How to Teach Teachers to Teach with New Media

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How to Teach Teachers to Teach with New Media
Initial and Further Teacher Education in a
Collaborative Learning Environment
2nd National Conference POSKOLE 2003 on Computers
in Education Lazne Sedmihorky, 23 25 April 2003
Peter Gorny Carl von Ossietzky University of
Oldenburg
Projekt eL3 eLernen und eLehren in Lehrer-Aus-
und Weiterbildung
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Contents

• The situation in 2000 (when proposing the
  project)
• The project concepts content and methodology
• The project realization
• First evaluation results and participants
  opinions

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The situation in 2000 (when proposing the
project)

• Approximately 75 of all teachers in Germany (gt
  700,000) do not use a computer for teaching or
  preparation of teaching material.
• Only 5 use computers in the classroom.
• Only 2 use the internet in the classroom
  (Estimated by Federal educational
  administrations, 2000)
• The Federal organisation of the school system
  leads to a great diversity and little influence
  for the Federal government.
• But singular Federally funded projects might help
  a little ....

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The eL3 Project Consortium
www.eL3.de

• Friedrich-Alexander-University of
  Erlangen-Nuernberg
• FIM-NeuesLernen
• Dr. Walter Kugemann (Chair of Consortium and of
  subproject Erlangen)
• Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
• Learning Lab for Multimedia-supported Learning
• within the Center for Didactics
• Prof. Dr. Peter Gorny, Informatics (Chair of
  subproject Oldenburg)
• Prof. Dr. Hilke Guenther-Arndt, History

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for
Education and Research (BMBF) Program New Media
in Eduaction Financial volume 2,3 Mio Euro
(approx. 72 Mio CSK) Jan 2001 Dec 2003
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The objectives

• Development of a system of distance education
  courses for teacher education
• pre-service teacher students
• in-service professional teachers
• for all school subjects
• for all school types
• general schools
• special schools
• vocational schools
• For all school levels
• Primary (grades 1 - 4 age 6 - 10 yrs.)
• Lower Secondary (grades 5 - 10 age 11 - 16
  yrs.)
• Upper Secondary (grades 11 - 13 age 17 - 19
  yrs)

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The pedagogical concept

• Awareness of New Media (media competence)
• Learning by Doing
• Direct application of New Media in each school
  subject
• Technical skills
• not presented separately and in advance, but
  embedded in the classroom content (method
  training modules for those who lack some
  technical skills)
• Methodological competence (media didactics)
• The web-based material
• to be completed with other material to be
  retrieved from the internet or other sources
• One task for a small group (max. 5)
• to be solved cooperately in each team at the end
  of each content module

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The methodological concept (1)

• Web-based learning material
• hypertext structure
• embedded applets for simulations and animations
• Tutorial guidance
• max. 15 persons preferably in one school
  district form a team with online communication
  and regular F2F-meetings
• Direct online contact to peers
• Discussion forum (newsgroup) for each team and
  for each course
• Chatrooms for each team and additional focus
  groups
• Database with glossary, bibliography, expert
  addresses etc.

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The methodological concept (2) Support
functions
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The methodological concept (3)

• Face-to-face group work real plenary
  discussions in a team (max 15)or meetings of
  small groups (max 5)

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The methodological concept (4)

• Forms of learning and associated media
• self organized learning, mostly online-learning,
  including the possibility to annotate web pages
  for exchange of ideas within a team.
• Request for help from a tutor per E-mail
• Discussions via newsgroups (Forum) or via Chat
• Exercises Learning by Doing with tutorial
  feedback on request per E-mail
• Tasks sent to the tutor, graded and detailed
  feedback per E-Mail
• Work in small (local) groups, espec. for
  exercises and cooperative tasks (online or F2F)
• Creating cooperative environments F2F team
  meetings

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The technical basis

• The course material
• embedded in the learning platform Hyperwave
  eLearning Suite, which offers the necessary
  functionality, especially also the groupware
  functions.
• The content is authored
• with the scripting language XLML (XML-based
  Logical Markup Language), developed for eL3.
• Internet access
• provided by the universities Erlangen and
  Oldenburg and by regional school networks.

