Technology to Support Teachers Using Evidence From Student Work to Customize Technology-Enhanced Inquiry Units

• In Event: 60.028 - Teachers as Designers of Technology-Enhanced Learning

Abstract

Objectives
We explore how teachers customize technology-enhanced learning (TEL) materials. Cases of selected teachers and the iterations they made to different online science inquiry units show: (1) the kinds of customizations teachers make to the materials; and (2) how TEL materials enable teachers to use students’ ideas as evidence for their customizations.

Theoretical perspective
Teachers’ curriculum customizations are the ways they adapt—online, offline, planned, or spontaneously—given materials to address local needs and specific instructional goals (Davis & Varma, 2008). Using their enactment experiences to adapt these materials makes teachers co-participants in the design process (Cviko, McKenney & Voogt, 2014). Successful customizations use students’ ideas as evidence (Black & Wiliam, 2010). But often, teachers’ decisions are driven by practical issues (Cviko, McKenney & Voogt, 2012).
Technology-enhanced learning (TEL) materials can make students’ ideas visible. With their ability to log, display, and automatically score students’ interactions, TEL materials can provide teachers with evidence to inform their customizations. Knowing how their students think can help teachers customize in ways that support students in making connections between new information and their prior understanding.

Methods & Data
We reflect upon four teachers’ enactments of TEL units from the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (Slotta & Linn, 2008). Based on individual interviews, classroom observations, and teacher artifacts (e.g., handouts, pacing guides, activity designs) collected over a two-year period, we identified cases to illustrate the variety of instructional goals, customizations, and technology features involved in teachers iterating the design of TEL materials.

Results
We identified three main approaches of teachers to customizing: (1) To guide students’ understanding, teachers designed instructional interventions (e.g., whole class discussions of difficult concepts); (2) To pace and build on student thinking, teachers incorporated scaffolding and guidance within the unit (e.g., displaying student work to model reasoning) and; (3) to better integrate given materials into larger curriculum plans, teachers supplemented, extended, abridged, and elaborated existing materials with their own activities (e.g., hands-on demonstrations, independent internet research).
Various technology features were essential in supporting these customizations, including (1) a system that logs student work for teachers’ inspection, which allowed teachers to monitor students’ thinking; (2) tools for conducting dynamic, embedded assessments, such as ways to flag and display selected student work; and (3) a user-friendly authoring environment, which allowed teachers to easily edit prompts, and to rearrange activities in the units.

Significance
When constrained by the conflicting demands of the classroom, and without an understanding of the original designers’ pedagogical rationale, teachers must often resort to shortcuts and familiar strategies when customizing. We begin to address this issue by describing specific technology features that afforded certain teachers’ customizations of online science inquiry units. Ongoing work will examine the relative success of these and other customizations, and suggest principles for designing curriculum materials that both afford and guide effective customizations (Davis & Krajcik, 2005). This work shows how technology can empower teachers successfully adapt materials to contemporary issues and local needs, and thus ensure the sustainability of educational innovations beyond the involvement of researchers.

Authors

• Camillia Faye Matuk, New York University

• Marcia Linn, University of California - Berkeley

• Bat-Sheva Eylon, Weizmann Institute of Science