Electronic Collaboration Between Preservice and High School Students:  Boon or Boondoggle?

 

Jada Kohlmeier,, Mill Valley High School

Jadak@swbell.net

 

 

Joe O'Brien, University of Kansas

Jeobrien@ukans.edu

 

Aaron Grill, University of Kansas

Agrill@ukans.edu

 

Paper presented at the College and University Faculty Assembly

National Council for the Social Studies

San Antonio, TX  November 16, 2000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…the quality of pubic education in this country depends upon our collective ability to close the gap between technology presence and its effective use in the pursuit of school improvement.

School Technology and Readiness:  Year 2 StaR Report

 

Introduction

 

          The U.S. Department of Education has estimated that school districts across the nation will hire about 2.2 million new teachers over the next decade (Riley, 1998).  This will occur in a time when an "explosion of new technologies [not only] has changed the way we live - from the way we do business to the way we communicate with each other" but is "also affecting the ways we teach and learn."  (Technology and the New Professional Teacher: Preparing for the 21st Century Classroom, NCATE, '97).  Given this, NCATE concluded that "[T]eacher education institutions must prepare their students to teach in tomorrow's classrooms. Rather than wait to see what tomorrow's classrooms will be like, they must experiment with the effective application of computer technology for teaching and learning in their own campus practice. Today's teacher candidates will teach tomorrow as they are taught today" (1997).  Strudler (1999) takes this a step further by arguing that one of the most important factors in determining the importance that teachers give to technology is whether or not they considered technology as an integral part of their own learning.  This suggests that teacher education faculty need to seamlessly weave technology into all aspects of their programs. 

     The need for teacher education faculty to model technology usage led to this study of an electronic collaboration project between teacher education students and high school government seniors on a web-based legislative issues assignment (Refer to Appendix A).  As part of a course the teacher education students surveyed high school government students' interest in issues before the 2000 session of the Kansas legislative and used the survey results to select the issues and to design a directed web-based search of the issues for use by the seniors.  Based on results of the seniors' Internet research, the teacher education students posted a letter to a legislator for and one against the issue for review and comment by the seniors.  Upon completion of the assignment, the teacher education students responded to questions about the use of instructional technology in a survey and follow-up focus group interviews.  This paper will discuss what we learned about the teacher education students perceptions of our use of instructional technology.

 

Technology and Issues-centered Instruction in Teacher Education

     In a report to Congress in 1995, the Office of Technology Assessment stated: “Despite the importance of technology in teacher education, it is not central to the teacher preparation experience in most colleges of education in the U.S. today.  Most new teachers graduate from teacher preparation institutions with limited knowledge of ways in which technology can be used in their professional practice” (2).  Since this report, little progress has been made. (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, 1997; CEO Forum, 1999; Milken Foundation, 1999, Willis & Mehlinger, 1996).  According to the CEO Forum on Education and Technology (2000), less than one-half of teacher preparation institutions require students to design and deliver instruction using technology, even fewer require it in student teaching experience and less than half of the faculty in teacher preparation courses use technology. "Bluntly, a majority of teacher preparation programs are falling far short of what needs to be done.  …teacher education faculty…undervalue the significance of technology and treat it as merely another topic about which teachers should be informed. Consequently, teachers-in-training are provided instruction in 'computer literacy' and are shown examples of computer software, but they rarely are required to apply technology in their courses and are denied role models of faculty employing technology in their own work" (NCATE 1997).  The work of Williams and Matthew (1995) supports the importance of such modeling. Their research on the use of Hyperstudio led them to conclude that exposure to the use of technology enhances the likelihood that beginning teachers will use it in their classrooms. 

      Few examples of technology are more pervasive and offer more opportunities than the Internet.  According to Education Week's 1999 National Survey of Teachers' Use of Digital Content, for example, 90% of K-12 public schools have Internet access and 71% of the schools have Internet access from one or more classrooms.  The Internet opens new horizons of teaching and learning.  As Braun and Risinger (2000) note:  "[T]he Internet makes available an unparalleled, and seemingly unlimited, repository of resources and ideas for social studies teachers." (p. 7). The implications for social studies instruction are exciting, yet challenging.  Technologies such as the Internet make it more possible and also more imperative that students learn to access information, compare and evaluate different perspectives and critically reflect on decision making (Rose 1997), skills critical to the learning of social studies.  The use of instructional technology offers several advantages for the learner.    As John Saye (1998) discovered, technological instruction is better for students for several reasons: the multi-media format motivates more students to engage in learning for longer periods; taps into multiple learning styles so more students are actively engaged; and, enhances critical and independent thinking. 

However, we must be careful to critically evaluate our use of instructional technology.  We must be assessing whether or not the use of a technology such as the Internet is merely encouraging the gathering of information or is engaging the students in critical analysis of the information.  Mark Windschitl (1998) argues that “Educators should distinguish between the effects of using technology and the effects of using information, as well as differentiating between accessing information and having a learning experience.”  The research and analytical skills that the students are learning are the most important aspect of instructional technology.  Learning to find and access information on the World Wide Web, evaluating the validity of sites, asking critical questions, and communicating with others are the best uses of instructional technology in classrooms.  The importance of learning to use the Internet for one's self and then to decide how best to use it with students is what led us to use a program, Track Star, that would require the university students to build a directed search of the net around a legislative issue.  Through the use of a web-based assignment, the researchers sought to help prepare teacher education for a new role for teachers as endorsed by NCATE.  Teachers "should help students to pursue their own inquiries, to make use of technologies to find, organize, and interpret information, and to become reflective and critical about information quality and sources." (NCATE, 1997)

