Chang, K.-E., Sung, Y.-T., & Hou, H.-T. (2006). Web-based Tools for Designing and Developing Teaching Materials for Integration of Information Technology into Instruction. Educational Technology & Society, 9 (4), 139-149.
Web-based Tools for Designing and Developing Teaching Materials for Integration of Information Technology into Instruction Kuo-En Chang Department of Information and Computer Education, Center of Research for Educational Evaluation and Development, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan Tel: +886223622841 Fax: +886223512772
[email protected]
Yao-Ting Sung Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, Center of Research for Educational Evaluation and Development, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan Tel: +886223952445 Fax: +886223413865
[email protected]
Huei-Tse Hou Department of Information and Computer Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan Tel: +886223622841 Fax: +886223512772
[email protected] ABSTRACT Educational software for teachers is an important, yet usually ignored, link for integrating information technology into classroom instruction. This study builds a web-based teaching material design and development system. The process in the system is divided into four stages, analysis, design, development, and practice. Eight junior high school history teachers participated in the evaluation of the system. Through experts’ reviews and content analyses of their instructional materials and interviews, we found that instructional materials produced using the system appear to be more coherent and systematic, provide deeper and broader information for learning, apply more adequate teaching strategies, and lessen the design and development load on teachers.
Keywords Integrated technology into instruction, web-based teaching material design and development, Instructional design
Introduction The impact of information technology (includes web technology, software or hardware tools) on the overall teaching environment is becoming more pronounced. The ability to incorporate information technology into instruction has been deemed to be one of the most important professional competences of teachers (Fisher, 1997; Scheffler & Logan, 1999). Indeed, when used properly, information technology not only allows diverse ways for the presentation of materials (Chang, Sung, & Chiou, 2002; Roberts & Hsu, 2000), but also offers easy access to the wealth of resources available on the Internet and is useful for developing learner-centered strategies and activities (Chang, Chen, & Sung, 2001; Chang, Sung, & Lee, 2003; Linn, 2000). Compared to the pace of advancements in information technology, however, the rate of its adoption in the classroom has been slow. Studies reveal that teachers are often especially interested in such technology, but because of a lack of confidence, are intimidated by it (OTA, 1995; Willis, Thompson & Sadera, 1999). Researchers have identified several internal and external barriers to the adoption of technology, such as teachers’ attitudes and willingness, their workload, the availability and accessibility of hardware and software, staff development, and institutional and technical support (Ertmer, 1999; Rogers, 2000). All these factors are interrelated. Lawson and Comber (1999), for instance, have argued that one of the key factors preventing teachers from applying information technology to teaching is their lack of computer literacy, which would require time to learn in addition to the time required for course preparation. However, Topper (1998) has observed that teacher training programs designed to facilitate technology literacy development often fail to achieve the desired results when teachers are over burdened with too much additional work. Cuban, ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at
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Kirkpatrick, and Peck (2001) have also found that, although the increasing availability of computer equipment in schools offers easy access to computer resources, many teachers fail to alter existing patterns of teaching. The lack of software designed specifically for instruction might be one of the major reasons for the continued lack of willingness to use information technology. The strong emphasis on the learner’s perspective in recent years has led to many software products for teaching which focus on students’ learning needs instead of teachers’ instructional design facilitation. Hence, teachers themselves have benefited relatively little from such developments (Leu et al., 1998; Marx, Blumenfeld, Krajcik, & Soloway, 1998). The software for “integrating technology into instruction” is therefore needed by teachers to leverage information technology with minimal effort. Moreover, through such software, the burden of course preparation would be lightened, and thus teachers would be better motivated to apply information technology in their teaching. As long as they have the will, they are more likely to seek ways to integrate technology with teaching and try out new materials and methods (Norum, Grabinger, & Duffield, 1999). If the ultimate goal of integrating instruction with technology is to make the technology an integral part of how the classroom functions (International Society for Technology in Education, 2000), then the design and application of software for instructional purposes is an essential step. Most Web tools currently available for instructional design provide only assistance with website construction for either asynchronous learning or distance learning. For instance, WebCT (http://www.webct.com) and eEducation (http://www.jonesknowledge.com) both provide tools for teachers to construct an online classroom to place course content pages and to utilize other functions such as course schedule, discussion zone, online quiz, and bulletin board. However, these web-based tools fail to address the difficulty of finding needed information through Web searches, which limits the amount of supplementary material teachers can offer (Small, Sutton, Miwa, Urfels, & Eisenberg, 1998). Moreover, the emphasis of these web-based tools on distance learning is different from the functions emphasized in technology-incorporated teaching, such as the support of teaching strategies for classroom teaching. In short, a web-based teaching materials design and development system tailored to the needs of teachers who have a lower level of computer literacy is helpful for teachers wishing to incorporate technology into teaching. It is the goal of this study to develop a web-based environment that allows teachers to implement their instructional procedures, for example by developing teaching plans, preparing course materials, and managing teaching activities in an efficient and effective way. This system will focus more on each step of web-based teaching material design (and will highlight the steps of Analysis, Design, Develop and Practice), which offer a series of technological auxiliary tools for teaching. We will also look from the aspect of information-searching, providing URL management modules, offering keyword indexing, and record browsing history. In order to evaluate the system, eight junior high school history teachers were invited to participate in the evaluation. This paper uses experts’ reviews and content analyses of teachers’ instructional materials and interviews, and concludes that instructional materials produced by the system appear to be more coherent and systematic, provide deeper and broader information for learning, apply more adequate teaching strategies, and lessen the design and development load on teachers.
