Educating Learning Technology Designers

Guiding and Inspiring Creators of Innovative Educational Tools

Chris DiGiano,Shelley Goldman,Michael Chorost

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781135590819
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Education
• Categoria: Education General

What knowledge and skills do designers of learning technologies need? What is the best way to train them to create high-quality educational technologies? Distilling the wisdom of expert instructors and designers, this cutting-edge guide offers a clear, accessible balance of theory and practical examples.
This cutting-edge guide:

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• synthesizes learning, instructional design, and educational technology perspectives on learning-centered technology — highlighting how interdisciplinary work is driving the fields of the learning sciences and technology design and development

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• offers helpful resources for both faculty and students — including descriptions of a variety of successful courses in learning technology design, examples of student work with commentary by instructors and students, and discussions of "lessons learned" in course development

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• includes a "To the Student" chapter that speaks in plain language about what is exciting and challenging about creating technology for kids

Directed to university instructors working with students on developing educational software projects and to managers leading learning technologies development teams, this book is a valuable resource for guiding and inspiring the next generation of designers of learning technologies.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Preparing the Next Generation of Learning Technology Designers

Shelley Goldman, Chris DiGiano, and Michael Chorost

Learning Technology on the Rise

The scene is a pay-as-you go after-school computer learning center that promises better school achievement and test scores. A seven-year-old girl sits at a computer screen. She reads a four-sentence story on the screen about a doctor giving a hospital patient an exam. To test her comprehension, the computer then prompts her to fill in the blank: “The ______ gave the patient an exam.” The girl accidentally types the word “doctor” as “dictor” and proceeds to the other three questions. The computer displays her score at the end: a disappointing 75% because “dictor” was wrong. The girl takes her hands off the keyboard and says, “I want to go home. I thought this was reading, but it’s typing.” She adds, “I hoped I would learn, but it was just like school except on a computer.”

Fast-forward 15 years to a museum setting. The exhibit floor features a six-foot-diameter globe that receives projections of complex scientific data in visual form. Across its face swirls a massive hurricane, the globe conveying the storm’s awe-inspiring size in a way not possible with any conventional map. A moment later, the globe switches to show the dramatic shrinking of polar ice caps; an expert is available to discuss what visitors are seeing. To prepare in advance for a visit to the exhibit, students can access a Web page with game-like challenges that teach tips for examining satellite images and noticing how polar ice caps and land formations change throughout the year. Teacher materials link these activities to the corresponding academic standards. Feedback is built in, so students can check their learning of how to “see” visual satellite data. Students who complete the advance activities are excited and engaged; the problems are difficult, but they are motivated to persevere and solve them.

Though the two vignettes might seem like caricatures in the way they describe such radically different learner experiences and interactions with technology, they are true stories. In the first example, the girl’s critique was spot on—the computer environment was based on a particular view of learning that was intended to be just like school. This was a standard reading comprehension activity that approximated testable performance steps for young readers. Though not particularly innovative, one could argue that the activity was nonetheless important, relevant, and based on sound theory and practice on learning to read—it was a traditional school exercise conducted on a computer instead of on a printed worksheet. It took an individual approach to learning reading and comprehension skills (and in this case, an unintended accounting of spelling skills).

As a computer-based lesson that could be installed on computers worldwide, the hospital exam activity had the potential to help huge numbers of students to reach some minimum learning goals. Multiply these gains by the 1,500 lessons that comprised this “integrated learning system” and it becomes clear why designers saw promise in their approach for achieving educational impact. The integrated learning system represented the idea that computers could take the place of teachers, especially when practice was the key to making learning performance perfect. At the time, such software applications were a major advance in learning technology, as they could track the learner’s progress over multiple sessions, stepping the student through learning objectives in a developmentally appropriate sequence. Not only could these system give immediate feedback to the learner but they could provide detailed reports to educators who needed to monitor student achievement. Now let’s look at the museum exhibit and its activity setting. In this case, rich interactive graphics, Internet-enabled communications, and enlightening scientific visualizations combined to create a powerful learning environment that spanned both the school and museum setting and engaged not just students but teachers and scientists as well. Like integrated learning systems, the design of this learning experience was rooted in theory, but here the theory was not about simulating a teacher, it was about the conditions under which people learn best—at school, at home or anywhere else. The entire set represented a learning arc of multiple activities and tasks and social and distributed views of learning (Pea, 1993; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown, Collins, & Duigud, 1989). It incorporated multiple paths into the phenomenon to be examined and included interactions with peers, teachers, and scientists around authentic and interactive scientific data and images. Questioning, game-like play, and relevant topics drove engagement. The activities and the set of technologies represent experimentation with recent research-based approaches to learning. The technology development was also distributed, with the visual earth being developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Web challenges and materials designed by university students, the museum staff, and a K–12 teacher and her students.

