Matching Items (3)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Educational technology
Description
The use of educational technologies as a tool to improve academic achievement continues to increase as more technologies becomes available to students. However, teachers are entering the classroom not fully prepared to integrate technology into their daily classroom teaching because they have not been adequately prepared to do so. Teacher preparation programs are falling short in this area because educational technology and the role of technology in the classroom is seen as an extra component to daily teaching rather than a central one. Many teacher preparation programs consist of one stand-alone educational technology course that is expected to prepare teachers to integrate technology in their future classrooms. Throughout the remainder of the program, the teachers are not seeing educational technologies modeled in their other core courses, nor are they getting the hands-on interaction necessary to become more confident in using these technologies with their future students. The purpose of this study was to examine teachers' views of educational technology in the classroom from those enrolled in a graduate program. The study consisted 74 first- and second-year teachers who were enrolled an alternative teacher preparation program. Thirty-four of the teachers received the Integrating Curriculum and Technology (iCAT) intervention and the remaining 40 teachers were part of the control group. Each teacher completed a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire and 23 of the 74 teachers participated in one of three focus group interviews. Additional data from the teachers' course instructors were gathered and analyzed to compliment the focus group and quantitative data. Results showed that iCAT participants' scores for confidence in using technology and efficacy for using educational technology increased at a faster rate than the control group participants' scores. Similarly, confidence in using technology, perceptions about integrating technology in the classroom, and efficacy for using educational technology could be predicted by the amount of hands-on interaction with technology that the teachers received during their graduate course. The discussion focuses on recommendations for infusing technology throughout teacher preparation programs so that teachers have the tools to prepare their students to use a variety of technologies so that their students can be better prepared to complete in today's workforce.
ContributorsKisicki, Todd (Author) / Wetzel, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Bitter, Gary (Thesis advisor) / Buss, Ray (Committee member) / Savenye, Wilhelmina (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Virtual Patient Simulations (VPS) are web-based exercises involving simulated patients in virtual environments. This study investigates the utility of VPS for increasing medical student clinical reasoning skills, collaboration, and engagement. Many studies indicate that VPS provide medical students with essential practice in clinical decision making before they encounter real life patients. The utility of a recursive, inductive VPS for increasing clinical decision-making skills, collaboration, or engagement is unknown. Following a design-based methodology, VPS were implemented in two phases with two different cohorts of first year medical students: spring and fall of 2013. Participants were 108 medical students and six of their clinical faculty tutors. Students collaborated in teams of three to complete a series of virtual patient cases, submitting a ballpark diagnosis at the conclusion of each session. Student participants subsequently completed an electronic, 28-item Exit Survey. Finally, students participated in a randomized controlled trial comparing traditional (tutor-led) and VPS case instruction methods. This sequence of activities rendered quantitative and qualitative data that were triangulated during data analysis to increase the validity of findings. After practicing through four VPS cases, student triad teams selected accurate ballpark diagnosis 92 percent of the time. Pre-post test results revealed that PPT was significantly more effective than VPS after 20 minutes of instruction. PPT instruction resulted in significantly higher learning gains, but both modalities supported significant learning gains in clinical reasoning. Students collaborated well and held rich clinical discussions; the central phenomenon that emerged was "synthesizing evidence inductively to make clinical decisions." Using an inductive process, student teams collaborated to analyze patient data, and in nearly all instances successfully solved the case, while remaining cognitively engaged. This is the first design-based study regarding virtual patient simulation, reporting iterative phases of implementation and design improvement, culminating in local theories (petite generalizations) about VPS design. A thick, rich description of environment, process, and findings may benefit other researchers and institutions in designing and implementing effective VPS.
ContributorsMcCoy, Lise (Author) / Wetzel, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Ewbank, Ann (Thesis advisor) / Simon, Harvey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
As students gain access to personally-owned Mobile Communication Devices (MCDs), schools have begun to embrace MCDs as mobile-learning (m-learning) teaching and learning tools. A research gap currently exists for the innovation of m-learning with student-owned devices, which this study attempts to fill by answering the following Research Question: What are the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Levels of Use of teachers at a high-performing, high SES suburban high school? To answer this question, I answered 5 sub questions: (1) What instructional decisions did BYOD user-level teachers make with regards to m-learning? (2) How did teachers collaborate on BYOD with colleagues during implementation? (3) How did teachers participate in voluntary professional development for BYOD and m-learning? (4) Was there a difference in Levels of Use between early career and veteran teachers? (5) What barriers to successful implementation did teachers at this school report? To answer these questions, I conducted a Levels of Use interview with 2-3 teachers from each academic department (n=28), at a school that was in its third year of BYOD implementation, as well as observed 18 of the teachers during instruction. I triangulated data from a first and second interview with observation data, and analyzed these data sets to profile the different Levels of Use among the teachers, and present recommendations for research and practice. I rated all participants between Level 0: non-use and Level IVB: refinement; no teachers in this study were above Level IVB. The findings indicate that teachers made instructional decisions based on their Level of Use, and although they did not participate in ongoing professional development specific to BYOD, they did work with others based on their Level of Use. Few teachers participated in voluntary professional development, and cited time as a factor. This study also finds that personal experience with technology and lesson planning for student-centered learning is a greater indicator of successful BYOD implementation than age or teaching experience. Finally, the most commonly reported barriers to successful implementation of BYOD were time, equity/access, and student behavior.
ContributorsRoss, Kyle (Author) / Danzig, Arnold (Thesis advisor) / Wetzel, Keith (Committee member) / Fourlis, Andi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013