint there must be a computer and with
that computer there comes the realization that it is not the computer at
all but the internet that is important. Duh! From 2000 to 2002 I would
survey my students to determine how many had computers at home connected
to the internet. In the last semester that I did this now unneeded survey
a show of hands in one class indicated that the majority totaling more
than 90 % did have such. I inquired of one student who entered the room
after the show of hands survey and he indicated that he had a computer at
home. I then asked if it was connected to the internet. He immediately
gave me a look and uttered quite forcefully, “Duh!” I was thus
enlightened that the personal computer was, for most of the world who do
use it, not of much value, perhaps none at all, if it was not connected to
the world-wide wealth available through it. PowerPoint is the
transitional technology. It is the device-the mechanism-that opens the
door to the vast array of possibilities for reorganizing what educators do
when they are teaching. It is not PowerPoint itself that is the turning
point but the wealth of information through PowerPoint’s connection with
the computer connected to the internet. PowerPoint leads the instructor
to realize how much information can be made available to the learners
through the devices. The formula? PowerPoint +computer +
internet=websites + discussion boards + possibilities for considering a
variety of learning styles and differences in skills and backgrounds.
PowerPoint has been with us now for a
decade and employed in many different settings. It has been noticed.
Thee has already arisen numerous critiques of PowerPoint usage and
discussion of the cognitive style induced by PowerPoint presentations.
It bears repeating that it not PowerPoint itself that is being commended
here but what it signifies and that is a link to a vastly more powerful
array of technologies and greater amount of information than any
technology has placed at the use of an educator. This is so because
PowerPoint requires a computer and computers are connected to the internet
if they are worth having around. It is to be noted the dangers or
drawbacks of using Powerpoint are not insubstantial and educators need to
be mindful of them so not to takes steps backward when intending to do
otherwise in so far as improving the efficacy of instruction.
So it is not the cell phone but the network, not the
tool but the information accessed by means of the tool and what is done
with it: our interacting with the information and reorganizing it and
transmitting it thus transformed by our purposes and needs and values. It
is the work we do with the tool that is that which is valued. The tool is
and must be that which has only an instrumental value. Otherwise we lose
much of the impetus for research and development for even better tools.
In the case at hand the work is teaching and learning and those activities
are the criteria by which we assess the tools, their worth and the need
for even better tools. It is about the potential of the tools and then
rapid realization of the potential.
But just what good is it, all this technology? Here
are a few examples in terms of problems faced by instructors and examples
of the added value of an information transmission device.
Varying Backgrounds and Skills
What to do when students have varying amounts of
background information that is either necessary for or enhancements for
the basic instruction? Take time to provide the necessary for those who
do not have it and bore the others? Allow for the enhancements for those
with the background knowledge and let it go for the others? Class time is
precious and carefully husbanded. When the educational technologies make
transmission of information easier that in turn allows educators to
provide more for those who need it. The usual problem that instructors
face with learners of varying backgrounds and rates of learning is more
readily dealt with by careful use of the technologies. Instead of
“teaching to the middle” and hoping that those who are slower will
somehow get what they need and assuming that the quicker, brighter
learners, most definitely will do so, an instructor devising a clever
instructional design can provide access for learners of varying
backgrounds and learning styles to what they need in terms of learning
experiences to assist them in achieving the common learning objectives for
the entire class. This is so because through the computer and websites
and PowerPoint presentations connected thereto instructors can provide for
so much information, drills and exercises with immediate feedback that are
very effective in learning. The electronic machines are infinitely
patient with the learner in presenting information and permitting and even
encouraging the learner to review it over and over again. The computer
can provide a variety of modes for the instructor to interact with the
learners either individually or in groups while working simultaneously
with the entire class. As unfortunate to observe but true nonetheless,
some learners need to be enticed, attention held and entertained. The
“bells and whistles” of a PowerPoint presentation along with the many
animations and special effects possible on websites and multimedia
presentations can secure the interest of learners acculturated through the
electronic media to fanciful animated shows.
Lack of Common References and Cultural Background
With an effective instructional design educators can
reduce assumptions about the “givens”, those elements of knowledge that
were to be presumed for the current instruction to proceed most
effectively with the subject matter at hand. Now the educator can provide
for the essential components of the prerequisite knowledge set using the
technologies.