Conditions for effective learning are the fundamental pursuit of the field known as “the learning sciences,” an amalgam of a range of disciplines including education, computer science, cognitive science, developmental and social psychology, anthropology, and linguistics. The learning sciences have converged on four major characteristics of effective learning environments: (1) They pose engaging, personally meaningful problems, (2) they allow learners to build on their existing knowledge, (3) they are social experiences that blur boundaries between student and teacher, and (4) they constantly assess student learning, enabling the learning environment and the students themselves to make adjustments (Bransford, 2000).

Each of these ideas was manifest in the museum exhibit. Engaging graphics and playful activities enticed students to learn about scientific phenomena that connected to current personally meaningful events and to global changes. Depending on prior knowledge, students could choose from multiple paths into the learning experience, whether through the Web-based advanced activity or by walking up to the globe at the museum and noticing patterns. Live connections with earth scientists and the presence of a central physical artifact, the globe, around which discussions could take place all contributed to a sense of a communal learning experience. Finally, at least in the advanced activity, students and educators received immediate feedback on their levels of understanding of scientific visualizations, helping motivate students to refine their knowledge.

The two stories represent touch points along the timeline of learning technology design (LTD), the name we use for the interdisciplinary field dedicated to the research and development of computer-based educational tools. The integrated learning system of the first story has its origins in the advent of personal computing in the 1970s, when the promise of “intelligent tutoring” across the curriculum captured the imagination of educators and opened the door to computers in schools. The multifaceted museum exhibit of the second story represents modern-day LTD motivated by findings in the learning sciences. Among these points on the time line, we have seen the emergence of a range of learning technology strategies from standalone software typically distributed on CD-ROM, such as the classic The Oregon Trail (released for the apple II in 1985); to libraries of smaller-grained applet-level software that target specific skills or concepts; to tools, simulations, and modeling environments that often mimic the thinking and computational practices of professionals; to multi-user virtual environments; to podcasts, mobile applications, and games.

Harnessing Change

Fundamental to all of these approaches is the idea that computer technology can give learners access to representations, abstractions, data, and people that were previously impractical—and often impossible—to bring to classrooms and other learning environments. Where technology-supported learning environments differ is around the particular choices of technology: how the environments are made available and how they can best foster particular kinds of experiences for learners. What makes the field of LTD both challenging and exhilarating is that this decision space is in constant flux. While the museum exhibit might represent the state-of-the-art for today, the design of learning technologies is continuing to evolve with new technologies, new distribution mechanisms, new development techniques, new learning needs, and new understandings of how people learn.

A particular force of change is the increasing availability of and exposure to computer technology. An impressive 100% of U.S. Schools have had Internet access since 2003. More than 14.2 million computers were available for classroom use in the nation’s 114,700 elementary and secondary schools as of the 2005–2006 school year, a ratio of approximately one computer for every four students (U.S. Census, 2007). Though now somewhat dated, a 1999 survey (Smerdon et al., 2000) gives us a picture of how these millions of computers are being used: more than one-half of teachers who had computers in their classrooms used them for word processing or creating spreadsheets most frequently (61%), followed by Internet research (51%), practicing drills (50%), and solving problems and analyzing data (50%). Interestingly, teachers in low-minority and low-poverty schools were generally more likely than teachers in high-minority and high-poverty schools to use computers or the Internet for instructing students, suggesting that more needs to be done to make technology access equitable.

Today, school is just a small part of the digital world that our children inhabit. A 2007 report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (Lenhart, Madden, Rankin Macgill, & Smith, 2007) reports that 93% of U.S. Teens use the Internet as a venue for social interaction and that 64% of online teens ages 12 to 17 engage in content-creating activities on the Internet, such as sharing artistic creations online or creating or contributing to Web pages or blogs. Another study found that most children (66%) use the Internet at home to play games, with fewer of them going on-line to complete school assignments (U.S. Census, 2007). And while the authors of this book (and possibly its readers) may find it difficult to stay current on the latest technologies, a recent survey of U.S. Children between 10 and 17 years of age found that 85% have a sense that they are “keeping up” when it comes to computers (National Public radio [NPR], 2005). Even infants are now spending 47 minutes a day using digital media other than televisions, and children from there to six are spending more than an hour per day above and beyond television (Garrison & Christakis, 2005).

Another important trend is the increasing prevalence of portable digital devices that are beginning to outnumber desktop computers and laptops. Witness the success of digital audio players, such as the iPod and the evermore-sophisticated mobile phone. Ubiquitous computing at school, at home, and on the go is ushering in a whole new genre of educational technologies that can support learning anytime and anywhere—giving new meaning to the learning sciences’ notion of personally relevant and social learning. In this book, we report on research in this new area of mobile learning technologies (see Chapter 12), but already there are commercially successful products. One example is LeapFrog’s LeapPad, an electronic book originally introduced in 1999 that enables students to improve their reading skills through activities that involve physically pointing to words, phrases, and pictures in specially encoded texts. The LeapPad was a runaway success and paved the way for a wide array of derivative products, including a digital pen that transforms the filling out of ordinary-looking paper worksheets into an interactive learning experience.