System outline The system is divided into four stages: analysis, design, development, and practice. Table 1 shows the functions for each stage. The portal page URL of the system is http://elearning.ice.ntnu.edu.tw. Below is a detailed description of each.
Analysis stage In this stage teachers analyze both learners’ characteristics and teaching content. Two functions are used for analyzing the progress and characteristics of learners. The first function is students’ basic information analyzer and manager, which records students’ basic information, including their past learning experience, family background, aptitudes, and what students feedback to teacher throughout the learning process. The second function is students’ score manager. Students’ score data accumulate over time with tests and exams as learning progresses. The score manager helps teachers better analyze students’ learning status.
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Stage 1. Analysis
2. Design
3. Development
4. Practice
Table 1. List of the functions for each stage Tasks Functions Learners’ characteristics analysis Students’ basic information analyzer and manager Students’ score manager Teaching material analysis Notepad Multimedia resource bank Web browser URL collector URL browser recorder URL resource bank Developing course outline Weekly course scheduler Syllabus builder Developing unit and lesson plans Unit plan builder Lesson plan builder Preparing teaching materials and Web Course page editor and manager pages such as online handouts, Personal webpage editor assignments, learning worksheets, Learning worksheet editor Slide editor demos, references, supplementary information, test questions, and slides for Test editor & manager classroom use. Carrying out class teaching activities Daily course bulletin Online evaluation & communication Online synchronous communicator Online asynchronous communicator Online assignment evaluator
With regard to teaching material analysis, teachers may utilize built-in databanks or conduct Web searches to collect information for the analysis and design of teaching materials. According to Keller (1983), multimedia presentations of materials usually increase cognition and arouse interest in learners. Therefore, the system provides a multimedia resource bank for easy retrieval by teachers. This databank contains many multimedia resources for teachers. Teachers can type a keywords related to the intended theme and relevant multimedia resources will then pop up for selection. Teachers may integrate these with the teaching materials they are developing. It is also noted that because of the complexity of Internet hyperlink connections, teachers often find themselves losing focus during Web searches (Park, 1991). In the other word, the hyperlinks around the Internet provide many different forms of various information. It is difficult for instructors and learners to search or even to use the resources in teaching or learning and it costs the learners too much time to filter the unrelated information. Furthermore, instructors and learners may perhaps get lost in many hyperlinks paths. To solve this problem, the system provides a notepad for teachers to record important information from the Web at any time during their online search. Small, Sutton, Miwa, Urfels, & Eisenberg (1998) pointed out that the chances of a teacher locating the right resources or adequate multimedia materials with just a few Web searches are slim. Hence, in addition to a web browser, the system provides teachers with a URL collector, a URL browser recorder, and a URL resource bank to assist teachers with online resource searching and gathering. The URL collector allows teachers to add new websites that they frequently use, and provides keyword search for URLs already stored in the system. The URL browser recorder helps record the names and URLs of websites teachers have visited using the system. The URL resource bank stores all relevant and assorted URLs. Teachers can easily access some other websites via Web links provided by the URLs in the databank and gather information for teaching materials design. The databank stores two types of URLs: (1) literature of educational or psychological theories; (2) course related information, such as lesson plans and examples of teaching activity design.
Design stage During this stage, teachers produce their teaching outline and plan based on the analyses in the previous stage. Teachers often draw on past experience and personal beliefs about teaching as they teach (Mannaz, 1999). Personal styles and beliefs are also reflected in their choice of educational software (Niederhauser & Stoddart, 141
2001). The system thus aims to assist teachers to produce outlines and plans in their own style. The model also provides a teaching plan and drafting tools to facilitate collation of lesson plans and self-reflection upon past teaching performances. There are four tools used in the design stage. Weekly course scheduler provides an academic calendar and monthly planner to facilitate time management. Syllabus builder assists teachers in developing, editing, and managing syllabuses, which is a course plan for the whole semester. Unit plan builder assists teachers in developing, editing, and managing unit plans, each of which is a teaching plan for a specific unit. Lesson plan builder assists teachers in developing, editing, and managing daily lesson plans, and includes a memo feature for particular lessons or classes.