Even though we know technology is important, many teachers are not utilizing it regularly in their classrooms.  According to Neal Strudler (1999), one of the most important factors in determining whether or not teachers saw technology as important was whether or not they saw technology as an integral part of their own learning.  If the students saw both education and non-education faculty utilizing technology often in their courses, they were much more likely to incorporate it into their own teaching.  The bottom line was the less that the faculty modeled the usage, the less likely the teachers were to use it in their own classes.  Peggy Ertmer (1999) argued there are two basic barriers to teachers using technology in their classrooms.  The first are the extrinsic barriers such as lack of access to computers and software, insufficient time to plan instruction and inadequate technological and administrative support.  The second are intrinsic barriers that include their beliefs about teaching, their beliefs about computers, their established classroom practices and their unwillingness to change.  These intrinsic factors are what pre-service education faculty need to influence.  If we model instructional technology for our prospective teachers, they are much more likely to see it as feasible, important and energizing.

     Alluding to the changes wrought by recent technological advances, Shirley Engle (1996) indirectly makes a case for preparing new teachers in the use of the Internet when he argues that given "the explosion of knowledge…which renders much of our old knowledge obsolete…, the cutting edge of education must be at the emergence of new knowledge  (viii).  This suggests an essential component of preparing new teachers for issues-centered instruction requires that they become well versed in how to use the Internet as a tool.

            There is a broad field of research supporting the importance of having students debate, discuss, research and analyze controversial public issues.  (Hunt & Metcalf, 1968; Oliver & Shaver, 1966; Engle and Ocha, 1988) In 1989 Fred Newmann argued that the most important component of democratic citizenship education is teaching young people how to deliberate over controversial topics and discuss the nature of the public good and how it can be achieved.  In turn, Engle concluded that issues-centered curriculum is not simply a way to prepare students as citizens, but "is the way that all education should be approached to produce informed citizens who are involved in working out better solutions to our problems."  (p. vii)

            Even though it is widely held that issues-based instruction is an important and rewarding experience for students and teachers, very few teachers are engaging in this type of instruction.  According to Rossi (1998), one of the reasons is that teachers are not really prepared for this type of instruction.  They have difficulty breaking complex issues into pieces that allow the formulation of activities where the students are the investigators and researchers, but within a context that is manageable for the students.  Many teachers think that only advanced students are capable of this complex thinking, however, Rossi makes a strong case that we expect all our democratic citizens to research, understand, analyze and make conclusions about complex issues, not just the intellectual elite.  In addition to learning how to conceptualize knowledge as issues, Rossi contends that teachers need to acquire the ability to address two teaching dilemmas.  First, how to provided enough structure and teacher direction for students to gain understanding without retarding the students’ interest, spontaneity and autonomy.  Second, how to encourage creative, high-energy student involvement that demonstrates true understanding of the content, not merely recall of facts. This type of teaching is complex and challenging and requires trained teachers to plan well-designed lessons that keep complex issues focused and create an interactive classroom.  Rossi suggests that one way of increasing the number of teachers utilizing this approach is improved teacher preparation, both pre-service and in-service teachers.

     The link between issues-based instruction and instructional technology is a natural fit.  With new technologies available more widely than ever before in schools, learning is shifting.  The CEO Forum  (1999) indicates that appropriate use of technology can result in a dramatic shift in instruction.  Use of technology, for example, betters enables a teacher to move from a teacher-centered environment to a student-centered one that relies not upon isolated work to deliver information to a passive learner, but to collaborative efforts where students actively explore authentic problems and make decisions about them.  These features also characterize an issues-centered learning environment.  We sought to replicate such an environment in a teacher education course and to investigate the results.

Purpose of Study

            We had two research questions for this study.  First, how do teacher education students respond to a collaborative project between themselves and high school students?  Second, how does the use of instructional technology affect a collaborative project between teacher education and high school students?            Given the students' reaction to the course assignment, a need also arose to consider the issues-centered nature of it in our study.

 

Description of and Justification for Course Assignment

     When designing the assignment, we sought to incorporate several pedagogical features.  These are reflected in Sasha Barab's work (1998) where five uses of instructional technology are named, of which our Track Star course assignment incorporated four.  First, technology provides information resources for the learner to be engaged in authentic inquiry.  For the teacher to use this effectively, she argues that they must have three skills: use of problem centered inquiry, use of collaborative groups to generate and evaluate various hypotheses, and use of teacher questioning to coach and model inquiry skills.  The assignment required all three of these skills of our teacher education students.  In turn, the teacher education students selected legislative issues for the high school students to research based on their response to a survey.  (Refer to http://learngen.org/ksgov/ksgov.html) The second use of technology is content contextualization, which situates the material to be learned with in a meaningful framework or actual event.  The assignment required the teacher education students to place an issue within the context of a bill passing through the Kansas Legislature for the high school students.  The third use of technology for instruction is as a communication tool between peers and researchers.  It should teach students to collaborate with other students, scientists, researchers and experts.  The use of the Track Star program encouraged the pre-service teachers to communicate with the high school students and vice-versa as well as e-mailing and writing members of the state legislature.  (Refer to http://trackstar.hprtec.org/main/display.php3?option=frames&track_id=10943 for a sample Track.) The fourth use of technology is as a “construction kit” for building understanding of ideas.  Students should gain a richer understanding of the issue in general as well as an appreciation for the importance of discussing issues with others.  In using the Track Star program we sought to fosters this discussion both between the teacher education and high school students. 

