What We Knowand What We Need to Know

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What We Knowand What We Need to Know
Roy D. Pea Center for Innovations in
Learning Stanford University NCTET-2002 A
National Summit on Education Technology January
25, 2002
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Structure of the Talk

• Harnessing powers of technology for learning
• What have we discovered in the field?
• Need to move from fragmentary knowledge to
  systemic understanding
• Redefining the roles of research
• Focused on issues educators have
• Stronger designs for research
• Partnership projects with policy relevance
• Industry engagement
• Inventing the future of e-learning

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Megatrends setting the stage

• K-12 education
• Higher standards
• Increasing accountability and ESEA
  reauthorization
• Exceptional teacher workforce transformation
• Extraordinary policy and business attention
• Tech infrastructure, 10Bil E-Rate How to
  leverage for learning?
• Learning sciences research
• Research to guide advances in curriculum,
  pedagogy, teacher learning, assessment
• Partnership projects bridging theory and practice
• Industry
• Moores Law, Metcalfes Law
• Miniaturization, portability, cost, digital
  convergence, bandwidth, ASPs
• New platforms hand-helds, thin clients, wireless
  networks
• Rapid growth of E-learning industry, E-services
  but no clear K-12 marketplace

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Power of technology to support learning

• Real-world contexts for learning
• Connections to experts and communities of
  learners
• Visualization and analysis tools
• Scaffolds for problem solving
• Opportunities for feedback, reflection revision
• Teacher learning

How People Learn (Bransford, Brown, Cocking,
Eds.) National Academy Press, 1999
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Many exciting and dramatic visions and results
from K-12 e-learning

• Virtual fieldtrips and inquiry quests teleport
  students to remote places and engage learning
• Teacher communities learning online together
  about best practices
• Learning environments leveraging scientific
  understanding to improve access to reading
• Student-scientist partnerships connect learners
  to powerful tools and distributed models for
  doing science and understanding the environment
• Simulations and dynamic graphing tools bringing
  calculus understanding to urban middle school
  students
• 11 E-Learning models offering teachers better
  assessment information to guide instructional
  practices

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What we have discovered in the field

• So technology can lead to learning improvements
  but does it?
• Mixed results and difficult to generalize across
  thousands of studies (e.g., PCAST, SIIA, PITAC)
• Hardware, software, and their pedagogical uses
  vary tremendously across schools
• Successful uses of technology typically
  accompanied with other reforms and have their
  consequences in the complex system of educational
  practices and organizations
• Rigorous longitudinal studies to document
  isolated technology effects are rare since
  expensive and difficult to implement

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Why? Technology is but part of a system

• Only one element in a coordinated, systemic
  approach to educational improvement
• Standards, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment,
  teacher development, school culture and
  school-home connections are fundamentally part of
  any systemic change
• and instrumental in the roles technology can
  play and its likely effectiveness

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How learning is organized (Education Systems)
Content standards
Coherence across levels incentives
Instructional workforce capacity
Why people learn (Socio-cultural context)
How people learn (Cognition)
What people learn (Content)
(From Nora Sabelli, SRI International)
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What we dont know

• How to conditionalize our answers to educators
  questions of how to make technology effective in
  improving student learning, e.g.,
• By age and developmental level
• By subject matter and topic
• By classroom context, including many ESL learners
• By school culture
• By district, community, state contexts
• Expertise is defined in part by conditionalized
  knowledge

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Our research answers are hard to adapt to
questions based in local situations

• Fragmentary research knowledge today requires the
  implementers of technologies in educational
  systems to figure out how to make them work in
  local conditions
• So far this is more craft than science
• We must make progress on the issues of scale for
  powerful e-learning applications
• Not only about numbers
• But the encompassing of diversity (learners,
  teachers, schools)
• And providing an enabling web services
  infrastructure for ongoing adaptive learning

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Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Education with
Multi-Level Modeling
From R. Rumberger (2000)
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Research and practice connections

• 20 years on, how did we get to a state of so much
  research on learning technologies that is so
  weakly aligned with what we need?
• Our problem is the model for how research relates
  to practice

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Linear flow model
The usual means of knowledge transfer through
dissemination has rarely worked for bringing
research to bear broadly on practice
Source Donovan, M. S., Bransford, J. D.,
Pellegrino, J. (1999, June). (Eds.). How People
Learn Bridging Research and Practice.
Washington, DC National Academy Press.
(Co-author).
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(No Transcript)
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Reciprocity-of-influence model
Source Donovan, M. S., Bransford, J. D.,
Pellegrino, J. (1999, June). (Eds.). How People
Learn Bridging Research and Practice.
Washington, DC National Academy Press.
(Co-author).
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Soexpand use-relevant research

• Use-driven research vs. Curiosity-driven
• Need more focus on issues faced by educators
• Need greater relevance for policy and educator
  decision-making
• Need productive roles for industry partnership
  and engagement
• But also recognize values of different roles for
  research in e-learning technologies pipeline
• Exploratory and proof of concept, can lead to
  creation of demand
• Small-scale investigations
• Large-scale systemic studies in diverse settings

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Need for a strong national use-relevant
(actionable) research program

• No information system of database maintained
  today, including the National Educational
  Longitudinal Study (NELS), and the National
  Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), has
  the design and content adequate to answer vital
  questions about technologys availability, use
  and impacts on student learning. NAEPis flawed
  as a data source for relating achievement to
  technology availability and use (Haertel
  Means, 2001).

