Opportunity
Professor Normand Roy and his colleague, Professor Sonia Lefebvre, teach a course, TLE-6008, in team teaching format, on the integration of technology in teaching as part of the Maitrîse en Enseignement Secondaire (Master of Secondary Education) at L’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, one of the ten universities in the University of Québec System.
The challenge the instructors are facing is constantly changing technology, and there are many tools and technologies that could be used in teaching. Therefore they decided to adopt an approach to teaching the course that allowed for the maximum flexibility in the choice of tools and technologies by both the instructors and the students, while at the same ensuring the key pedagogical goals of the program were met.
Innovation
The course is taught in a hybrid format, with 75% of the course taught online and 25% in class, with three one-hour sessions taught synchronously online and one week-end class on campus. There are 15 online graduate students, nearly all high school teachers. The course is offered twice a year. The students are drawn from all over the province of Québec.
The main tool used for the online synchronous sessions is the VIA eMeeting & eLearning web conferencing platform, developed by SVI eSolutions, a company based in Québec City. VIA is available in both English and French applications.
Through VIA, the instructors and students can share the screen, use video, audio and text communications channels, team discussion and a shared whiteboard. However, VIA is just the shell through which the instructors and students access many other tools and applications.
Typically, students are divided into groups of three to five (a common optimum number for synchronous conferencing) in which they work to learn, mainly collaboratively, about other Web 2.0 tools and their benefits and limitations for teaching. Usually the students are working individually from home or work, but are online synchronously in the group.
Although there is a shared whiteboard in VIA, the instructors found it was limited for their purposes, so they have adopted a more adaptable platform called PadLet, which is an online multimedia ‘pin-board’, into which text, audio and video files or links can be uploaded and securely shared. PadLet is available in over 30 languages.
The instructor can manage different class activities through the PadLet wall, which both the instructor and students in the class can access. Even though password protection is available, the instructors promote public visibility of the PadLet walls, allowing students to develop awareness of their digital traces.
In this course, PadLet is used primarily as an organizing framework for the exploration and analysis of different resources produced by students’ interaction in other Web 2.0 tools. Many other tools are used to produce content: Google Documents, Realtime Board, wikis, etc. For example, one Padlet board can lead students to different conceptual maps produced with Realtime Board (Figure 2).
Students are also required to work in their teams to build a wiki about the dangers of the web, first working synchronously using VIA then asynchronously. Each is required to play a different role in building the wiki (adding documents, videos, etc.).
Using Web 2.0 tools, students also make collaborative presentations on different learning theories, using tools such as Google Docs.
In comparison, the in-class sessions focus on different competencies (i.e. how to use different technologies in a classroom).
Because students and instructors are drawing on different tools and examples during each offering of the course, the course varies each year, requiring the instructors to be flexible and agile in incorporating new technologies.
Finally, even though a great deal of time is invested in learning and developing competencies with the tools, the evaluation is still conventional. Students write an assignment about the potential of digital technologies in their practice of teaching.
Benefits and Outcomes
Students come into the course with a wide variety of skills and confidence in the use of digital technologies. One aim of the course is to move students out of their comfort zone regarding the use of technology for teaching.
However the most important objectives of the course are as follows:
- To learn about the range of tools available for teaching and how to assess their educational value
- To learn to collaborate, both synchronously and asynchronously
- To see technology as a means to foster learning, rather than just focusing on the technology itself
- To develop digital competency and confidence
- To encourage the use of widely available tools which are not limited to classroom use
- To experience challenges from the student perspective, making them more conscious of helping strategies necessary with ICT
- To make distance learning more active.
Challenges and Enhancements
Complex technologies with complex learning take students longer to learn and require deeper levels of understanding of the tool, and its benefits and advantages. This is not always predictable in advance of trying to choose the right technology with the right pedagogical content to explore.
Students’ anxiety about technology can interfere with their pedagogical learning if they focus too much on the technology. Also, although the students have a good deal of control in their examination of different technologies, the instructors have limited control over the students’ learning environments. If students are struggling with a technology at a distance, it is more difficult to assist than if they were in class. Those challenges can lead to the use of other tools to assist (Skype, Google Hangout).
It is still a struggle to find effective ways of evaluating students’ participation in the Web 2.0 environment.
Potential
The need for school teachers to have greater expertise in online learning is growing. It is best if they learn through exploration and evaluation of the technologies in a relatively supportive learning environment that embeds the use of technology within the overall goals of education and the particular context in which they are teaching.
The method used in this course could be extended into other subject areas where technology is rapidly changing and where students come with a wide range of digital competence.
The use of VIA and Web 2.0 tools enables instructors to communicate effectively with students at a distance, and also enables and encourages collaboration between students.
Further Information
Professor Normand Roy
Département des sciences de l'éducation
Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
Trois-Rivières, Québec
[email protected]
Professor Sonia Lefebvre
Département des sciences de l'éducation
Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
Trois-Rivières, Québec
[email protected]
