After attending 10 weeks of Theory of Education Technology class, one question that always comes into my mind is “Is Educational Technology (ET) applicable to real world situation and how far it can be applied to?”. Even though to date, there are lots of scholars trying to “define” what is ET and even trying to list out steps or instructional design models on how to apply them to the real world situations, but are there just simply theories that only can be read in the books? Or are they applicable to the real world situation? Are all the scholars trying to understand the real practitioners which are the teachers, learners and etc. According to the latest definition by AECT( 2008), Educational Technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources. But what kind of technologies or learning environment is “Appropriate” for the use in education in different context in real world situation?
Before I start to discuss more in this topic, I think it will be better that I first introduce a little background of myself. This is my first semester in ET and I mean first in the way that I never have any proper ET background before. My major was Computer Science before joining ET in Ewha. I was working as project associate in e-learning projects in Hong Kong before joining to Ewha. That was my 2nd E-learning job. My first job after my 1st degree was a Project Assistant in one E-learning job in Malaysia. So this explains why I am here study ET for my doctoral program. Even though I am not from ET but I was working closely with ET field and during the years I worked I found out that I have so much passion in ET and I want to make education better from practitioners’ point of views. I found out that there is a big gap between practitioners and ET experts.
I still remembered in the year 2004, I joined my first e-learning research project and we tried to develop an Intelligent learning management system that not only it could recognize the facial expression and movements of learners but also it would suggest the next topics or next activities that the learners should continue with. We spent lots of resources both money and human resources in the project, well, I would not say that the project failed but then it is not very useful for the learners and instructors.
First, in 2004, internet or broadband was still kind of slow in Malaysia. The idea of E-learning was also new to most of the students in Malaysia. Not many universities have distance learning courses or cyber campus courses. During that period, LMS was just a platform for instructors to upload files and students to download files or to submit assignments or to see the score. To date, I believe still most of the universities are using what I mentioned above in the LMS and Nothing more than that. Many instructors do not even know how to use LMS properly especially if they are not from IT or computer science background. In addition, not many lectures want to use the LMS because they found out that it is difficult to use and they did not get much support from the university too. In addition, during my 2 years working period in Hong Kong as E-learning project associate, the same issues happen again and that was during the year 2008 to 2010. Hong Kong, which is the 3rd Asia country with the fastest broadband after Korea and Japan, again there are lots of lectures or professors in universities that do not know what and how ET can help them. Some even don’t know how to use LMS provided by the university. So, in my mind, I always wondering, during these 4-6 years period, what happen to our education system especially with the advancement of technology day by day, why ET in real life is still not catching up to the level what the ET scholars mentioned and trying to achieve since 1950s’? Are the ET scholars just trying to “foster” around their own community? That is why their valuable ideas never reach the real practitioners? For me to date, the most successful transformation of ET to date is from the use of overhead projector to ppt files in the class or maybe on and off some the use of videos or audios in the class.
According to M.D. Roblyer, Aoraon H, Doering (2010), educators will use new methods if they can see clearly compelling reasons to do so. Many educators look to educational research for evidence of technology’s present and potential benefits. However, even though ET has been introduced since 1950s but to date research results have not made a strong cases on impact on teaching and learning. Researcher such as Clark (1983, 1985, 1991, 1994) have openly citied on the effectiveness on computer based learning. Clark concluded that most studies suffered from confounding variables that could either increase or decrease achievement. They attempt to show a greater impact on achievement of one delivery method over the other without controlling for other factors such as different instructors, instructional methods, curriculum contents or novelty.
With all the debates above, M.D. Roblyer, Aoraon H, Doering. (2010) stated the four current issues to apply technology into education which are (1) increasing costs of keeping up with technology, (2) attacks by technology critics, (3) low teacher use and (4) the influence of accountability movement and the No Child Left Behind Act. From the above mentioned issues, issues 1 to issue 3 are what I was facing while working in e-learning project. Most of the instructors that I met in universities, especially the one that were not from IT background faced a lot of problem in trying to apply technology in teaching such as either they found out that the LMS are not user friendly and this happen because the LMS developers or researchers are not practitioners so they could not understand the real needs of the users. Besides, most of the students are not much interest in using LMS too. Or else, some instructors who have the passion to apply technologies into their teaching but they were lacking of resources to do so. In addition, some of the teachers are not even up to date to the latest technologies in the field.
In conclusion, in order to successfully apply ET in schools or universities, I believe that the support from the management of schools and universities or even better the support from the country government is one of the most important factors. Follow by ET researchers or scholars should research and proof the effectiveness and the appropriateness of latest technologies that can be applied in education based on practitioners point of view especially scholars should consider on the resources needed while apply one technology in teaching. Nowadays, with the increase interest both in mobile learning and immersive learning environment such as second life or 3D simulation, many researchers start to investigate the effectiveness and impact of these technologies in teaching but they have forgotten that both these technologies required skills and lots of resources. Normal K-12 schools or even most of the universities might not be able to support to use these technologies in teaching, so is it appropriate?
So as ET students, before we start a research any topic of ET, we should always ask ourselves the below questions:
- Is this technology a burden or aid on to teachers?
- Is this technology applicable to the teachers?
- Is this technology appropriate for the use of teachers?
- How can ET help the educators to catch up with the ever changing technologies and understand the jargon and terminology of ET?
- Do we really understand the practitioners and their needs?
- Are ET scholars too eager in catching up with latest technologies and forget about the real needs of the practitioners?
- Are there any free and friendly open source tools that we can introduce to teachers?
How can we help to improve the teaching and learning experience of practitioners using technologies?
Finally, instead of blindly suggesting the latest technologies for teaching, both ET experts and teachers should consider other variables that will impact the teaching and learning process such as student learning styles, teaching styles, specific performance score, learning styles that reflected in the actual software or hardware product, resources needed and etc. In short, ET final goal not only ease the teachers and learners plus improve the performance or competency of the learners and teachers but also to suggest which technology work better and appropriately to facilitate learning based on different context, different ways, different practitioners/learners and why it is suitable.
M.D. Roblyer, Aoraon H, Doering. (2010). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching. America: Pearson Education, Inc
Robert A. Reiser, John V. Dempsey.(2007) Trends and Issues in Instructional Deign and Technology. America: Pearson Education, Inc
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