|
|
Assessment tools - Activities and Formal Studies
|
|
Before we get to the survey templates, we need to explain some of the underlying ideas to help you use them productively.
Computers and the Web do not, by themselves, cause people to learn differently than before. Of course, neither do paper or electricity. Yet paper, electricity, and (probably) computers are all vital to the way you teach your courses. The point is that the learning outcomes are determined by the choices we make every day about how to use paper, electricity, and computers. Paper used one way can help students learn, while used another way it might confuse them. Because the same thing is true about computers, digital hardware, software, the Web and other modern technologies, we need to focus on the activities that make use of the technology. We've found many technology-supported activities that cut across the case studies and vignettes created for this Web site, such as modeling, simulation, visualization, computer and numerical analysis, locating and evaluating information, and real-world data analysis. The faculty we've interviewed have also praised the value of other, more generic teaching-learning activities such as faculty-student interaction, collaboration among students, attracting students to spend more time studying, and the like.
To make this same point about activities in a different way, it used to be common for people to ask, "If we use this new form of technology, how much better will people learn?" I call that a dyadic question because it has only two elements: the technology and the outcome. But to provide a sensible, useful answer to such a question, you must specify at least three elements:
- One or more technologies (and possibly other elements of context)
- One or more activities that happen with the help of the technology
- One or more outcomes of those activities.
We call this activity-centered view of technology a triad because it has three elements. If you'd like a slightly longer version of this explanation, click here for a narrated slideshow; you'll need Real Player to hear and see it.
If we are together on this notion about the centrality of what people choose to do with technology, we can take a look at three types of study that can really be worth the effort for courses or departments such as yours. The rest of this tutorial is devoted to showing how to do each of them.
|