Preparing for the Next 30 Years

Though there is much to celebrate in the more than 30 years of history of learning technologies, what the next 30 years holds hinges on the fundamental question of this book: How do we prepare the next generation of learning technology designers? Of course, it’s sensible for any field to ask itself this kind of question. Many domains, especially those being transformed by rapid technological advances such as physics, are wise to revisit their curricula and training. However, we believe that in the field of LTD this is a particularly timely question, the reason being that unlike physics with its centuries-old grooming tradition, few of us who have been part of the first 30 years of innovation have had any formal training in the design of learning technologies! We represent the first generation of learning technologists: the computer scientists, educators, and psychologists who almost without exception stumbled accidentally upon this exciting new opportunity to transform education through computers. Today, we find ourselves in a position to ask: What do I wish I knew or appreciated before I got into the design of learning technologies? How would I advise someone just entering the field?

Another contrast with physics is that LTD today is not just accessible to dedicated professionals or graduate students with advanced equipment but to dabblers and bricoleurs. Anyone with a Web browser and a text editor has the potential to create the next smash-hit educational software download. In a recent small survey that one of the authors of this chapter conducted of developers of educational mathematics applets (Chung & DiGiano, 2002), half of respondents reported that their creations began simply as an exercise in learning the Java programming language. The fact is that though innovation over the last 30 years of LTD may have been driven by teams with advanced degrees and access to correspondingly advanced development tools, the next 30 years may well be propelled by unpredictable bursts of individual brilliance by amateur LTD enthusiasts. This phenomenon might seem to make moot the question of how to prepare the next generation of learning technologists—after all, they might never formally identify themselves as such. However, we believe that the specter of the LTD hobbyist makes it all the more imperative for us to find ways to orient people effectively to the essential tenets of the field, to allow informal contributors to stand on the shoulders of the previous generation. The corollary to our central question then becomes How can we distill LTD to its essentials so that a wide range of individuals can get a taste of LTD through informal activities and elective courses?

None of the contributors to this volume would claim to have the one right answer to the question of how to prepare the next generation of learning technologists. However, all of the chapters in this book highlight the value of experiences at the college level that can make a lasting impression on young designers. The contributors represent some of the most innovative educators and practitioners in the field of LTD, but they are just a few of the many faculty and researchers developing creative ways to expose students to its arts. Over the last decade, experimental initiatives have matured into regular course offerings, often integrated into graduate-level programs in educational technology. As of 2008, there were more than 100 master’s-level programs and scores of doctoral programs in educational technology in the United States. Originally, the focus of many of these programs has been on preparing in-service and pre-service teachers to leverage existing technologies in their future classrooms. However, emerging courses in the design of learning technologies have been a welcome addition, allowing students to suddenly change roles from users to creators. Because LTD is a hybrid field—connected to our understandings of learning, developments in technology fields, and to developments in the design fields—computer science departments, design schools, art departments, and other programs have also been experimenting with courses. A typical context is a project-based course where one of the options is designing an education-related technology.

The Concept for this Book

Could students experience the process of creating something as rich as an interactive museum exhibit in these kinds of college courses? We know for a fact that they can (the weather exhibit was implemented in part by a student design team at Stanford University), but rarely without instructors and students adopting a core set of LTD-specific principles and practices. That, in a nutshell, is the motivation behind this book. We sought to assemble the lessons learned from implementing and supporting LTD courses so that instructors would avoid our mistakes and add to our successes. We realized we were uniquely positioned to collect and organize the theory, practices, design methods, and collaboration techniques that characterize successful LTD courses. Between 2002 and 2007, we led a project called Training and resources for assembling Interactive Learning Systems (TraILS) sponsored by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 0205625), which created and supported a consortium of researchers and educators from the learning and computer sciences who were passionate about teaching LTD. Over those 5 years, TraILS faculty and more than 300 students at Drexel University, Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Colorado at Boulder participated in a grand experiment to explore and refine different approaches to LTD education, the results of which are described in many of the chapters to follow. To broaden our scope, we also solicited chapters from other leading educators in LTD from Indiana University, Simon Fraser University, Utah State University, and virginia Tech.

Many issues deserve careful attention when educating the next gener...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• 1. Introduction: Preparing the Next Generation of Learning Technology Designers
• 2. What Is Design Knowledge and How Do We Teach It?
• 3. Focusing on Process: Evidence and Ideas to Promote Learning Through the Collaborative Design Process
• 4. Partnering with K–12 Educators in Collaborative Design of Learning Technology
• 5. Authentic Design and Collaboration: Involving University Faculty as Clients in Project-Based Learning Technology Design Courses
• 6. Moving from Feedback to Scaffolding: Improving the LTD Student’s Experience
• 7. Interdisciplinarity in Learning Technology Design Courses
• 8. Applying the “Studio Model” to Learning Technology Design
• 9. A Learning Technology Design Course, Deconstructed
• 10. Teaching Educational Design Through Computer Game Design: Balancing Expectations, Abilities, and Outcomes
• 11. Creating Educational Gamelets
• 12. Playground Games and the Dissemination of Control in Computing and Learning
• 13. Reflecting on Reflection: Guiding and Capturing Student Projects Online
• 14. To The Student
• 15. Featured Student Projects
• List of Contributors
• Index