How Technology Enhances Teaching and Learning Essay

Students at the Owen Schools Strategy in the virgin Economy seminar enter a instructroom that looks deal any other, buy food that a jutting system and video screen construct been installed. Their professor announces that today they will be joined by a invitee speakr, a senior VP from a Fortune 500 corporation. What sterilizes this guest grumble unique is that the students ar sitting in a Nashville schoolroom that the guest lecturer is speaking from his home office in Estonia, via video applied wisdom.This is an example of one and only(a) of the creative panaches skill members at Vanderbilt ar victimisation applied science to enhance their students learning. In the scene describe above, Owen professor David Owens, along with professor Bart Victor, practice session video conferencing to let an international guest speaker to their organization studies seminar. Across the University, ability be using engineering to help students master subjects from elementar y and secondary school instruction to ergonomics to structural equation modeling. They are developing their possess skills while making students comfort adapted with the engine room that will help them be successful after leaving Vanderbilt. As they introduce much and more technology into the patternroom, faculty are decideing it raises the quality of class sermon and involves students much more deeply in their own education.The employers of today are feeling for the really best employees to fill invests in their organizations. The desired traits of an employee apply to be centered on experience. The more experienced an appli bumt was, the more likely they were to get the job for which they applied. Today, employers are not only looking for experience, they are as well as looking for a person that has a power point in the field. Employers get down begun to veryize the importance of strategic calling and leaders skills that an education affords. Beca utilise of this shift in desired qualifications, late adults have been unavailing to adequately compete in the job market. The aforementioned time and account powerfulness constraints, as well as the fact that they have been foc employ on building the experience that was previously desired has put adults at a disadvantage. Being able to obtain a college degree via technology-based education methods has greatly reduced that disadvantage. It has similarly had an impact on their ability to execute the functions of the position when thejob is obtained.For this issue of the T individuallying Forum, we spoke to four Vanderbilt faculty members, each of whom is using technology to enhance their students learning.Owen Management professor David Owens uses videoconference links to take on in guest speakers and desegregates video and audio technology into most of his lectures. psychology Professor Andy Tomarken teaches methods and statistics courses in a computer lab, allowing him to integrate traditio nal lecture with demonstration endures using the methods he is belief.Peabody Professor Margaret Smithey lines her students in the preparation of multi-media schoolroom presentations including clips from the Internet, video, audio, and reinvigorateds archive footage. She has opened an e-conference for interns from her courses who want to stay in raise up with their fellow students and professors, and she maintains a library of digitized video clips, taken from weather and pretended schoolroom settings.Department of Biomedical Engineering Chair Tom Harris directs a new NSF-funded center focused on developing technology-based bioengineering teaching materials and curriculum. He is collaborating with several partners, including Peabody Professor John Bransford.What engine room Brings to the Classroom What these faculty members have in common, and what they share with many others across the campus, is a committedness to exploring the opportunities technology offers for improv ing the quality of classroom instruction.Professor Margaret Smithey describes how technology allows her to gain on unexpected turns in class intervention. Yesterday afternoon my students had precise questions nearly classroom management, so at that point I give tongue to lets look at these scenarios that I have on a CD. The CD brought to lifetheir questions. I think seeing positive classroom scenarios related to their questions makes learning dumbfound alive for my students check than if I gave my opinion or told a story.Professor Tomarken, who teaches advanced statistics and methods classes, says incorporating computers into class controvertion substructure also make extremely difficult courses much easier for students to grasp. single of the challenges of teaching advanced statistics to students who often lack a strong mathematics background is translating theoretical stuff into a workable set of concrete analysis, Tomarken says. I find that its really important to talk round different subprograms of models from the point of view of specific problems and thats really where the ability in class to have stuff be on the projection system is critical.Access to a computer-equipped classroom can also be important. I like to get students interacting with software in the class, Tomarken says. I find if you just send them home to do it on their own, they run into real problems. When they follow me, typing in on their own computers, that facilitates their learning.Last semester, Tomarken also faced another problem the lack of a good schoolbook for teaching structural equation modeling to social science students that he solved using technology. in