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The course content (1)

• The course material
• consists of problem-oriented case studies from
  school subjects,
• presents technical advice and methodological
  solutions.
• Concrete methodolical problems or class room
  scenarios
• analysis
• selection of an appropriate medium
• derivation of an methodological approach and its
  mapping on technical fucntions
• problem-based exercises to enhance the necessary
  technical skills and competences

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The content (2)

• The content is organized in three levels
• Basic Level with main focus How to teach with
  the help ICT in the classroom (specialized for
  each school subject),
• 2nd Level with main focus How to organize
  students' ICT-supported learning (specialized for
  each school subject),
• 3rd Level for in-depth courses (in planning)

• production of eLearning material (e.g., database
  applications, digital video / audio, simulations,
  animations),
• "Beyound the classroom walls The Global
  village,
• computer-supported student projects,
• evaluation methods.

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The Content (3)

• Course modules ( e.g. for the subject History )
• Introduction Teaching and learning with the
  computer
• Collecting and organizing educational material
  with the computer
• Computer-based communication and cooperation
• Information retrieval with new media
• Designing work sheets with the computer
• Preparing digital images for the lessons
• Presentations in the classroom
• Animations and simulations
• Collecting and analyzing data
• Designing interactive work sheets
• Applying data bases and designing own data bases

LeveI I
Level II
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The practical realization

• Staff
• 11 full-time developers
• 15 teachers on part-time basis
• Development time
• 3 years
• Course system development phase
• Test phase Summer term 2002 (5 courses, max. 15
  participants per course)
• Prototype system Winter term 2002/2003 (9
  courses, max. 45 participants per course)
• Course system full access starting Summer
  term 2003
• for min 50,000 teachers (distributed over
  several years)
• organized by U Erlangen-Nürnberg and U Oldenburg
• or organized via other institutions
  (franchise-model)

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First evaluation results and participants
opinions (1)

• Course platform
• The performance of our course platform Hyperwave
  eLearning Suite is extremely bad very long
  responce time for the users. (This is caused by a
  poor cordination of several systems OS Solaris /
  Oracle / HIS / eLS). Solution New hardware for
  Redhat-Linux / Oracle / HIS / eLS.
• The participations complained over inadequate
  communication functions of the platform. Partial
  solution Customization of the user interface.
• The participants preferred to work offline with
  the course material. eLS was only activated for
  communication purposes.Solution a download
  version and tutorial support for triggering
  online communication.

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First evaluation results and participants
opinions (2)

• Didactical concept and course contents
• The participants approved the strong school
  subject orientation of the course material
  especially as didactical motivation for
  exercising the software functions.
• The participants disliked, that the lecturers and
  tutors synchronized the participants work with
  the course modules
• by giving late access to the exercises and tasks
• and by strict deadlines for sending in the task
  results.
• An evaluation of the content quality of our
  course material is not yet available. (To be
  performed in Fall 2003.)

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First evaluation results and participants
opinions (3)

• Communication and cooperation
• The amount of communication amoung participants
  and between participants and tutor or lecturer
  was surprisingly poor due to several causes
• Our course authors have not given sufficient
  incentives for online communication in the teams.
  (The material is still very similar to common
  textbooks.)
• The participants were not willing (or able) to
  start online cooperation or collaboration in
  small virtual groups.
• The possibility to discuss module texts with the
  help of cascadable annotations (a function of
  eLS) was rarely used.

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First evaluation results and participants
opinions SUMMARY

• Limits of virtual learning
• An online identity does not produce the necessary
  confidence as a face-to-face meeting.
• Participants rejected to cooperate with
  strangers.
• Participants are reluctant to spontaneously ask
  stupid questions online.
• Individual learning required much self discipline
  and high competence for self-organized learning.

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Thank you for your attention !
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Analysis
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Analysis
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Selection
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Concrete Examples
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Concrete Examples
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Exercises
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Exercises II Evaluation
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Exercises II Evaluation of students
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Exercises II Evaluation of teachers