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Making stronger use-relevant research

• Haertel Means (2000)
• Aggregated insights from ten research methodology
  experts on national ed-tech RD improvement
• Many called for arrangements where related
  studies are conducted in test-bedsor networks
  of sentinel schools
• Aim to provide evidence of emerging trends and/or
  offer sites that have agreed to participate in
  sustained studies of the effects of technology
• Called for intermediary organizations to review
  existing research, identify research questions,
  synthesize results, create templates for data
  collection instruments, support local researchers

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Missing key infrastructure elements for stronger
research designs

• More meaningful assessment measures for 21st
  century skills
• Mechanisms like consortia, coordinated studies
  sharing common measures, data collection
  protocols, tools
• Improve patterns of learning technology use by
  mining use data from unobtrusive yet meaningful
  measures, coupled to SIS

SRI Technology Evaluation Design Meeting Web
Site http//www.sri.com/policy/designkt/found.html
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21st Century Skills in Relation to Selected
Content and Technology Standards (Haertel
Means, 2000)
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(Quellmalz and Haertel, 2000)
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Vital need to support teacher learning
There is a national crisis in teacher
professional development -Glenn Commission, 1999

• Huge turnover and new workforce preparation
  need2 Million new teachers needed by 2008-2009
  (3.1 Mil today)
• Increasingly accountable, but unprepared for new
  standards and assessments, and technology use
• Expand and deepen PT3 to support schools of
  education in helping new teachers learn to use
  technology effectively in the classroom
• We need a deepening focus on uses of technology
  to empower teacher learning
• Video case studies of exemplary practice
• On-line communities of practice and mentoring

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Accelerate learning for school leaders

• Research indicates strong school leadership is a
  key success factor in creating a productive
  school culture for improving learning with
  technology, including
• Instructional vision and a rationale linking it
  to technology use
• Support for teacher time for planning,
  collaboration and reporting technology use
• Critical mass of teachers in technology
  activities, with a high degree of collaboration
• Technology access and technical support
• (Means and Olson, 1995 Becker, 2000)

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Make the learning enterprise reach beyond the
classroom

• Ubiquitous computing and communications enables
  learning anytime anywhere
• Extend engaged learning beyond the school day and
  coordinate learning across boundaries
• Informal contexts
• Museums
• Homes
• Community centers
• Gardens, parks
• Need multi-generational designs

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Inventing the Future of E-Learning

• Aim for 11 e-learning to high standards
• Portable digital learning portfolios for every
  learner
• E-Learning Workflow Management
• Need for real-time teacher performance support
  tools that are coupled to SIS data-driven systems
• Need ubiquitous broadband for highly interactive
  visualization-intensive web services, video
  sharing and services
• Need new mechanisms for reciprocity of
  influence in inventing the future of learning
  across communities
• Concept of LENS partnerships Learning
  Expeditions in Networked Systems
• Scout the frontiers of what is possible and
  desirable, e.g. using Internet-2 capabilities,
  handheld broadband services,

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Presidents Information Technology Advisory
Committee Report to the President (PITAC August
1998)

• Vision of Transforming the Way We Learn
• Any individual can participate in on-line
  education programs regardless of geographic
  location, age, physical limitation, or personal
  schedule. Everyone can access repositories of
  educational materials, easily recalling past
  lessons, updating skills, or selecting from among
  different teaching methods in order to discover
  the most effective style for that individual.
  Educational programs can be customized to each
  individuals needs, so that our information
  revolution reaches everyone and no one gets left
  behind.

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Its not enough of a Grand Challenge

• Enabling this vision requires re-inventing
  learning substantively, not only the HOW and WHEN
  of learning
• We will do better at re-inventing learning if we
  heed the PITAC visions of transforming the ways
  we
• Communicate
• Deal with information (I/O)
• Work
• Design and build things
• Conduct research
• Deal with the environment
• Do commerce
• Each of these areas in society is spawning new
  literacies and required skills for an informed
  and proficient citizen.
• Keeping education apace of the needed learning
  curve is the Grand Challenge

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National Research Council Committee on
Improving Learning with Information Technologies

• Establish ongoing dialog and interactions among
  the IT industries, learning sciences, and
  educational communities toward improving
  education for all learners through the
  development and appropriate uses of modern
  technology.
• Find ways to incorporate the knowledge base,
  research findings, and innovations from each of
  these communities into more coherent, strategic
  approaches to developing education technologies
  and improvements in learning outcomes.
• Establish ways to allow the end users of
  technology in the education community to make
  more strategic decisions about their purchase,
  use, and maintenance of education technologies
  and the kinds of professional development
  programs that will be required to use education
  technologies in ways that can effectively
  transform teaching and learning for the new age.

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Whats possible within 5 years?

• Affordable, personal, portable gateways to
  e-learning content and e-services (using
  ASPs and wireless handhelds)
• Fundamentally better real-time teaching and
  assessment capabilities in classrooms
• Continuous teacher professional development

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Thank you for your contributionsto improving
learning and teaching with technologies!