      Our use of the Track Star assignment addressed four key components to issues-based instruction as identified by Rossi (1998).  First, the issue should be problematic and persistent, such as the concealed weapons and abortion as used in the assignment.  It should be controversial and contain elements of doubt.  Second, students should study an issue in-depth and exploring information from diverse sources.  The Track Star allowed the pre-service students to experience the role of a teacher in gathering the information from many sources and formulating them for the high school students, who would in turn be exposed to these sources in a more focused format.  Third, student centered inquiry should be encouraged and supported by lesson opportunities and assessments.   Rossi states that “the learner’s mental construction of the information is at the heart of instruction.”  Our pre-service teachers experienced this mental activity in creating the tracks.  This will train them for their future in teaching their students in this way.  The skills of identifying bias, recognizing fact v. opinion and the use of primary and secondary sources for evidence are practiced by both the pre-service and high school students in this activity.  The fourth requirement is substantial conversation both among students and between students and the teacher about the issue.  We were able to generate this electronically to some degree between the pre-service and high school students, and we were also able to model this discussion with our pre-service students as we prepared their Tracks. 

                       

Subjects and Setting

 

            In seeking to answer these questions, we patterned our study upon what Smith (1978) and Merriam (1992) would call a bounded system case study, in which we studied a teaching technique incorporated into a pre-service education course entitled “Teaching Kansas Government.”  Working on this project was a professor at the University of Kansas, a doctoral student and teaching assistant a one-semester sabbatical from a high school, a graduate teaching assistant in the technology field and a high school government teacher.

            The pre-service class, “Teaching Kansas Government,” is a one-hour course meeting once a week for two hours.  We had 23 students in either their junior or senior year, who were seeking certification of middle and/or secondary social studies education, initially enrolled in the course of which 20 participated in the study.  One of the assignments for this course in the past was to study an issue facing the Kansas Legislature and write a position paper.  We adapted this project to allow the pre-service teachers to study an issue facing the legislature and create a Track web site that could be visited by high school government students.  The teacher education students considered issue before the Kansas legislature, designed and gave a survey to the high school students.  Based on the survey results, The teacher education students selected seven issues they predicted would be on-going issues as well as interesting to the high school students.  They were broken into groups and charged with creating the Track.  This would include an introductory page explaining the issue and asking some anticipatory questions and several web sites including a copy of a bill proposed to the legislature, newspaper articles, editorials or interest group sponsored web sites favoring or opposing the issue.  Along with each web site, the pre-service students wrote questions prompting both content analysis and critical evaluation of the information on the sites.  These responses were returned to the pre-service students for their evaluation.  Based upon the responses from the high school students, the college students then wrote two letters regarding the issue, one for and one against.  These letters were added to the Track and the high school students read the letters and then responded by explaining which letter they would theoretically sign and reasons for their selection.

            Track Star is a simple to use program that allows the educator to select sites on a given topic and create a “one stop shop” for their students.  This is sponsored by the High Plains Regional Technology in Education Consortium whose web site is http://hprtec.org.

 The word documents created by the pre-service students such as the introductory page, the pictures of the Track creators and their letters were added by our computer technician.   As far as researching their information, this was done electronically as all their sources were from the Internet.  The Information Network of Kansas (http://www.ink.org) provided invaluable information on the house and senate journals, calendars, committee schedules and debates, full text of the bill and an opportunity to track the bill.  It also provides links to all Kansas Legislators.  We also provided the students with several of the prominent newspapers in Kansas that have on-line archives.  In our case the Topeka Capitol Journal was the best source with its “cyber-session” and free archival access. 

 

Data Collection and Analysis

       Triangulated data for this study consisted of observers' notes, pre and post course survey, transcribed interviews, and student work.  We used information from all 20 of our students, therefore no sampling was done. We conducted surveys on the first and final days of the semester probing into their level of comfort using instructional technology, how important they felt it was and their likelihood to use it in their future classrooms.  We also conducted what Rubin & Rubin (1995) call semi-structured, focus group interviews, which were taped and transcribed, after the projects were completed in order that the students “would spark off of one another, suggesting dimensions and nuances of the original problem that any one individual might not have thought of.” (p. 140) We have the actual Tracks that were created by our pre-service students as archival records of their strengths and weaknesses in issues-based instruction and use of instructional technology.  These also serve as record of the high school students’ responses to the issues raised and questions asked by the pre-service teachers.  We have field notes collected through weekly debriefing sessions where we discussed what we were observing in our pre-service students as it related to our perceptions and expectations for the project as compared to what was being produced.  We e-mailed with the high school government teacher weekly and held an open-ended interview with him at the end of the project.

            With so much data collected, the grounded theory (Cresswell 1994) approach worked best.  After much analysis, which moved from narrow and specific to broad and thematic, we see the limitations, but also the great potential of this project.  This approach allowed us to interpret our data from the interviews, surveys, Tracks and field notes throughout the semester, but more thoroughly with the completion of the course.  Each week we wrote observations, concerns and impressions as field notes, and then met to discuss what we had written.  This allowed us to clarify aspects of the project for our students, but also served as valuable first-hand evaluation.  When it came time to formally evaluate the data, we separately interpreted the interview transcripts, tracks and our field notes to determine our personal impressions.  We then met to share our impressions and compare theories.  Thankfully, we consistently agreed in our assessment of what the students and we as instructors did and did not achieve.

 

 

Pre and Post Course Survey Results

     When asked to explain how they would justify to high school students why they needed to study state government, the responses fell into six categories.  A representative comment is used to explain each category.  First, “find out how to change something you do not agree with.”  Second, “to help them understand how important it is to know their rights.”  Third, to understand how “the decisions made in Topeka eventually filter down and affect everyone’s lives.”  Fourth, to “appreciate how the state government works on their behalf.”  Fifth, to understand how “Kansas is completely different in its issues than New York, California, or even Missouri.”  Sixth, how to “make more informed decisions.”  The biggest difference between the answers on the pre and post survey was that the students tended to include more reasons for studying state government in their post survey answer than in the pre survey one.

