Techno-Pedagogy

TECHNO-PEDAGOGY

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org

Technology in professional development is a complex issue (Borko, Whitcomb, & Liston, 2008).  Technology can, and has, helped higher education overcome previous outreach barriers, particularly in reaching students in remote locations. Because technologies are continually changing, the instability of technology, as well as the unfixed nature of the knowledge required in using them, places additional demands on faculty to keep up with the constant stream of new technologies. Due to the constantly changing nature and development of new technology, a gap exists in researching the effectiveness of new tools on teaching and learning.  Positioning educational technologies as artifacts within their social applications of teaching and learning, and providing a grammar of practice  identifying specific techno-pedagogical competencies allows faculty to make “the work of practitioners at the center of professional study” in a community of practice (Grossman, 2011; Lave, 1991).

Technology is a broad and constantly changing skill-set required of faculty, and selecting the appropriate techno-pedagogical strategies to effectively engage students in the content is a separate skill-set. Media literacy influences student development, and developing a critical analysis of media consumption is an important skill for students.  In understanding how technology and media intersect with learning, consider the compatibility between theories of technology and education, and how that relates to your content.

There is a need for faculty, as well as the institutional level, to identify and articulate the occupational realities when technology and competencies intersect, while understanding and communicating how technological resources and strategies can engage students and enhance student learning (Moore & Readence, 1984). The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge  is a collaboratively developed framework of scholars and researchers seeking to conceptualize and clarify the competencies that evolve from the intersection between pedagogy and technology. Investments in new and interactive technologies in education require both the technical and pedagogical skills to use them. According to the National Educational Technology Standards, faculty should be competent in designing digital assessments, modeling digital work creatively, promoting digital citizenry, as well as inspiring student learning (Jacobsen, Clifford, & Friesen, 2002; Lebec & Luft, 2007; Voithofer, 2007; Wentworth, Waddoups, & Earle, 2004).

Assessment and evaluation in education: Some concepts and principles

The ability to engage in high-quality assessment has become a sine qua non for the college-level educator. But, effective assessment requires mastering the professional knowledge and skills involved. The field of assessment and evaluation, like all other specialized disciplines, has developed many important concepts, principles, and methods to guide practice. A few of these are briefly discussed here. They should become part of the academician's professional armamentarium.

Assessment and evaluation
Assessment is a process of determining "what is." Assessment provides faculty members, administrators, trustees, and others with evidence, numerical or otherwise, from which they can develop useful information about their students, institutions, programs, and courses and also about themselves. This information can help them make effectual decisions about student learning and development, professional effectiveness, and program quality. Evaluation uses information based on the credible evidence generated through assessment to make judgments of relative value: the acceptability of the conditions described through assessment.

The statement "If you don't have any goals, you don't have anything to assess" expresses the close relationship between goals and effective assessment. It is goal achievement that effective assessment is generally designed to detect. An effective assessment program helps a college's or university's administrators and faculty members understand the outcomes – the results – their efforts are producing and the specific ways in which these efforts are having their effects.

Types of assessment
What is being assessed and evaluated determines the appropriate type of assessment and evaluation. For purposes of planning, desired outcomes (the ultimate results desired or actually achieved) as well as processes (the programs, services, and activities developed to produce the desired outcomes) and inputs (the resources: students, faculty and staff members, buildings, psychological climate) are all articulated in terms of goals and objectives. Thus, one can distinguish among outcome goals and objectives and outcome assessment and evaluation, process goals and objectives and process assessment and evaluation, input goals and objectives and input assessment and evaluation. Because it is results that count for most of higher education's stakeholders and critics, the emphasis today is on outcome assessment and evaluation.

Causation of outcomes
Outcome assessment, however, does not by itself produce enough evidence to permit thorough understanding of the behavior of an educational system. Outcome assessment indicates what results have been produced and how much of them. Clarifying causation – determining why the results were achieved – is the task of process assessment. Improving the quality of results depends upon improving the quality of processes. Thus, outcome assessment is not enough. In the case of learning and student development, a detailed understanding of the functioning of orientation, curriculum, instruction, academic advising, and other key educational processes is necessary for maximal improvement of institutional results. In other words, the results of both outcome and process assessment are needed to improve the quality of outcomes. The findings of process assessment research are interpreted in the light of empirically based higher-education theory to determine whether the processes being used can be expected to produce the outcomes desired with any particular set of students.

Input assessment is also necessary. It helps us understand our students. For example, input assessment can describe the characteristics of entering students: their various abilities as judged by placement testing and, among other important variables, the approaches they take to learning, their capacity for abstract reasoning and critical thinking, and their levels of epistemological and moral judgment development. This information gives faculty members, administrators, and others crucial information for designing programs appropriate to the developmental needs of specific kinds of students and of individual students.

A definition of CALL

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is often perceived, somewhat narrowly, as an approach to language teaching and learning in which the computer is used as an aid to the presentation, reinforcement and assessment of material to be learned, usually including a substantial interactive element. Levy (1997:1) defines CALL more succinctly and more broadly as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning". Levy's definition is in line with the view held by the majority of modern CALL practitioners. For a comprehensive overview of CALL see ICT4LT Module 1.4, Introduction to Computer Assisted Language Learning(CALL): http://www.ict4lt.org/.

A brief history of CALL

CALL's origins can be traced back to the 1960s. Up until the late 1970s CALL projects were confined mainly to universities, where computer programs were developed on large mainframe computers. The PLATO project, initiated at the University of Illinois in 1960, is an important landmark in the early development of CALL (Marty 1981). In the late 1970s, the arrival of the personal computer (PC) brought computing within the range of a wider audience, resulting in a boom in the development of CALL programs and a flurry of publications. Early CALL favoured an approach that drew heavily on practices associated with programmed instruction. This was reflected in the term Computer Assisted Language Instruction (CALI), which originated in the USA and was in common use until the early 1980s, when CALL became the dominant term. There was initially a lack of imagination and skill on the part of programmers, a situation that was rectified to a considerable extent by the publication of an influential seminal work by Higgins & Johns (1984), which contained numerous examples of alternative approaches to CALL. Throughout the 1980s CALL widened its scope, embracing the communicative approach and a range of new technologies. CALL has now established itself as an important area of research in higher education: see the joint EUROCALL/CALICO/IALLT Research Policy Statement: http://www.eurocall-languages.org /research/research_policy.htm. See also the History of CALL website: http://www.history-of-call.org/.