Educational technology - an introduction

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This is an outline for a print text on educational technology and of no interest to you for the moment .... DSchneider 18:22, 26 June 2006 (MEST)

Author: DSchneider

Introduction (10 pages)

• See: educational technology

Schools of educational technology

• Goal: Present the major forms of educational technology research. This discussion will be picked up again in the "Research and development" section.

Content (examples):

• EduTech as a design science - part of the learning sciences
• EduTech as playfield for research on learning and cognition
• EduTech as playfield for computer science (technology driven)

Conceptual foundations ( < 20 pages )

Goal: This chapter should be short and "understandable" and demonstrate why learning and education theories are relevant for educational technology practise and research. Its purpose is not really to teach learning theory, didactics etc. but to shortly define/recall important concepts that are necessary to understand the foundations of pedagogical designs that use technology.

Learning theory

Content (examples):

• learning theory
• Behaviorism, including various schools like programmed instruction, etc.
• Cognitivism
• Constructivism, including various schools like socio-constructivism, situated cognition, etc.

Learning types, levels and style

Content:

• learning type
• learning level
• learning style

Ergonomics and HCI

• Goal: Introduce constraints

Content:

• some words on HCI concepts and research
• cognitive ergonomics
• usability
• cognitive load theory etc. ??

Motivation and Affect

• motivation
• emotion and flow theory

Education, pedagogy and instruction

• Goal: This should be very short and strongly be linked to learning theory and explain the difference between educational, pegagocial and instructional theory.

Content (examples):

• educational theory
• pedagogical theory
• instructional design

Pedagogical strategies and tactics

• Goal: Provide a general overview, terms and well know typologies, such as Joyce, Reeves, etc.

Content (examples):

• Pedagogic strategy
• Pedagogic method
• Pedagogical scenario

Instructional design models

• Goal: Reinforce the scenario concept and its relation to abstract design models. This is quite closely related to the previous section but acts as a sort of chapter summary.
• Overview: instructional design model

Major instructional designs (20 pages)

• Goal: Present a good sample of designs for which use of technology is relevant. Each entry will have forward pointers to appropriate technologies. Alternatively, this chapter also could be put into an annex or merged into the next chapter (overview). The idea is that students should be able to find out what we mean e.g. by "inquiry learning", "case-based learning", etc. and at the same time already show why and where the use of technology makes sense ...

Content: See instructional design models

Technologies in education - an overview (10 pages)

• Goal: Provide an overview of various technologies according to their field of application.

Overview

• educational technologies, including a short categorization of major technologies used in education. This will also go beyound teaching/learning, e.g. include tools for student management.

Standards

• Goal: discussion of various standards and trends. Also discuss the issue here whether teaching can/should be "programmed" (e.g. with educational markup languages).

Content (examples):

• Standards
• IMS standards

Major technologies (> 20 pages)

• Goal: Provide an overview of major technologies used today in education, each will be linked to appropriate instructional design models/theory or other fields of applications.

Content: See the entries in educational technologies and other relevant technologies (note: some entries are a bit misplaced currently).

Research and development methods (15 pages)

Research schools in educational technology

Content:

• Overview
• design-based research
• clinical experimentation
• quasi-experimentation (ecologicallly valid experimentation)
• clinical qualitative research (e.g. qualitative cognitive science like dialog analysis)

Development methodology

Content:

• Introduction to instructional design methods
• Plus a choice of 4-5 major approaches like:
  • MISA (heavy industrial)
  • Kemp design model, ADDIE (medium industrial)
  • Light models, such as Backwards design
  • Teacher-centered lesson planning and associated tools.

Evaluation methodology

Content:

• Design / course evaluation methodology (for practicionners)

Innovation & change management

• Goal: Provide some insights on how to manage a project to introduce ICT

Content:

• General change management methodology
• Teacher development models with respect to ICT usage

The relation between research and the field

• Goal: Discuss an innovation/diffusion model and show how research and practice may influence each other. This may be merged with the previous section

Various stuff

(to put somewhere else)