I don’t have the same classroom experience as others taking this course but I can speak to this topic quite well as I was involved in the integration of a technology teaching tool across much of the first and second year undergrad math curriculum in a higher education institution.
The major need that faculty/teachers were expressing is that students were not getting enough formative or realistic feedback about their abilities prior to midterms and finals. In large undergrad classes there is not a realistic way to provide feedback to all students in a timely and consistent manner. Yes, there are tutorials – but one of the issues was the length of time to return quizzes and huge discrepancy in quality of feedback students received. As a result students, especially struggling students, didn’t have a realistic picture of what they knew and didn’t know.
While I didn’t at the time when devising this solution I can see now that the formulation of this solution demonstrated the application of a TPCK framework.
In order to determine the solution for this problem I had to understand the pedagogical issues that were underlying the student needs. In this case it was timely feedback back and awareness of misconceptions just in time. Additionally I also knew from my understanding of the content that ample opportunities for practicing was required to be able to master the procedures being taught.
Understanding those two sides I could then select a technology tool that would support and align with the these goals. There are various tools available to support math learning however not all would fit the needs of this particular scenario. Knowing the technologies settings, how it can be configured to support various learning situations, its limitations, etc all are important in allowing you to select and integrate the tool to support the learning goals.
For my particular example we implemented a gated practice/quiz set up with embedded help/hints to reduce unaddressed misconceptions and reduce over confidence prior to midterms/finals. Students would use the technology to practice questions. If they got a question wrong they knew right away. They could then access hints or help tools to learn/relearn how to approach the question (question values changed after they viewed these help/hints so they never were provided the right answer). Once they achieved a pre determined score on their ‘homework’ they unlocked the quiz (for marks) on which they only had one chance. If they did poorly on that quiz they could go back and practice the homework some more (or go to the help centre/instructor for more help). We saw a significant improvement on attendance to the help centre and improvement on midterm and final scores.
Without understanding the content, the pedagogical strategy, and the technology tool I wouldn’t have been able to devise this strategy that supported learner goals.
Hi Kari,
I am quite intrigued by your gated practice/quiz set and associated tools. Was this something that you developed on your own or was it a ready made platform or combination of platforms? I have heard of similar platforms that utilize AI to ensure students are understanding concepts with certain level of mastery.
Cheers!
Gordon
Hi Gordon
It was one platform, mymathlab, and a keen awareness of how the platform could be set up to achieve the pedagogical goals. Most people used the platform to just drill (online homework) but using the tool in that way wasn’t demonstrating any impact on learning. But I also knew that the platform could be set up in different ways so we chatted about what the students were missing and arranged the use of the tool so that it more directly aligned with what the instructors wanted to achieve.
I think that sometimes, when it comes to tech in teaching it isn’t always the wrong tool…but how it’s implemented. If you look at the ADDIE model of Instructional design the I stage is implementation….even a carefully designed and developed learning object won’t work well if it’s been improperly implemented.