Socrates’ “givens” were the epic poems and the plays
and the materials that served as the basis for the culture of his time.
They were for the most part transmitted orally. Socrates could assume his
audience/learners had the knowledge of those tales by which Greeks were
educated, their paedia. Socrates could not read nor write and yet he was
most well educated through the oral exchanges becoming a full participant
in the life of his people. His contribution was not in transmitting
information. His reputation as Philosopher and as Teacher was through his
efforts to develop the thinking skills of others, hoping thereby to
achieve the object of his quest: knowledge of the essential components of
a life that would be described as being in as many ways as possible a
“good” life. In the Meno Plato indicates a Socrates using a
stick to trace geometric figures in the dirt at the feet of the
interlocutors. He does so to engage the mind in reflective thinking and
to develop that thinking. Of course as midwife to ideas Socrates was
attempting to deliver more critical thinking out of the minds of his
audience, not transmitting but leading out of the learner a capacity, a
potential: educating. In his pedagogy he made many references to elements
in the common cultural heritage in the oral tradition. He could take as a
“given” that his “students” had considerable working knowledge of those
elements. Plato depicts Socrates spending no time in rehearsing those
tales that were the transmitters of knowledge and values now used as
instruments to provoke reflective thought. The dialogues contain no
summaries of or footnotes for the “literature” of the day.
Today educators can not assume much at all as common
to the knowledge base of learners in advanced technological societies.
This is particularly the case with classes formed of a diversified group
of learners. They often vary in their background knowledge, their
cultures, their religions, their sources of information and their level of
intellectual development. This is more often the case in any urban
setting and in any college or university with admissions processes
striving for diversity as either an aesthetic value or some pedagogic
enhancement. The resulting situation is that the instructor can take as
little as possible as a “given” and instead must present that which is
needed as background and previously- in a time long gone-taken for granted
as known by the students. Here is where the educational technologies have
great value. As information technology technologies they make available
to the educator a vast amount of information that can be presented in and
out of the classroom to the learners. The student can access what the
instructor deems as important and even necessary in the classroom and out
of it through the computer at any location with access to the world’s
information cornucopia: the internet.
Having the information-educational technologies
provide what was formerly taken as a “given” as well as other needed
information to the learners then permits, facilitates and encourages the
educator to focus on the learning, the development of the thinking, the
heart of the enterprise. The focus of teaching and of education is not the
transmission of information it is rather the development of the wide range
of thinking skills with which information is organized and evaluated and
applied effectively to situations and then on to producing more
information, some of which is accepted as knowledge. Education often
involves the transmission of information but it is at its core more than
that. The transmission of information is made so easy by the technologies
that education can focus on what is done with that information: how it is
assimilated, analyzed, criticized, arranged, tested, used, etc.. The
instructor who once thought of the role of instructor as information
transmitter who would assess learning by measuring what information was
retained will possibly think of the technologies as threatening as they
can easily be employed by institutions to transmit information and assess
quantities retained. An instructor who focuses on the learning of what is
important about the subject matter is not threatened by the technology but
can use it to perform the often tedious transmissions that are
propaedeutic to learning.
This providing of the former “givens” is not only the
case with the arts and literature but it applies as well to mathematics
and the sciences. The technologies can rapidly present and make available
for subsequent reviewing truly unimaginable amounts of information and
even drills and exercises for original appropriation by learners or review
or for focusing the learner as preparation for the new learning that is
being encouraged through the execution of the educator’s lessons now set
within a more comprehensive instructional design.
So it is about the pedagogy. The technology can
shift the focus of educators from the instructor presenting to the student
learning: from the instructor centered approach to the learner centered
approach. After the class has been designed and constructed, it is
taught. It is then that the instructor becomes a leader, coach, and
assistant to the learner in developing the skills of information
acquisition and arrangement and evaluation and application. With the
technologies the educator can have more direct contact and supportive
interaction with the learners.
So with the technologies available we now have the
traditional face to face, lecture and blackboard modality of instruction
along with web-assisted and the blended or hybrid mode and the fully
online asynchronous mode. Soon faculty will conduct classes without
using any of the electronic technologies about as often as they go an
entire semester without distributing duplicated documents.