     When asked to indicate the teaching techniques of most and least interest to them, the responses were fairly similar.  Most students replied that either they wanted to be “as varied as possible” or to use “student-centered approaches such as cooperative learning or discovery learning.”  Lectures and reading from the textbook were the least favored techniques.  Only one respondent on the pre survey and four on the post survey cited the use of any form of instructional technology in their answer. 

     In questions 6 & 7 they were asked to identify the forms of instructional technology of most and least interest to them.  The forms of technology identified ranged from computers and computer games, the Internet and the creation of webpages, specific application programs such as power point and Hyperstudio, and VCR and videos.  There was little difference in their responses between the pre and post survey.  The only change concerned their responses to the forms of instructional technology of least interest with number of people citing the use of the overhead dropping from five to two.  Also, the examples of instructional technology cited increased with answers ranging from Bulletin Board to web page design to Hyperstudio.

     Students were asked to describe a classroom that successfully integrated the use of instructional technology.  In giving directions for the survey students were advised to imagine such a classroom when responding to this question.  On both the pre and post survey their answers fell into one of five categories.  For the first category, several seemed to take the question literally and responded that “I have not seen one firsthand.”  In the second and third categories are those responses that either talked about a classroom, but made no references to technology or mentioned technology in a generic fashion.  A sample response of the first category included “a classroom that incorporates many different types of teaching techniques” and for the second one, “incorporates as many different media as possible.”  The remaining ten respondents cited either one or several examples of a technology and/or its application.  One person, for example, cited the use of “Inspiration which can organize and outline thoughts for a research paper,” while a second person cited putting course material online and “focus[ing] on written sources and back[ing] up main ideas with Internet sources.” 

     While implied in several students’ responses, no one, for example, considered how the technology might enable them to create more student-centered instruction that they cited in question 4.  While this might have been due, in part, to the wording of the question, their responses and our interaction with the students suggested that this was a new question for them.  They seemed to equate instructional technology with hardware and software without considering the implications of the use of it. 

     On the post survey students were asked to state what they thought that we were trying to accomplish and how successful we were at it.   While we were able to group their responses into four categories, some responses contain multiple characteristics and fell into more than one category.  First, several students indicated that the purpose of the project was to provide “access to local information through the World Wide Web.”  Second, a couple of students took this a step further and indicated that the assignment “showed us that there is a vast amount of information on numerous topics…[and how] to put together these ideas.”  Third, several students concluded the project sought to demonstrate how to “evaluate websites…relate [them] to high school students… [and provide them] contrasting views on an issue.”  Finally, most students indicated the project’s purpose was to “give us an insight as to how technology can be incorporated into teaching.”

     What proved insightful for us was what was not said.  Only one student made any reference to the content of their work by commenting on where to find a bill and how to contact a legislator.  Even though most of them concluded that students needed to learn about state government in order to “make more informed decisions” and to understand “how to change…state laws,” the project was not recognized as a vehicle to accomplish these ends.  Also, quite telling was the absence of any comments about designing a way to electronically communicate with students.

Interview Results

     An initial of the survey results enabled us to settle upon the group interview questions that were:

1.      As a student in course, what was the most rewarding aspect of the project? …the most

frustrating aspect?

 

2.  As you are well aware, it is difficult to do an assignment for a course such as this one without actually working with middle or high school students.  One purpose of the project was to enable to you to gain some insight into working with some high school students, in part, by electronically collaborating with them.  A second purpose was to explore ways to use instructional technology when designing assignments for high school students.    Given this, how might you recommend that we change the project to better achieve these purposes?

 

3.  How might you design an assignment for your middle or high school students that either used the Internet and/or enabled the students to collaborate with other students?

 

     In reviewing the transcripts of the interviews we put the students' comments into four categories: frustrations with the assignment; benefits of the assignment; recommendations for improvement of assignment; and, applications of technology in the classroom.  The groups agreed, by and large, upon several frustrations.  What follows is a description of each frustration with comment(s) of the students to support it. 

     First, several groups were disappointed that "not many students chose our topic."  Even though all the teacher education students received the responses to the questions on the Track and to the letter to the legislator, each group obviously was personally invested in their own work and was unhappy if their work was not chosen.  When asked of one group if the high school teacher should assign groups to an issue, one group responded:  "I think so, but then again, it takes away the student choice.  That's an important thing.  Everybody wants that choice."

     Those groups that did receive an adequate number of responses were "really disappointed with the response we got back.  It seemed like they missed the point."    This did cause a couple of groups to turn the question back on themselves by wondering "if we had unrealistic expectations of what most students can do" or if it chose an issue "above their heads."  Interestingly enough, their "unrealistic expectations" might have blinded them to the reality of high school students as indicated by one group that complained that it was like the students "could have written the responses without ever having seen the Track.  They didn't use anything that we had provided to justify their responses."  One group then took this a step further. This group wondering if part of the problem with the responses to their issue was that the group posed "college level analytical questions."  A second group concluded they should "forget follow-up questions."