that respect is no book that is perfect, that really is appropriate, for this class. There are either books that tend to be too easy or too hard or just not broad overflowing in scope. Tomarken solved this problem using the Prometheus system, by placing his lecture notes on the web. This not only replaced the textbook, it allowed students to spend more time focused on the lecture and less time copying formulas from the board. I told them, you dont have to print anything, its all on the web, just listen.engineering Changes tenet, Not Teachers While all the faculty members interviewed for this article believe technology has great power to influence their teaching, no one feels it fundamentally changes them as teachers.Ive al shipway wanted a very interactive classroom, Smithey says. I want it to be very theoretically based and I enjoy exactly what I want my students to learn. I think technology has alter the quality of what we can access. Smithey also emphasizes the importance of technology being used for a clear purpose. I never want to use technology just for technologys sake still to support my students learning.Professor Tomarken feels that integrating statistical software and visual models into his courses means he comes into class better prepared exclusively doesnt think it ch anges him as a teacher. I usually am charming interactive with the class. He does, however, honorable mention the accessibility of computers with reducing the passivity gene in his classes. They have to type things in, they have to click on the mouse. I think its pretty lively in a lot of ways.How Technology Enhances Learning Professor Owens, Smithey, and Tomarken all feel they can see technology enhancing their students learning, particularly when students use the technology directly. David Owens requires his students to do at least one group project entirely over the Internet. Theyre not allowed to do it face to face, Owens says. They arent allowed to say, Ill call you tonight. They have to do everything practical(prenominal)ly. In this project, they have a lot to figure out close to group process, what things are do best face to face, what things are through with(p) best asynchronously, what things are done best in an anonymous chat room. And they figure it out. Itsso much more powerful than my sitting up thither byword the group process models showProfessor Smithey requires her students to complete a serial publication of computer assignments from a course CD that she has developed. Smithey values these pre-class assignments because they save classroom time and improve the quality of class discussion. When the students complete their CD assignments, they come to class with a common context. We are able then to discuss particular class dilemmas or teaching dilemmas that everyone has watched, analyzed and reflected upon. So, we can experience there and go with our class discussion rather than having to take 20 or 30 minutes of classshowing the video and asking the specific questions. Theyve done all that in the computer lab.Technology can also improve the dynamics between teachers and students, often leading to deepen learning. Students can see youre doing a lot of work to barely their education and I think that theres an appreciation factor that ultimately contributes to their own motivation, Tomarken says.Students who may question how much their professors care about teaching can also see evidence of the time and discomfit taken to prepare for class. I think sometimes graduate students, or possibly even undergraduate students, go in with the mindset that this teachers doesnt really give a darn about teaching and I think using technology is a real way of communicating yes I do, Tomarken adds.Technology Brings Challenges Introducing technology into the classroom can also get down a set of challenges. First among them is finding the time affected to incorporate new technology into courses. Professor Smithey not only uses the technology herself but also requires her student to produces multi-media projects during the semester. If youre deprivation to ask the students to do such(prenominal) a challenging project, you have to be available to them. You have to have support. There has to be some relief time to learn about the technology. You dont have to know the details of technology but you have to understand it well enough that you can envision what your students need to know about using it.The technology itself can fail, leaving an instructor to resort to back up. Technology also changes rapidly and it takes time to reinforcement up with technical changes that influence how equipment and software perform in the classroom. Professor Owens points to a digitized news show he purchased from CBS I have the CD in here and one of my fears is that someday Ill pop it in the classroom and it wont work. Its a constant upkeep.Professors Tomarken and Owens also note that having computers in the classroom can distract students from the class itself. Teaching in aclassroom equipped with computers actually introduces the potential for students to be doing something on the computer that doesnt have anything to do with the class, Tomarken says.I now and again go parading around and check out what people are up to , Owens says. Some people take notes on the computer, some people pick up to get the lecture slides up on their screen so they can see them up close, some people do e-mail, surf the net, do whatever. He agrees with Tomarken that students in-person use of computers in class is an issue that call for to be examined, through whether thats worse than day dreaming I dont