Preserving the value in the past practices
In the use of the new technology care must be taken
so as not to lose what was valuable in the previous modes of instruction
and interaction of educator with the learner. For example there was a
value in learners taking notes while the instructor was presenting
information. The learner would make appraisals of what was most important
to note. This was an important part of the learning process and it should
not be thwarted or lost when the new technologies are employed in
instruction. The instructor using the technologies to present information
will be challenged to develop techniques to denote what the instructor
thinks of as most important in what is being presented and for the learner
to recognize that denotation and make similar appraisals while
assimilating the information even while using even more technology for
simple capturing or recording. From pencils and pens and paper and
notebooks and pads to hand held computers and information storage devices
the learner progresses with mechanisms for retaining information but none
of that is learning. How the information is taken down and in and stored
must involve the learner making appraisals and seeing connections and
relations. The educator is duty bound to insure that those necessary
steps in appropriation of information as part of genuine learning take
place. As it has always been this is one of the basic challenges for any
teacher whether working with chalk on boards or PowerPoint on websites.
"It’s about the pedagogy."
William Jefferson Clinton was kept on point by his
political handlers in his successful attempts to capture and hold the
presidency with the now familiar phrase- become refrain, "It's the
economy, stupid!" Well for those looking to achieve some goal or to
capture some prize in their use of educational technologies or through
their participation in various initiatives involving educational
technologies perhaps a similar phrase might serve well to keep folks
focused, "It’s about the pedagogy."
At a time when money is scarce at all levels of
education there may appear to be a choice as to whether or not to direct
funding on either educational technologies and on course management
systems or on a concerted faculty development effort to improve teaching
and learning. This dichotomy I believe is quite specious because of the
qualitatively different nature of the current educational technologies now
available to and being used by educators in more and more innovative
ways.
I have taught over three dozen classes that are fully
online (asynchronous) in which I never meet face to face with any learners
and over two dozen partially online classes (hybrid or blended) where I meet
for an hour or so every week or so. I have used three course management
programs and created my own academic websites in support of my
instruction. So what! From this experience I have learned a few things
about what is important here and it is not the bells and whistles of the
technologies. The increasing variety of instructional modalities is
not the real important matter. What have me occupied nearly every single
day are not matters that are technical or mechanical but are pedagogical.
What my colleagues ask me for assistance with are not matters that are
technical or mechanical but are pedagogical. These are the heart of the
matter: what are our learners learning and how can we do it better: the
efficacy of our instruction.
The real issue for our colleges and universities with
a focus on education is how to most effectively use those technologies
with our learners. What my colleagues want is assistance with how to use
what is available to them to accomplish what they want to do. They do not
ask for much assistance with the programs or devices. None who are so
interested in the use of the technology for instruction are so dense that
they can not learn the mechanical details of the programs (software) that
are involved. That is simply a matter of time on task. As faculty learn
the technologies their next desire is to learn how to use them most
effectively to do what it is they want to do with them: teach. As the
number of faculty involved in their use increases so to the need for and
now demand for support with instructional design and course management and
development.
I have witnessed faculty talking about and
demonstrating how they use some piece of technology in their classrooms
many times. I have seen faculty quite willing to demonstrate or show some
clever use of PowerPoint or websites and computer research techniques. I
have seldom witnessed faculty willing to talk about the structure of their
lectures or their lesson plans or even their clever, sometimes
entertaining, asides and anecdotes and other devices to attract and
maintain attention or to illustrate and underline a point. It is not
simply the newness of technology. Slides have been available for some
time but they have not encouraged faculty to share what they do with them
with colleagues. What is it about the latest wave of technological
innovations that turns faculty into conversants over their teaching
methods and pedagogic devices? The Power! The technologies make
available such an enormous amount of information and make transmitting
that information so easy that it empowers instructors to present more and
to present it in more attractive ways and to present it on different
levels for people with differing skills, backgrounds and learning styles. Previous
to the advent of the new digital technologies faculty would be quite
reserved in making inquiries into the teaching styles or pedagogic designs
of members of their own departments let alone in other disciplines.
Now I have often observed inquiries being made to faculty in another
discipline concerning their use of these technologies and such inquiries
are met with a willingness to share rather than circumspection of the
inquirer.
