Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus of Education, The University of British Columbia
[permission granted to reproduce if authorship acknowledged]
In last
week’s, E-Learning and Student Success, I expressed concern about Ontario’s
plan to require students to take four of the 30 credits required for graduation
on-line. I expressed hope that those responsible for planning and implementing
the change would consider the capacities of adolescent learners. Notwithstanding
those concerns, what students will learn and how they learn will both be
influenced by changes in information and communication technologies.
New, and
increasingly sophisticated, technologies will enable teachers to conduct
pre-assessments of what students know and are able to do in a domain. That
information will enable teachers to link instruction closely with students’
prior knowledge, allowing them to plan instruction better matched to their students’
current level of understanding.
Technologies
will provide more focused opportunities for student practice and remediation.
Teachers will be able to make provision for individual students who require
additional practice in order to achieve mastery of a procedure (adding,
subtracting, multiplying, etc.) and become fluent in the use of the procedure.
Teachers will do so by employing applications that can customize the practice
problems to the individual student’s characteristics and needs, monitor the
student’s success, and adjust the difficulty of new practice problems. The increased
use of this and other adaptive technologies will help to reduce the gaps
between students in terms of their mastery of fundamental conceptual and
procedural knowledge.
Adaptive
technologies have the potential to reduce early school leaving due to lack of
challenge. These technologies will be able to customize problems to enable
students who have mastered fundamental concepts and procedures to apply them in
new and more challenging contexts. The judicious and carefully constructed use
of technology will provide students with opportunities to solve problems with
the conceptual and procedural knowledge they have acquired.
Problem
solving need not and should not be confined to extensions or challenges for
concepts and procedures already mastered. There are many elements of science
and social studies in which problem solving is an appropriate vehicle for
learning. There are quite a few simulation games that have been developed over
the years that prompt users to design, build and manage cities and nations that
must confront a variety of issues over the course of their development. The
ubiquity of smartphones, inexpensive laptops and tablets will enable more
deliberate use of such programs in schools.
A related
development is the use of technology to give students the experience of being
in an environment that they might not otherwise experience or to immerse
students in an environment for the purpose of exploration. While virtual experiences have existed for
some time, the proliferation of inexpensive devices and the exponential
increase in bandwidth will enable teachers to use them more extensively and
deliberately.
The more
deliberate and extensive use of new technologies will have a significant impact
on teachers and teaching. There will be teachers responsible for the management
of the learning of a group of learners much as a general practitioner physician
manages the health of a patient.
There will be educational technologists who, working under the direction of teachers, will identify the various technologies that may be mobilized to support a student’s learning. There will also be subject specialist teachers who are responsible for diagnosing the learner’s needs in their areas of specialization and planning an instructional sequence to enable the students to progress from where they are to where they should be according to the established curriculum.
General
practitioner teachers
will ensure coordination among specialists and technologists, monitor the
implementation of the learning plans of students for whom they are responsible,
communicate with and report progress to parents and guardians. They will collaborate
with teacher technologists and specialist teachers to assess, plan, implement
and evaluate the student’s progress. They will also be adept in marshalling the
services and resources that students with special needs require to succeed and
will be the primary point of contact for their parents and guardians.
Technology
will figure prominently in the management of student learning and in
communication with parents and among staff members. It will facilitate student
self-assessment and increase their autonomy as learners, desirable changes that
will help prepare them for a life of learning. But, as I said last week, these
changes must be carefully planned and implemented. That means they must
consider learner characteristics and capacities.