Why Teach With Technology?
Why teach with technology? A healthy skepticism is appropriate when it comes to new educational tools. The general perception of technology by people outside the educational field may be glowing and hopeful, but teachers are often more cautious: "In sum, technology offers the teacher a vague promise of increased effectiveness at the price of having to know and do more" -- Kenneth E. Eble, The Craft of Teaching (122).
There are two general reasons for instructors to use technology: to make teaching easier, and to make teaching better. Those two things do not necessarily happen at the same time, however; sometimes technology makes teaching easier without appreciably raising the bar for student learning -- for instance, making handouts available on the web instead of xeroxing them for class -- and sometimes it improves the class while demanding greater attention and work from the instructor. Admittedly, because of the learning curve, using technology sometimes makes teaching both harder and slower! However, most well-conceived uses of technology end up improving both dimensions in the long run.
Just having new tools to play with, aside from the effects of the technology on content delivery, can often rejuvenate enthusiasm and motivation on the part of the instructor as well as the students. As Wilbert McKeachie says in Teaching Tips, "The best answer to the question, 'What is the most effective method of teaching?' is that it depends on the goal, the student, the content, and the teacher. But the next best answer is, 'Students teaching other students'"(144) Learning new technology brings the instructor and the students together as learners (although not infrequently, some of the students are more adept at it).
It can also generate more concrete curricular innovation. In "Computers and Pedagogy: The Invisible Presence", Patrick McQuillan describes how even though the multimedia courseware never materialized because of technical difficulties, the course actually benefited just from making preparations to use technology: the theoretical basis of the material was more explicit, the course involved a more experienced TA, and the instructor used more visual models (in Mark A. Shields, ed., Work and technology in higher education: the social construction of academic computing, 1995).
Of course, no technology can save a bad class by itself; it can only enable improvement. Nor can technology accomplish every purpose served by the traditional education system, especially those involving face-to-face contact. Kenneth Eble writes, "the socialization that attends college going is something technology cannot provide, and the very presence of technology may make that socialization even more desirable." (The Aims of College Teaching, 171).
How Do I Select The Right Technology?
In identifying and using the right technology it would be no bold claim to assert that technology has always been a part of teaching. Every teacher you have ever had was (!) a technology user, even if their preferred technology was a textbook assigned for out-of-class reading. The real question, especially in a day when many new electronic technologies are available, should rather be "What technologies are most useful for this class?"
Not all classroom teachers need to rely on the chalkboard, although some probably ought to; not all classes need a website or an electronic bulletin board, although many (especially large ones) could benefit. An instructor's decision to use or forgo any particular technology depends on a number of factors, including these:
· convenience and availability
· capacity of support infrastructures
· tradition (slide projectors are common in Art History departments, less so in others)
· expense
· students' level of skill and comfort (although they can learn)
· instructor's level of skill and comfort (although they can learn, too)
· required preparation time
· technical requirements (darkened room? Internet connection?)
· capacity to handle certain types of information, such as images, sound, or long passages of text
· influence on classroom dynamics (does it encourage students to talk to each other?)
At UCLA, however, we would at least say:
Let instructors choose their technologies based on an informed awareness of the current options.
offers several documents with specific information on technologies and how to use them:
What Are Some References For Teaching With Technology?
Technology in General
Creed, Tom. "Power Point, No! Cyberspace, Yes". May 1997. National Teaching and Learning Forum. (www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9705/creed_1.html)
"Educational Technology: Media for Inquiry, Communication, Construction, and Expression" (www.lis.uiuc.edu/~chip/pubs/taxonomy/index.html) This is a taxonomy of media, with 1996 NSF grants used as a test case (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
Robert Sommer, Tight Spaces: Hard Architecture and How to Humanize It. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1974. See Chapter 6 on Movable Chairs, Fixed Beliefs, Hard Classrooms.
Robert Sommer, Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1969. See Chapter 5 on Small Group Ecology.
Robert Sommer, "Classroom Ecology" in Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, III (1967), 487-503.
Robert Sommer, "Classroom Ecology" in Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, III (1967), 487-503.
Jane Healy, Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds -- for Better and Worse -- recent publication by a highly respected critic of technology
Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil -- a sceptic's view of education's love affair with computers, 1995
Kommers et al., Cognitive tools for learning -- conference papers on multimedia, 1992
Specific Technologies
Saul, Joseph M. "E-Mail Etiquette: When and How to Communicate Electronically". University of Michigan's Information Technology Digest, April 8, 1996 (Reprinted with permission of University of Michigan Information Technology Division)
O'Hare, Michael (1993) "Chalk and Talk: The Blackboard as an Intellectual Tool," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, v12, n1, pp 238-46.
Anne B. Keating, The Wired Professor: A Guide to Incorporating the World Wide Web in College Instruction
Web-Teaching : A Guide to Designing Interactive Teaching for the World Wide Web (Innovations in Science Education and Technology) by David W. Brooks -- 236 pages (June 1997)
The Prentice Hall Directory of Online Education Resources by Vicki Smith Bigham, George D. Bigham -- 416 pages (September 1998)
Net Lessons : Web-Based Projects for Your Classroom by Laura Parker Roerden, Sheryl Avruch -- 306 pages (March 1997)
The Busy Educator's Guide To The World Wide Web by Marjan M. Glavac -- 200 pages 1 Ed edition (March 30, 1998)
Jakob Nielsen, Multimedia and Hypertext: the Internet and beyond -- an expert speaks, 1995
Thomas Mann, Library Research Models -- an in-depth look at research methods, including where the Net fails. 1993
Samples of technology in courses
Teaching & Learning on the WWW -- database of links to websites being used for teaching, searchable by discipline. Good sources of ideas as well as actual course material. (www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tl/)
Online Journals and Websites
The TLT Group (Teaching, Learning, and Technology) of the American Association for Higher Education (www.tltgroup.org)