Tjeerd Plomp

Design Approaches and Tools in Education and Training

In our contemporary learning society, expectations about the contribution of education and training continue to rise. Moreover, the potential of information and communication technology (ICT) creates many challenges. These trends affect not only the aims, content and processes of learning, they also have a strong impact on educational design and development approaches in research and professional practices. Prominent researchers from the Netherlands and the USA present their latest findings on these issues in this volume. The major purpose of this book is to discuss current thinking on promising design approaches and to present innovative (computer-based) tools. The book aims to serve as a resource and reference work that will stimulate advancement in the field of education and training. It is intended to be useful in academic settings as well as for professionals in design and development practices.

Information technology and gender equality: a contradiction in terminis?

Using the data source of the Computers in Education (Comped) study, carried out under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the status of gender and computer use in education in a number of countries has been investigated. The findings in this study indicate that the concern about gender equity expressed by many educational practitioners are right. Females know less about information technology, enjoy using the computer less than male students, and perceive more problems with software. Possible causes of this are differences in parental support, access to computers, amount of female role models and activities carried out with computers in school. Gender differences are being found both outside and inside schools. This means that both teachers and parents have to be made aware of this as a starting point for proper action. Schools rarely have a policy concerning gender issues; and when it exists, it is not directed to parents as well. The U.S.A. is the most ?gender equal? country of the countries examined.

Motivating students at a distance: The case of an international audience

Distance education is rapidly becoming an increasingly important and even preferred method of instructional delivery for many educational contexts. In spite of the many student benefits surrounding distance learning programs, however, a great number of distance learning courses suffer from extremely low student completion rates when compared to their traditional classroom-based counterparts. Although it may be tempting to point to instructional content and methods as the source of low distance learning completion rates, it can be shown that it is often motivational problems, and not the instruction itself, which lay at the root of these statistics. This article describes the motivational issues encountered by a representative group of international distance education students, as well as a specific, low-cost motivational intervention that assisted the instructors of these students to improve completion rates by providing effective and efficient motivational student support.

The integration of computer use in education

There is an increasing awareness that disappointing experiences with the introduction of computers in education are a consequence of insufficiently taking into account factors that are crucial when introducing change in educational settings. Many of the problems in the literature show great similarity with the kind of problems often experienced in curriculum implementation. In this context the endeavors to make computer use an integrated part of classroom activities are analyzed. Emphasis will be laid on the interaction between teachers and courseware; elements for a more effective strategy for the integration of computer use in educational practice will be presented, with special attention to the design of support materials as an essential part of courseware.

Some gender issues in educational computer use: results of an international comparative survey

In the framework of the Computers in Education international study of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), data have been collected concerning the use of computers in 21 countries. This article examines some results regarding the involvement of women in the implementation and use of computers in the educational practice of elementary, lower secondary and upper secondary education in participating countries. The results show that in many countries computer use in schools is dominated by men. Female teachers have less regard for their skills and knowledge than their male colleagues have for their own skills and knowledge. In all countries (except for the French-speaking countries) less than half of the schools had a special policy for the promotion of equal opportunities for boys and girls with regard to computer use. This school policy mostly consists of retraining a female teacher to become a computer science teacher, or a female teacher being selected as computer coordinator.

SITES2006—International comparative survey of pedagogical practices and ICT in education

This paper describes the rationale, conceptualization and design of the Second International Information Technology in Education Study (SITES). SITES is a survey of schools and teachers of their pedagogical practices, their use of ICT and their readiness for changing their teaching–learning towards the demands of the 21st century. The study will take place under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and the data collection is planned for 2006; therefore the project is called ‘SITES2006’.

Exploring the Mechanisms through which Computers Contribute to Learning

Even though it has been established that the incorporation of computers into the teaching and learning process enhances student performance, the underlying mechanisms through which this is accomplished have been largely unexplored. The present study aims to shed light on this issue. Two groups of 10 secondary school students were tutored by their geography teacher in how to solve correlational problems. Students in the one group used paper and pencil while students in the other group used a computer spreadsheet. All tutorials were videotaped, transcribed verbatim, and subsequently all transcripts were segmented and coded. The mean frequencies for teacher and student behaviours between the two conditions were then compared. Results indicated that teacher behaviour in the two conditions differed in terms of error feedback, factual and conceptual questions asked, regulation of students, and task management. Regarding student behaviours, the findings showed that the two conditions differed in terms of task engagement, goal setting, and explanations given. On the basis of these findings the issue of mechanisms is discussed and three main implications for the teaching and learning practice are drawn.

Introduction of computers in education: state of the art in eight countries

In 1989, the IEA Computers in Education study collected data on computer use in elementary, lower- and upper secondary education in 22 countries. This paper presents some preliminary results for lower secondary education in Belgium-Flemish, Belgium-French, France, Greece, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S.A. The major questions that are addressed are related to the availability and the use of hard- and software, the problems experienced in introducing computers in schools and the attitudes of the principals towards computers. The results show that the number of schools equipped with computers and the number of computers available in schools increased dramatically over the past few years. Despite this fact, computers still are only used by a limited number of teachers, and mainly for teaching students about computers; the integration of computers in existing subjects is still limited. The major problems experienced in educational practice are the lack of sufficient software of high quality and insufficiently trained teachers.

Study design and methodology

A considerable body of recent literature describes the profound changes occurring as societies move from agricultural and industrial economies to a highly interconnected global knowledge economy (see, for example, Dertouzos, 1997; Tapscott & Williams, 2006). In the industrial age, the pace at which new knowledge evolved was relatively slow and a major role of schooling was to ensure that students mastered a well-defined set of knowledge and skills. However, with the advent of the 21st century, people are finding such abilities no longer sufficient when facing the everyday realities of the workplace. These realities demand making rapid decisions based on incomplete information when tackling novel situations, an aptitude for working through a plethora of information of varying levels of accuracy when tackling ill-defined problems, and the capacity to collaborate with a diverse team that may be distributed globally when endeavoring to accomplish personal and organizational goals (Peters, 1997). A strong theme running through these projects is that curricular and pedagogical changes need to take place if schools are to successfully help students develop these learning outcomes. The role of ICT is envisaged not simply as a technical skill or as a means of improving learning effectiveness but also as a way of transforming the goals and processes of education. In fact, there is increasing evidence that young people who have always been surrounded by and interacted continuously with ICT develop a different approach to learning and knowledge management from students who have not had this opportunity (Pedro, 2006). The OECD is conducting a study on these “new millennium learners” to examine the challenges they pose and the extent to which their emergence will contest prevailing views of interpersonal communications, knowledge management, and learning within schools.

Pedagogical practices and ICT use around the world: Findings from the IEA international comparative study SITES2006

This special issue presents a number of secondary analyses of data collected in 2006 in the Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES 2006). This study is the last of a number of international comparative surveys on information and communication technology (ICT) in education conducted under auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). After summarizing the aims and scope of previous studies, the aims of SITES 2006 as well as key aspects of the research design are summarized. This is followed by a brief abstract of each of the articles included in this special issue. Three articles discuss international findings of the study and also findings from three participating education systems (South Africa, Denmark, Hong Kong SAR) are presented.