Development stage During this stage teachers prepare supplementary materials according to the draft teaching plan prepared in the design stage and the actual teaching needs, and then place the completed materials onto the website for students’ review before and after class. Most of the available tools for web-based teaching material development and course management lack the needed support for instructional webpage production and fail to provide assistance with the preparation of supplementary teaching materials such as learning worksheets and slides. The key task in this stage is therefore to produce all the materials (learning worksheets, slides, etc.) necessary for instructional webpage production and teaching activity implementation in a web-based support environment. To familiarize teachers with the new operating environment, the system incorporates the standard Microsoft Office editing tools (MS Office 2000), which the majority of teachers should be familiar with. The tools in this stage are as follows: 1. Course page editor and manager: This tool provides teachers with an environment for instructional webpage editing and combines real-time on-line multimedia functions to facilitate the production of instructional webpages. 2. Personal webpage editor: This tool assists teachers in developing their own personal teaching pages through which students can access the course pages designed by the teacher. 3. Learning worksheet editor: This tool helps teachers develop learning worksheets which are becoming more popular with teachers. 4. Slide editor: This tool incorporates functions from Microsoft PowerPoint and assists teachers with slide preparation. 5. Test editor and manager: This tool incorporates functions from Microsoft Word and assists teachers with test question editing. It also helps produce a test template according to the type and number of questions teachers need in order to reduce the extra work with test paper formatting and layout.
Practice stage During this stage teachers utilize the Internet to conduct various classroom and after hour teaching activities and employ online tools for distance discussion and evaluation. In addition to synchronous and asynchronous network communication tools, the system also helps teachers evaluate students’ papers online. The following four functions are provided by this stage. 1. Daily course bulletin: This tool provides an online bulletin for announcements and course daily messages to students. 2. Online synchronous communicator: This function provides a discussion forum similar to online chat rooms to allow teachers to provide counseling or respond to course related inquiries. 3. Online asynchronous communicator: This function provides an asynchronous discussion zone similar to a message board to allow teachers and students to discuss course related problems. 4. Online assignment evaluator: This function allows teachers to evaluate and score students’ papers and assignments on-line.
Experiment Participants Eight history teachers from three junior high schools in Taipei participated in this study. The participants have one to nine years of teaching experience with an average of six years. They had a basic understanding of computer operations such as word processing and surfing the Internet, but had no experience in the use of webbased applications for the design or development of teaching materials. 142
Research design The eight participating teachers were randomly divided into an experimental group (referred to as Teachers A, B, C, and D) and a control group (Teachers E, F, G, and H). The subjects were requested to develop their teaching materials for an assigned teaching unit. The experimental group was given the system, and the control group an Internet browser and word processor. Tools and materials Course Content Material: The participants of this study were given the unit “Domestic Politics of the Ming Dynasty” from the “Glories of the Late Imperial Era” section of the junior high school history book. The participants were assigned the text of the unit along with the relevant parts in the teacher’s handbook as a reference for designing the teaching materials and developing four hour teaching periods. Scale for evaluating instructional materials: In order to analyze the differences between the materials developed by the experimental and control groups, we developed a five-point Likert-type scale (1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree). Zero points were given when a desired item was missing from the teacher’s materials. The scale comprises three categories of eight items (Table 2), including the quality of supplementary information gathered in the analysis stage, the teaching plan developed in the design stage, and the teaching materials produced in the development stage. Questionnaire for interview: To obtain the opinions of the participating teachers in the experimental group, the researcher developed a set of 21 structured questions for the interview. The questions are divided into several categories such as background, opinions about the system interface, functions, guiding mechanism, system usefulness, and the personal process of instructional design. Procedures The procedures of the experimental group were implemented in three stages: (1) Giving instructions and background interview (60 min.). During this stage, a teacher’s general background is probed during the interview, including his or her past experience with the use of computers in teaching. The proposed system is also explained to the teacher. (2) Planning, data searching, and preparing worksheet. This stage starts with the actual analysis and design done by the participants (80 min.). Based on the textbook and the teacher’s handbook, as well as information gathered from the Web, teachers then proceeded to produce the “teaching plan,” the “lesson plan,” the “learning worksheet,” and the “detailed activity plan” with the help of the system tools. The researcher also conducted interviews with the participants regarding this particular stage of the experiment (30 min.). (3) Developing teaching materials as Web pages. This stage starts with the participants executing the development stage (80 min.). The participants decide on the content for their Web pages, which they may develop with the system tools. After developing teaching materials, the researcher interviewed the participants in this stage for 30 minutes. For the control group, due to a lack of Web page production experience, it was difficult for the participants to implement Web pages with other Web page tools like FrontPage. So, they were asked to complete the analysis and design stages. The data in the development stage was not included in the comparison. This part of the experiment was thus divided into the following two stages: (1) Giving instructions and background interview (60 min.). The content of the interviews was the same as for the experimental group. The functions of Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer were also explained to the teachers. (2) Planning, data search, and preparation for worksheet. During this stage teachers conducted their own analysis and design of the teaching unit (80 min.). This includes the course content analysis, the use of computers to prepare and save supplementary materials (using Word or Notepad), formulating a teaching plan, and finally, developing learning worksheets. After the teachers completed their work, the researcher then conducted interviews on this part of the experiment (30 min.).
Results The finished instructional materials were evaluated by two junior high history teachers with 22 and 27 years of experience. The materials used were the teaching plans, supplementary materials, and work sheets. The evaluation results for eight teachers are shown in Table 3. The Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient indicates 143
a strong agreement between the two experts’ ratings on the quality of the materials, ρ =1.00 (p