     A second frustration was the amount of time required to do the assignment, as well as how infrequently the class met.  Since the course was a one-hour course, class session were held once a week for two hours.  Also, a field trip to the legislature and to local district court was built into the course, which meant that two weeks sometimes passed between class sessions.  Added to this was the third frustration, a lack of clarity about the expectations for the assignment.  "Sometimes we were just lost about what we were supposed to be doing and what they were supposed to be doing and how it all fit in."  This reflected the part of the assignment where the emphasis was on building the Track, so that "[O]nce we figured out what the end goals was…it [was] easier to kind of look at it as a larger concept."  One group though realized that "in all fairness to you…this was…new for you."  These two frustrations eloquently spoke to the fact that while we wanted them to think like teachers as they prepared the material for the high school students, they still after all were students in a course who were going to receive a grade on the assignment.  As one group commented:  "[I]t was just an assignment."

      The fourth frustration concerned technical glitches.  One group, for example, had great difficulty with creating its Track due to a problem with the program.  Problems with technology on both the university and the high school end also contributed to their frustration about the lack of responses.  A fifth frustration was searching for sites on the web.  As one group noted:  "It's a little hard to find websites…especially with [an issue] that narrow and subjective."  This frustration arose, in part, because a couple of groups with relatively specific legislative issues, such as making the wearing of seat belts a primary offense, encountered difficulty in realizing the larger issue inherent in wearing a seat belt.  After discussing with this group that the issue came down to public safety versus individual freedom, they encountered more success with the search of the Internet.

     The sixth and most fascinating frustration concerned their knowledge about the students and their contact with them.  One group said that it was frustrated that "[W]e don't have direct access to the kids."  This group went on to say:  "It's kind of like they don't exist and we don't exist."  As a recommendation to improve the course one group even suggested a "field trip…to meet some of these kid…."  Other groups desired more specific information about the student in order, for example, "to cater the questions to what they know."  While six of the seven groups consider direct contact with the students essential, one group though didn't think something like a field trip was necessary since the purpose of the assignment was "like taking a class on-line."

     The benefits of the assignment fell into four categories.  As a counterpoint to the last frustration, most groups felt "that it was really good that we got to actually work with students."  One group, for example, mentioned learning how the high school students "read the questions differently from other people…was a good thing."  How much a group considered working with students a benefit seemed directly related to the level of response that they received from the students.

      Several students cited an increased knowledge about state government and resources as a benefit.  One student remarked that "I created a rapport with different legislators to where I have a whole different outlook."  [While not mentioned during the interviews, several groups took the opportunity during the field trip to visit legislators related to the group's issue.  On the other hand, according to our field notes several students also were frustrated with the failure of certain legislators to respond to numerous e-mail inquiries.]  For another group, following the legislators and bills "was a learning experience," while a member of a second group felt that learning to track a bill "can be beneficial…I learned how to read legislative text."  In addition to learning about state government a third group indicated the state of Kansa website contained "so much information." 

  The third benefit was that the assignment got "us familiar with everything that 's available on the Internet and then to turn around and do it.  I feel really confident now…."  The opportunity to undertake an assignment dependent upon the Internet was beneficial.  "I think that what was rewarding was actually doing it…seeing the finished the product..  …finding the bill and researching the bill and actually having a taste of that is just something that I don't do." 

     Finally, as one group noted: "I think anything that is trying to pull technology into the realm of social studies…is a great idea."  Our modeling the use of instructional technology reinforced what they were learning elsewhere.  One group, for example, noted: "I thought that was good to be seeing [instructional technology] in this class because…he [instructional technology course instructor] harps at us all the time about how [during student teaching] next year it will be mandatory….  Then in all the observations that I have ever done, I've never seen any teacher use any technology whatsoever."  This seemed led one group member to conclude:  "I think it gave me more experience with Track Star.  I just loved doing it last week in 7th grade geography class….  This was the first time that I've ever used technology at all.  It was pretty cool."

     The recommendations provided by the groups mirrored the frustrations voiced by them.  The groups desired "clearer directions and one group suggested "actual mapping out of the web should be on the [course assignment] Track so we could just follow directions."  While cited often when addressing frustrations, the groups seemed to realize that this was the first time and improvements were in the works since overall little attention was paid to it other than a mention.  Concerning the lack of responses from the high school students, several groups suggested pairing up groups of high school students with teacher education students. One group suggested that  "[I]t might be easier to design the questions too if you were assigned to a group of students."  As far as the time issue, one group suggested meeting twice a week, while two other groups recommended that we eliminate one of the two other course requirements and devote more time to this assignment.  No group mentioned deleting any of the course content or eliminating one or both of the course field trips.   

     The overriding recommendation concerned increased information about and contact with the students.  One group mapped out an approach.  They suggested that they meet with the high school students prior to creating the Track  "you could meet with the students…[to learn] what they know about weapon laws.  So when we said, 'what do you think about this?' and they start going off on 'I don't think you should be able to carry around a weapon!' then you could have said 'OK, wait, this is what we are really talking about.'"  Another group asked "if we could have correspondence with the kids on some of these issues.  If they had questions, they could e-mail us.  If I could just talk to them for ten or fifteen minutes, it would be it."  Overall, the groups felt the assignment the assignment "could have been more personal."  Related to more information about the high school students, two groups desired more assistance with crafting questions for the Track and one with more insight into conducting more issue-oriented Internet searches. 

      As with the survey, the groups seemed limited in their response to the question using instructional technology in their classroom.  One student best summed up the prevailing attitude: "I'm not an expert on any of it [instructional technology], but I'm willing to try."  Another student concluded:  "I think that we're expected to use technology a lot now.  It's the basis of everything now, I mean kids know more than I do about it.  We're going into a classroom and going to be expected to do it because all the kids know about it, they use it constantly and to prepare them for the future, you're going to have to do that."  Specific applications were drawn mostly from the course assignment and their suggestions for improving it.  These included: research on the Internet: use of Track Star; tracking a bill using the state website; using a "bounce board"; posting material on the Internet; using e mail to correspond with others; an electronic bulletin board to exchange ideas; and, using Power Point.  Their comments either were very general or addressed very specific applications that lacked much detail.

