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The Promise and Challenges of Integrating Interactive Technologies into University Pedagogy
Excerpted from the Campus Technology 2007 conference proceedings for the session, "Realizing Your Smart Classroom Dream"
8/22/2007
Interaction
Using educational technologies in interactive ways is challenging because it demands better curriculum design and course production. Significant time and effort must be invested in mastering the technology and in converting existing courses into interactive experiences. There may be substantial initial instructor effort required and almost certainly additional efforts required of learners, but the promise and payoff comes in the form of a much better overall learning experience for all stakeholders. Technology managers are tasked with offsetting as much of that effort as possible by implementing well designed technology programs, selecting appropriate technologies, and providing a variety of avenues for end user support. The first step toward accomplishing this is to gain an understanding of the relationship between interactive educational experiences and educational technology.
An interactive experience might be defined simply as allowing a user to make a change in the state of a system. However, from an educational technology perspective an interactive experience would be employed to promote change in the state of the user's mind. This is an important distinction and the fact that the state of the system changed may be irrelevant. Educational technology can be broadly defined as knowledge applied systematically to instruction and can be viewed as both physical technology (i.e. assorted classroom tools, books, computers, software, computer networks) and communications media (i.e. lectures, writing, drama, instructional design, symbol systems).
Educational technology, therefore, allows for two basic types of interactive activities: technology-based (human-machine) and media-based (human-human). Human-machine interaction might involve interactive whiteboards, tablet and pen display interfaces, document cameras, and other hardware-based tools (i.e. keyboards and mice) and allows instructors or students access to learning materials, in potentially novel ways, by using a technology interface. Human-human interaction can occur in three distinct ways:
- Interaction between the learner and the originator of the teaching material;
- Interaction between the learner and an instructor who mediates between the original material and the learner by providing guidance and assessment; and
- Interaction between the learner and other learners.
Interactive educational technologies might provide simple transparent access to a variety of instructional content, serve to remove distance or time constraints by providing a channel of communication for learners, be employed in ways that directly challenge a students' existing knowledge or abilities, or be used to push personalized content to learners just when they need it most. There are many potential approaches to using interaction in education and educational technologies will vary widely in both how they encourage interaction and provide an educational benefit. Successfully generating added value by integrating interactive technologies into university pedagogy turns out to involve a highly sophisticated set of considerations.[Editor's note: Proceedings from the Campus Technology 2007 annual summer conference are being added to the conference proceedings site. You can find the full text of Randy Jackson's session proceedings there, along with the proceedings of many other conference session presenters.]
Randy Jackson, Ph.D., is Assistant Director of Classroom Support Services at the University of Washington-Seattle. He has 18 years of technology management experience at the university where he also earned his Ph.D. in Educational Technology.
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