Learning Generation Evaluation

In order to evaluate the use of information technology in the Teacher Education Program, data were gathered to establish baseline measures of faculty and student familiarity with the use of technology in general within three target courses at the University of Kansas. The three courses chosen were those determined to be courses that most individuals just entering the education program would be likely to enroll Additionally, faculty members teaching undergraduate courses, and graduate students were interviewed.

Data was collected to help determine, familiarity with information technology, opinions regarding advantages/disadvantages, opinions about how familiar they believe teacher educators/graduate students should know about the use of information technology, barriers present or resources available, personal teaching style, and the amount of information technology they use in their classrooms.

Interview data yielded several interesting findings:

Most faculty and graduate student instructors defined information technology as any type of technology designed to disseminate information and assist in teaching and learning, ranging from overhead projectors to websites or software packages produce to aid learning.

Common advantages of using information technology in courses included: increase and ease of access to information, increase in innovativeness/variety of teaching methods, increase the likelihood of collaborative projects, and increase in communication between instructor, students, and potentially parents.

Common disadvantages included: potential for abuse and misuse (e.g., adolescents can use it to access pornography), time consuming, lack of knowledge and an unwillingness from some instructors to learn, lack of technical help to troubleshoot problems that may arise during presentations, and evaluation of the quality of information available.

In general, most individuals interviewed stated that they expected graduates of the teacher education program to be able to be competent with basic skills of computer use, know how to conduct searches and evaluate the quality and credibility of the information found on the internet, know how to access the different search engines, understand and be able to use information technology as a instructional tool, and finally be able to integrate its use within the course and use it as a means to facilitate learning (i.e., should enhance the effectiveness of the teacher as opposed to being used as a crutch).

Faculty member and students teachers tend to agree that the best way to increase the use of information technology into the teacher education program is to integrate its use within existing courses through assignments that make the use of that make the use of technology a necessary component of the assignment. For example, many have suggested that in order for future teachers to use information technology in their courses it is first necessary for current instructors to effectively model the use of information technology via having active websites for their courses and making use of teaching software, or creating assignments that force students to use technology to establish collaborative networks with other institutions.

There is much variability in the how much different instructors use information technology within their courses, ranging from instructors who claim they do not use information technology beyond emailing and keeping track of grades to other instructors who use technology extensively and integrate its use throughout the course (e.g., websites, online syllabus and assignments, etc).

Most individuals identified barriers to the use of information technology as: lack of knowledge and time, no incentive for many instructors to learn, lack of usefulness in learning to use information technology for students because many times the sites they will teach at will not have the equipment, lack of equipment, and lack of technical support for initial learning. Resources included: IDS, CTE, access to graduate students who are knowledgeable about programs, etc., and technical support for troubleshooting.