 

Findings

      Several factors seemed to inhibit the teacher education students from fully realizing the purpose and potential of electronic collaboration.  These factors were drawn from our analysis of the survey results, our observation notes, the interview transcripts, and our review of their Tracks.  The factors were related to three areas:  understanding and use of instructional technology; establishing and implementing an electronic collaborative project; and, designing and implementing an issues-centered assignment.

Instructional Technology:  The students possessed little experience with instructional technology.  During the assignment they tended to focus either on the technical components of the assignment, such as concerns related to using the Track Star program, or on the benefits to them as a teacher education student, such as learning more about Kansas government or how to use internet resources.  They failed to make the leap to consideration of the instructional implications of using such technology in a high school classroom.  When discussing the benefits of using the Internet, for example, their attention was focused mostly on what resources were available to them and, to a lesser degree, the availability of these resources for high school students.  There was no discussion of how use of the Internet might influence how they might teach or how their students might learn.  We also learned that while all the students were experienced with the use of technology, their level of competence varied greatly and, more importantly, few possessed experience with transferring their computer skills to an instructional application. 

     In that regard we felt fairly successful in modeling instructional technology and in introducing them to and instructing them in a new form of technology that they could use in a future classroom setting.  We observed a slight increase in the number of students, for example, who listed Track Star and the Internet as instructional technology they were most interested in using in the future, as evidenced in the related survey question given before and after the course was completed.  However, these types of responses were significantly less than we anticipated.  When describing an ideal classroom using instructional technology, only a few listed Track Star specifically and while several mentioned the Internet there was no discussion of instructional application.  Many of them literally described the physical technological capabilities in the room, such as the number of computers available or spoke in general terms about the use of instructional technology.  More strikingly the number of students who said they had never observed one was almost one-third of the students. We attribute this, in part, to our not explicitly discussing such a classroom throughout the semester and also to a vaguely worded question.  In the future we will have them describe ideal teaching strategies utilizing instructional technologies within a classroom and to draw connections with the course assignment. 

            More direct support for our analysis of the students not grasping the abstract concept of seeing the assignment as a model for their own teaching, is that when asked specifically what they thought our motivation was for using Track Star, they demonstrated very limited perceptions.  The most common responses were: to show us resources for teachers, to teach us to track a bill, to teach us how to contact our legislator, to show us how we could use Track Star in our future teaching, to acquaint us with and evaluate credible websites.  While these were all true and certainly a piece of the project, not a single student indicated we had inspired them with the importance of using instructional technology in their classes. When we inquired as to whether or not the Track Star was successful in helping them achieve the goals they perceived (as they indicated on the survey), the students answered affirmative their goals were limited to the basic knowledge in using Track Star and the Internet.  Their comfort level had been increased and indicated they would be likely to use it in the future.

Collaboration:  The success of the course assignment became less positive, however, if their goals were focused on issues related to the collaboration with the high school students or the structure and time allotted to the project.  They felt frustrated at times in the clarity of instructions and amount of work involved.  In relation to working with the high school students, they expressed a lack of fulfillment and understanding of the students for whom they were making the Tracks.  This showed us that they were focusing on the immediate outcomes of the project as it related to their immediate and individual success.  Overall, we felt their vision of the overall purpose of the assignment was extremely limited as compared to ours.

     The teacher education students realized the advantage of creating the Track and receiving an opportunity to review the written responses of the high school students to the questions and the letters to the legislators.  They learned, for example, that they hadn’t phrased their questions in a way that was perfectly clear to the students and realized changes that they should have made.  The responses to their letters were not as detailed or supported as they thought they should have been so they felt they were given a glimpse into what high school seniors will be like to teach.  They began to question their expectations of high school students.  This seems borne out by the surprise expressed by numerous students about the overall quality of the high school students' responses.  While the high school students wrote first impression type response, for example, to questions about the websites, the teacher education students seemed to expect more formal essay type responses.

            When considering the collaborative nature of the assignment, we were disappointed that the pre-service students did not see more of the benefit of creating a Track Star project to be used by actual high school students.  They were concerned that they didn’t feel connected to the students.  They felt inadequately informed as to the high school students interests, abilities, comprehension levels and motivation.  Many of these aspects of the project were legitimate concerns, however, they seemed overwhelmingly uncomfortable with the fact that they were never in personal contact with the students.  We were surprised that only one student mentioned in the interview that contacting the high school students strictly through the technology seemed to him to be the most significant aspect of the project, and was, therefore not a concern for him.  This philosophical aspect of the project will need to be more heavily stressed in the future.

            In addition to the pedagogical concerns of our pre-service teachers, the collaborative aspect brought along its own set of technical concerns.  The initial concept seemed feasible, but the software, hardware and technical expertise needed became more difficult than we anticipated.  We worked with a relatively new high school (five years old) but their system and ours represented nearly two computer generations.  We also encountered certain issues surrounding student privacy and school board policy involving e-mail access at the high school.  The high school had difficulty scheduling adequate lab time, especially when the Internet ran slowly with so many students accessing the same websites simultaneously.  Also, we as instructors lacked the necessary skills and support system to make the electronic part happen in a timely fashion.  The survey, for example was done using paper copies which we needed to drive to and pick up from the high school and to tabulate by hand because we were unable to guarantee having an interactive version posted on the web soon enough. 