know.Need for University Support Support by the University for the use of technology is also critical. Bringing technology into the classroom uses resources ranging from computers to classrooms to graduate assistants, and university gigantic coordination is intrinsic for ensuring an effective learning environment for students. unmatched element that is essential is support in the form of graduate students to help students with technology, Smithey says. It is impossible for one faculty member to support an entire class of students in creating innovative ways to use technology. You can insure to use CDs that you hav e in your own library, you can continue to connect to the Internet from the classroom, but supernumerary faculty support is necessary to take technology use to the side by side(p) level of requiring our students to use technology in a way that prepares them for using it in the future classrooms.Physical facilities are also important. Keeping the technology in working order is crucial but so are other issues such as ensuring a classrooms fleshly design supports the best possible use of the technology. You have a very real problem if you have big nice screens and nice projectors but the screen is in front of the white board if you want to write and have slides at the same time, its difficult if not impossible, Owens says. woful Forward with Technology As the University moves towards an increasingly coordinated approach to the use of technology, several effortsare underway at Vanderbilt to determine just how technology can be used to most effectively enhance learning. One effort is t he VaNTH concentre in Bioengineering Educational Technologies, a occasion effort between Vanderbilt, Harvard University, University of Texas, and Northwestern. Among is several priorities is look into into the value of technology, such as web-based education for teaching bioengineering. The research team is collaborating with specialists from the Learning Technology Center at Peabody and with the Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS).Its recognized that bioengineering teaching materials are not very well developed and there is not a broad consensus on bioengineering curricula, says Thomas R. Harris, chair of Vanderbilts Department of Biomedical Engineering. We need a new way to look at bioengineering education. Why not use the modern methods that weve been developing in the learning sciences and learning technology, and really take a look at this from an entirely new point of view?The settlement is a $10 million NSF divide for Vanderbilt and its academic partners to develop a new curriculum in bioengineering, one that utilizes fundamental principles of learning science and is driven by technology, web based technology, simulations, slides, interactive systems, and tutoring and homework systems, Harris says.Although the grant focuses on the development of bioengineering, the collaboration between Peabodys Learning Technology Center and the Department of Biomedical Engineering has the potential to benefit students and faculty in all areas of the university because part of the research involves determining exactly which technological tools best enhance learning.One of the things of concern is that in higher education a lot of people are very critical of technology as being just a waste of time and coin and so forth. Well, is that right or not? Harris asks.If a particular tack of learning technology is no good, were going to be quick-witted to identify it as such. Wed like to be able to guide the decision ofeducators and administrators about w hat is effective and what is not. And if you can begin to show major(ip) advances for some of this, then the justification for the additional investment is there.Another potential benefit this research offers is the opportunity to develop a much better understanding of the kinds of resources required for faculty to use technology in ways that consistently enhance student learning.There could be a minuscule investment that could dramatically increase our effectiveness if we do it right, Harris says. Thats the key. We have to know how to do it and what to do. So if we get in and do research in this center and we find out some of the mistakes and things you ought to avoid, I think that you could tailor a system that could dramatically increase effectiveness and make faculty more effective.Harris believes that effective use of technology has the potential to diversify the student-teacher relationship at the undergraduate level. I think were going to see a revolution in the interaction between students and teachers, he says. I think the relationship to undergraduates is going to become more like the relationship to graduate students in the sense of more direct personal interaction. By using technology were going to be able to use the power of the person, who they are and what they are. The teachers inspirational role is going to become much greater.Like Harris, Professors Owens, Smithey and Tomarken also see new opportunities to use technology in the classroom. David Owens wants to pursue his interest in virtual teams by developing a course run exclusively on the Internet. Andy Tomarken plans to continue integrating computer interaction with more traditional classroom activities. Margaret Smithey would like to use videoconference links to allow her students to observe a live classroom setting and then interview the teacher afterward, all via video. In each case, these faculty members, like many others across the University, will continue to use technology to chal lenge both themselves and their students.