Dennis Dicks

Planning for Integrating Teaching Technologies

Teaching technologies offer pedagogical advantages which vary with specific contexts. Successfully integrating them hinges on clearly identifying pedagogical goals, then planning for the many decisions that technological change demands. In examining different ways of organizing this process, we have applied planning tools from other domains - Fault Tree Analysis and Capability Maturity Modeling- at the school and college levels. In another approach, we have examined attempts to broadly model the integration process at the university level. Our studies demonstrate that the use of a variety of tools and techniques can render the integration of teaching technologies more systematic.

An empirical evaluation of topic map search capabilities in an educational context

This paper reports on an investigation focusing on improving the reliability and efficiency in current database-oriented search-and-retrieval mechanisms in e-learning applications through the use of topic map technology (ISO/IEC 13250). The development of our topic maps is grounded in a theory of cognitive information-processing and information retrieval. We outline the development, implementation and evaluation of a Web-based topic map designed to help graduate educational technology students search for online resources in preparation for an essay assignment. Sources of data include (a) hard data drawn from observations, tracking of search-related steps, and results of searches; and (b) soft data concerning judgments of utility of information and users understandings of the search process. The results indicate that, in comparison to search engines, topic maps enable students to provide more precise answers to questions. In addition, the topic map produced higher recall than the search engine employed in our study.