            Besides the high school scheduling conflicts, there were aspects of our college class that made this arrangement difficult.  Because it is a one-hour class, the Kansas Government class met once a week for two hours.  This required the groups to meet a great deal outside of class, therefore communication on the project was probably minimal at best.  The pre-service students also questioned whether the high school teacher followed their instruction.  There was essentially a four-way communication between pre-service students, university instructors, high school teacher and high school students.  However, in spite of all the technical and collaborative concerns, the general consensus of the pre-service students and the high school teacher, as well as ourselves, is that it is a good project and with some adaptations, should be continued.  We are looking forward to the technological changes that will be possible the second time around, which will enhance the interactive capabilities.

Issues-centered Instruction in an Electronic Medium:  Surprisingly to us, the research questions that will require an especially increased focus the issues-centered approach of teaching.  This was an aspect of the project that we assumed would be obvious and “take care of itself.”  We see now, however, that this must become a more central theme to our instruction and more careful attention must be made our pre-service teachers’ strengths and weaknesses.  One reason, for example, for the low level of student responses to some Tracks was due to the lack of clarity of some questions or the tendency to pose a question and then follow it with "Why?". Unless the teacher education students clearly communicate both the issue and what they expect of the high school students, the attempt at electronic collaboration collapses. 

     The Track Star program has the potential to test this teaching ability in a fairly direct way.  In order to create a quality track, the students need to conceptualize what the main issue is and then disseminate the basic questions and/or arguments making up that issue.  The websites selected and questions asked for the track should accentuate each of these major points of view.  As stated before, Rossi argues that issues-centered instruction requires two elements to be successful, both of which need to become more central to our instruction.  First, the teacher must provide enough structure and direction for the students to understand the important points, but not so much structure that the students can’t follow a spontaneous idea or question.  Second, the teacher must generate student involvement that guarantees true understanding, not just gleaning facts.  We feel that while the creation of the Tracks led the pre-service students through these steps, they did not translate to the high school students for two reasons.  The high school teacher was concerned that the Tracks were too long and lost the students’ interest.  They were merely reading the websites to find the answers to the questions, not really thinking deeply about the issues and its consequences.  The other concern was the lag time between interactions between the pre-service and high school students.  The spontaneity required of issues-centered instruction was lost because the students were not communicating with each other in a meaningful time frame.

Besides the technological shortcomings, the main reason our pre-service students struggled with this concept of teaching was that they were unused to issues-centered instruction, and therefore, unused to conceptualizing ideas in that manner.  To cite one example, one group endlessly searched the webs for information on laws related to making the failure to wear a seat belt a primary offense.  While part of the problem resulted from how best to conduct such a search, it also demonstrated a lack of experience of conceptualizing the root issue(s) inherent in the proposed legislation, namely government regulation v. personal autonomy.  Once we considered this as the root issue, we then moved back to the issue as it relates to other traffic laws and came up with motorcycle helmets.  Once this was done, they found sites that enabled them to backdoor the seat belt issue.  This indicated to us that our pre-service students need more concentrated instruction in conceptualizing an issue, breaking apart the basic aspects of that issue and then creating methods to present those issues to students.

The questions written to accompany each site were critical to this project.  The most common mistake was asking all opinion-based questions which did not require the high school students to read the information on the websites in order to answer them.  The other prevalent mistake was asking a question requiring the high school students to read large amounts of text.  The trend was for the high school student to leave those answers blank, either because they could not determine the answer or did not put out the effort to search thoroughly.    We faced a quandary as to how much guidance to provide them.  At what point after reworking the question with the students would the question become our question and not theirs?  With several groups we encountered resistance as we reviewed their selection of sites and made suggestions for modifying their questions.  They seemed to step back and wonder if there was a “right question” to ask. 

Issues-based instruction generally requires and implies a great deal of teacher spontaneity and adjustment - following up on a student response, probing deeper to an answer, clarifying a confusing question, breaking down a complex question into several more focused questions and so on.  This highlighted a dilemma with asynchronous electronic projects - method instructors and students are caught in the middle ground between theoretical or hypothetical application in a university setting and the practical, every day applications that occur during practicum experiences.  While the high school students’ responses to the questions potentially offers the pre-service students insight into problems with their questions, this assumes that the question and accompanying website(s) are viable.  It was not unusual for one or several questions to go unanswered and we were amazed at how this crushed some of our pre-service students.  In our interview with the high school government teacher, he indicated that the students found a number of the questions vague and/or open-ended.  As a result, just as expressed by several groups during the interview, many high school students did not even use several websites when answering the questions.  The challenge becomes how to sharpen the teacher education students' ability to create viable issues-centered Tracks that provoke the thinking of the high school students while building in opportunities for more electronic between the two groups of students. 

 

Suggested Modifications of and Student Preparation for Assignment:

Improve the collaborative nature of the non-electronic features of the assignment:  For example, we need to provide the high school teacher more direction, as well as more opportunity to offer feeback to the teacher education students about her/his observations of the high school students’ work on the Track.  Since the teacher education concluded that the opportunity to review the high school students’ work as a significant feature of the assignment, they need more information to help explain how and why the high school students made their responses.  The high school students, for example, ran out of time in the computer lab to get all the way through most of the Tracks, especially those who asked questions that forced the high school students to read carefully as opposed to some which asked more opinion-type questions that could have been answered without necessarily reading the web sites carefully.  Therefore, the high school teacher needs to review sample Tracks in order to gauge the amount of time necessary for the high school students to complete what is expected of them. 

         Redesign format of the Track:  We would suggest limiting the web sites to one neutral, two pro and two con.  Many of our Tracks had up to eleven web sites and we feel that this is too many to be effective, both because of time issues as well as “overkill.” 

