Sarah Katherine Howard

Risk-aversion: understanding teachers’ resistance to technology integration

Teachers who do not integrate technology are often labelled as ‘resistant’ to change. Yet, considerable uncertainties remain about appropriate uses and actual value of technology in teaching and learning, which can make integration and change seem risky. The purpose of this article is to explore the nature of teachers’ analytical and affective risk perceptions, and how these influence decisions to integrate technology in their teaching practice. These ideas are explored through an in-depth qualitative analysis of teacher interviews focusing on experiences with, and beliefs about, technology and teaching. Results suggest decisions to integrate technology in teaching are influenced by negative affective responses to technology, general risk-aversion in teaching, and the perceived value of technology in teaching. The risk analysis framework and findings presented in this paper can be used to support communication with teachers to minimise perceived risks and, where appropriate, help support future technology use.

Affect and acceptability: Exploring teachers’ technology-related risk perceptions

Educational change, such as technology integration, involves risk. Teachers are encouraged to “take risks”, but what risks they are asked to take and how do they perceive these risks? Developing an understanding of teachers’ technology-related risk perceptions can help explain their choices and behaviours. This paper presents a way to understand the complex weighing of teaching and technology values when teachers’ choose, or choose not to, integrate technology in their teaching, through an investigation of technology-related risk perceptions. Findings suggest that teachers, regardless of personal and professional technology use, perceive the same risks when considering technology integration in the classroom; but there was considerable variance in the acceptability of these risks. Acceptability was strongly related to teachers’ affect for technology and value of technology in teaching. The study employs the semantic image of “cost–benefit” as framework to identify and discuss teachers’ rationales supporting their choice to integrate technology in their teaching.

Seeing the system: Dynamics and complexity of technology integration in secondary schools

This paper introduces system dynamics modeling to understand, visualize and explore technology integration in schools, through the development of a theoretical model of technology-related change in teachers’ practice. Technology integration is a dynamic social practice, within the social system of education. It is difficult, if not nearly impossible, for the human mind to fully conceptualize complex social systems. Therefore, it is necessary to use conceptual frameworks designed to examine these phenomena. The model presented in this paper draws together known factors of integration and findings from a large-scale technology initiative in Australia to create a preliminary casual-loop model of technology integration in secondary school teaching. The preliminary model illustrates feedback and multiple effects in the system of education. The use of system models can potentially support a shift from focusing on teachers’ technology use to student outcomes, and the feedback loop of students’ technology use on teachers’ practice. Implications for technology integration, teacher change and learning are discussed.

Free for All: A Case Study Examining Implementation Factors of One-to-One Device Programs.

Despite significant investment in school one-to-one device programs, little is known about which aspects of program implementation work and why. Through a comparison of two implementation models, adopter-diffusion and saturation, and using existing data from the One Laptop per Child Australia laptop program, we explored how factors of implementation may affect device diffusion, learning and educational outcomes, and program sustainability in schools. In this article we argue that more focused research into implementation of one-to-one device programs, moving beyond comparisons of “devices versus without devices,” is needed to provide reliable data to inform future program funding and advance this area of research.

Driving curriculum and technological change to support writing in the engineering disciplines

Written communication skills are essential for engineers in the workplace, yet developing these skills in undergraduate engineering continues to be an issue. Curriculum innovation can be increased through the use of online writing tools that are designed to support integration of written tasks in engineering courses, along with the appropriate leadership communication and integration in the faculty teaching culture. Moreover, research has shown that there is a need to incorporate writing activities to enhance both learning and communication. The overall aim of this project is to create an integration model in collaboration with leadership, learning support and academics at several Australian universities. The integration model is based on a risk communication framework, which will support the use of engineering-specific online writing tools and drive curriculum innovation in undergraduate engineering. To create this model data is being collected from academics and students on use of the online writing tools.

Persuasive Systems Design features in Promoting Medication Management for consumers

Medication safety continues to be a growing concern in the healthcare industry. Providing medication information to consumers and supporting selfmanagement would help to reduce medication errors and to increase medication adherence. This paper reviews the persuasive systems design features used in current medication management applications for consumers. A database search was conducted to identify relevant articles, which were then reviewed using the Persuasive Systems Design model as a framework for analysis. The results highlighted the applicability of these features for the medication management information systems available to consumers. Primary task support and Dialogue support categories were highly cited in the articles. System credibility support category was moderately cited and the Social support category was cited least in the reviewed articles. Tailoring, monitoring and reminder features have been considered more than the other features in previous studies.

Sustainability and Scalability in Educational Technology Initiatives: Research-Informed Practice

Although a positive impact of technology interventions on educational practice and student outcomes has been shown in many previous research settings, the use of technology in classrooms and schools is still often superficial and not meeting the potential of technology as envisioned by education reformers and researchers in the field. However, when technology projects have been implemented successfully in educational practice and shown valuable impacts, sustainability within similar contexts is not guaranteed—let alone scaling the initiative to other broader contexts. This article builds on the discussions of the EDUsummIT 2017 Thematic Working Group 9 (TWG9) and the summary report that captured the outcome of those discussions. The goal of TWG9 was to help inform policy and practice by providing insights into key factors that contribute to scalability and sustainability of educational technology integration and impact.

Exploring Engineering instructors’ views about writing and online tools to support communication in Engineering

ABSTRACT To be fully prepared for the professional workplace, Engineering students need to be able to effectively communicate. However, there has been a growing concern in the field about students’ preparedness for this aspect of their future work. It is argued that online writing tools, to engage numbers of students in the writing process, can support feedback on and development of writing in engineering on a larger scale. Through interviews and questionnaires, this study explores engineering academics’ perceptions of writing to better understand how online writing tools may be integrated into their teaching. Results suggest that writing is viewed positively in the discipline, but it is not believed to be essential to success in engineering. Online writing tools were believed to support a larger number of students, but low knowledge of the tools limited academics’ understanding of their usefulness in teaching and learning. Implications for innovation in undergraduate teaching are discussed.

A Structure Optimization Algorithm of Neural Networks for Pattern Learning from Educational Data

Digital technology integration is recognized as an important component in education reformation. Learning patterns of educators’ and students’ perceptions of, beliefs about and experiences in using digital technologies through self-reported questionnaire data is straightforward but difficult, due to the huge-volume, diversified and uncertain data. This chapter demonstrates the use of fuzzy concept representation and neural network to identify unique patterns via questionnaire questions. Fuzzy concept representation is used to quantify survey response and reform response using linguistic expression; while neural network is trained to learn the complex pattern among questionnaire data. Furthermore, to improve the learning performance of the neural network, a novel structure optimization algorithm based on sparse representation is introduced. The proposed algorithm minimizes the residual output error by selecting important neuron connection (weights) from the original structure. The efficiency of the proposed work is evaluated using a state-level student survey. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs favorably compared to traditional approaches.

The Effect of Delivery Method of Instructional Materials to Meet Learning Goals and Objectives in Online and Open Learning Environments

Technology continues to change rapidly and grow exponentially year after year especially in the area of communication technology. One of the significant changes is the affordance of communication and distribution networks supporting these technologies. Thus, with Internet access becoming ubiquitous for a large part of our population, we live in a time where information is available anytime, anywhere, and from a multitude of devices. There is potential for unprecedented access, through these networks, to deliver knowledge and materials to learners through increasingly portable and mobile devices. Increased access and portability create a number of predictable and unpredictable ways learners can engage with knowledge and course materials. New possibilities for content delivery present a number of unique implications for learning and thus presenting a number of considerations for learning and course designers.