Course management programs run apace with PowerPoint
as engines for pedagogic development forcing faculty with little or no
formal study of pedagogy to rethink what they want to do as instructors
and how they go about doing it. Arranging for a well designed course in
the online mode or even presenting materials through its use for web
assisted or blended classes has faculty thinking about basic pedagogic
issues. It has made me and some of my colleagues accept the use of
pedagogic jargon that we previously had little but disdain for:
objectives, outcomes, learning units, assessment, management, etc... Any
faculty member who seriously considers using the educational technologies
begins to think about the various factors that contribute to good
instructional design and effective instruction. Beyond the jargon of
contemporary education and the SOTL there are the basics of teaching and
learning as the instructor actually experiences them. The technologies
can provide many ways in which the instructor can assess effectiveness.
Learning how to be an effective instructor using the
technologies makes one a more effective instructor whether in an online
class or a traditional class. There is a “spill over “ effect that I have
read about concerning others reporting their experiences, experienced for
myself and observed with others. Instructors who use group learning
exercises in online classes or components of classes will often carry that
over into their face to face classes. Instructors who provide for sample
quizzes online then start offering them in the traditional classes.
Faculty who accept email queries from their online students start
accepting email from their in-class students. Faculty who begin to
recognize different learning styles in their online students in
constructing learning modules or exercises start taking those styles into
account in their traditional classes.
So, I do believe that learning and using educational
technologies, such as a course management program, prompt both individuals
and, through them, their institutions to then focus on the pedagogic
issues. This is what I see one college after another doing. I think of
it as a natural progression for instructors and educational institutions
in an age of rapidly expanding information and educational technologies.
I expect resources continuing to be directed toward the adoption and
adaptation of educational technologies and course management programs as
part of a concerted faculty development effort to improve teaching and
learning. It is not simply a good thing. It is a necessary thing for any
educational institution to do. There is a vast literature reporting on
and analyzing pedagogy and in particular pedagogy involving the
educational technologies as part of the exploding field now known as the
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL).
Educational technologies and course management
programs are tools. Tools come along and are refined and eventually many,
even most, are replaced by even better tools. Educational technologies,
including course management programs, will continue to move far beyond
what they are now. Educators should, must and will forget about the
specific educational technologies and course management programs. The
focus should, must and will remain on what we want to use the tools to do
and how best to do that. Both the effective features of educational
technologies and course management programs and their restrictiveness and
failures can prompt attention to be given to where it first should be: the
effectiveness of the teaching and learning. With that concern the right
tools will be found, developed, used and then further refined or replaced
and so on and on.
Most Significant Issues:
Here are some of the most perplexing of the issues
that I now think about:
1) What technologies and what instructional
modalities are best suited for what type of learners?
2) How do we best identify the various types of
learners considering a host of factors that include: learning styles,
abilities/disabilities, habits of mind (cognitive mindsets), background
knowledge?
3) If we could determine an answer to the previous
question, how would we go about arranging for the provision of instruction
in the modalities most suited for the various types of learners?
4) How would we best identify the faculty who are
most suited to offering instruction in one modality over another?
Concluding Observations:
Faculty have a professional obligation to improve
upon the effectiveness of their instruction. Faculty need time and
resources at their disposal to pursue pedagogic assessment and research
and development to improve the efficacy of their instruction. Faculty
need to be observed, evaluated and rewarded for their pedagogic efforts
along with their work in their discipline. Most institutions do not
provide for near enough for their professional educators as educators as
they do for them as scholars and researchers in their disciplines. The
educational technologies currently available and being adopted by faculty
are forcing those involved with them to consider the pedagogy involved.
Faculty themselves are starting to recognize their own more general
responsibility to research and develop more effective pedagogies than they
are currently using-The explosion in the "field" called the Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning (SOTL). Reports of the successful adoptions of the
technologies forcefully illustrate the need for institutional support for
faculty seeking to use them effectively. Unfortunately institutional
support for faculty who are exploring ways to utilize the educational
technologies is not yet adequate to meet the current need. Most colleges
are still a long way from recognizing, let alone adequately responding to
that need. Higher education does not have the infrastructure of support
for faculty to successfully carry out their dual responsibilities as
educators and as members of a specific academic disciplines. Thinking of
the educational technologies as being distinguishable from basic pedagogic
development is part of the reason for the lack of attention to the
current need.