Make possible a quicker schedule:  Another criticism regarding the responses from the high school students was that there was too much lag time from when the projects were handed in until they actually heard back from the high school students.  We are unable to have the high school students respond to the questions or letters via e-mail this time around.  We hope to change this for the next time and feel that the turn-around time could be cut to one week.  The pre-service students would hand-in the project one day, the high school students would have between two and three days to work with the Tracks and post their responses on the web.  That would give our college students around 48 hours to review the responses and come to the next week’s class ready to discuss the student responses to their Tracks and/or letters. This time frame does not add up to seven days, we’re trying to cut it to five to account for a two-day weekend.

            More systematic/quicker interaction between two groups of students:  One other way to increase the interaction between the high school and pre-service teachers would be to establish a type of electronic bulletin board where the groups who created the Tracks could correspond on a more day to day basis with the groups using them.  They could clarify the wording of questions, ask follow up or re-directional questions of the high school students when necessary and could engage in meaningful dialogue about the issue itself. 

            Address question of personal contact:  Besides the electronic communication, many of the pre-service students felt unfulfilled in that they never had direct contact with the students.  They expressed a desire to go to the school and either meet with the students in an attempt to learn more about the type of students for whom they would be creating the Tracks or on the day that the Track Star assignment was presented so they would be able to explain it themselves.  We’re not sure how we feel about this.  We certainly could do this, being the high school we worked with is only fifteen miles away, but one of our original goals was to create an environment where any school could align themselves with a university pre-service class, regardless of geographic location.  If we include face to face interaction, we have automatically eliminated schools that are not located near a university, and therefore, limited the scope of the impact of this project.  We are more inclined to attempt to increase the turn-around time for the responses, create an electronic bulletin board arrangement and possibly videotape the high school students or video conference if possible. 

            Develop certain issue-centered related skills among teacher education students:  We need to spend time with the students both in how to conceptualize an issue for themselves and how to prepare an issue for students.  It is necessary, for example, not only to explain the reasons for the design of the Track as mentioned earlier and to model several examples, but also to discuss them within the context of the issue itself.   On the latter one, we also need to address the use of questions and the importance posing appropriate, specific, yet challening questions for an on-line format since their choice of questions is what is most likely to generate higher level thinking among the high school students.

            More explicit discussion of instructional technology:  To better enable teacher education students to realize the purpose and potential of instructional technology, we need to be more blatant not only about its integration into a course assignment but as a unique field in and of itself.  We need to more explicitly model and then discuss the modeling in our course.

 

Conclusions

 

1. Despite the purpose of the assignment to explore the feasibility of electronic collaboration between teacher education and high school students, the teacher education students still felt a need to put a face on the students. The use of technology in such a collaborative effort needed to make the interaction more real, spontaneous, meaningful, and timely.

2.  Our use of instructional technology came across at times as confusing and frustrating.  This was due to our limited experience with certain types of technology, a limited support system, the newness of such an assignment, and the teacher education students' lack of familiarity and experience with instructional technology.

3.  The teacher education students' perception of the effectiveness of our attempt at electronic collaboration was directly related to the amount and quality of response from the high school students' to a group's work, even though each teacher education student received all of the responses by the high school students.  In turn, the teacher education concluded that their review of the responses resulted in a greater insight into the high school students.

4.  Requiring teacher education students to design and post on-line an issues-centered assignment for high school students necessitates the need not only to provide more instruction on how to conceive of issues and to design instruction around them, but also the implications of interacting with on-line instructional material.

5.  Time to reflect upon the key elements, i.e. instructional technology, collaboration with a high school government classes, and issues-centered instruction, was a critical, missing element.  We expected students to acquire understandings in each of these areas without really offering them the opportunities to do so.

 

A dilemma, a question, and a thought

 

     As we approach a new semester with the course, we confront a fascinating dilemma. If we seek to model an assignment that uses instructional technology, an issues-centered approach, and a collaborative effort between teacher education and high school students, do we dramatically downplay the content focus of the course to provide the time necessary for students to thoughtfully consider all facets of the assignment?  The study revealed that our students were ill-equipped to address these areas, yet we also realize that their understanding of and ability to teach state government is modest at best.

    As we grappled with this modest attempt at an electronic, collaborative project between teacher education and high school students, we encountered this question - in what situations is such electronic collaboration compatible with issues-centered instruction? Does the limited spontaneity of the interaction between the teacher education and high school students, for example, collide with the need for a more free flowing discussion as endorsed by an issues-centered approach?

     Finally, boon or boondoggle?  Unquestionably for us such an approach is a boon, but also is a path that initially serves to raise more questions about how best to proceed than answers.  We eagerly take this path since the possibilities offer great opportunity for the growth of our teacher education and high school students.

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Appendix A:

 

Description of Course Assignment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overview of Assignment

 

1.      Selecting the Issues.  The university students brainstorm issues before the state legislature and consider those that might possess the greatest appeal for high school students.  Based on the discussion of the list generated by the brainstorm session, the university students narrow the list to 12-15 issues.  A survey is created that provides a brief description of each issue and that asks the user, i.e. the high school student, to rank each issue in order of greatest interest, with “1” as the one of greatest interest.  (Refer to the survey constructed for the 2000 Kansas legislative session.  This survey is posted on the Tracking a Legislative Issue website.  The high school students complete the on-line survey and the university students tabulate the results of the survey.

 

2.      Researching the Issues: Based on the survey results, groups of university students are assigned a legislative issue to research.  Using the outline provided (refer to Outline for