ED-MEDIA 1999 Proceedings Book - Association for the ...

Meaningfully Incorporating Technology into Graduate and Undergraduate Courses
In A College of Education
Ni Chang, Ed.D.
University of Wisconsin
800 W. Main St.
Whitewater, WI 53190
changn@uwwvax.uww.edu
414-472-5798
Introduction
With the germination of incorporating technology into students’ learning at the college and university level, literature has
shown that technology benefits students’ learning (Bazillion, & Braun, 1998; Berger, 1998; Grossman,1999; McCandless,
1998; Raschke,1998). The merits attribute to different software and technology applied in the education of college students.
However, it is an inappropriate practice to infuse technology into curriculum without a careful consideration of possible
outcomes how the application of a type of technology can affect students’ understanding of concepts. The pedagogical goal
aims at assisting students’ understanding of content of coursework with technology rather than about technology.
Demographically, it is true that characteristics of students’ needs and demands to instruction and learning are matchless.
Even teaching a same course in a same university over years, an instructor finds that he may encounter groups of students
with different attributes and competence in learning. How to use technology effectively requires a careful examination and
investigation from the instructor on the impact of uses of technology on students’ maximal development in learning.
There exists another reason associated with the inappropriateness in teaching students about technology. In the
contemporary technology world, many children are capable of handling a certain type of technology. Many more will soon
join the club. Being pre-service teachers, students have to be aware of how to stimulate and promote children mastering
concepts effectively with technology. In this sense, college instructors should first and foremost be trained properly. It is
imperative for an instructor to pay attention to how learning process with technology is structured. What and how an
instructor performs in class will surely affect how pre-service teachers will manage their classroom instruction with
technology in the future. Meaningless integration of technology contributes little to an in-depth exploration of learning that
plays an unimportant role in the enhancement of students’ comprehension of content work.
Reflective Practices
To bring about the effective learning results, it requires an instructor to motivate learners’ desire in lore. With respect to
employing technology to teach, an instructor should possess rich ideas of how to integrate technology meaningfully into
college curriculum, which should result from trials and errors. Much reflection and self- analysis should be part of this
process. It is advocated that an instructor provides a wide array of opportunities to invite students’ voices regarding the
effect on the application of technology as tools in the assistance of learning as a means to ameliorate outcomes of teaching
and learning.
Respecting feedback and views from students is crucial in the situation where an instructor is concurrently responsible for
four courses in one semester. It is a usual case that a group of same students take two or three out of the four courses that
this instructor is teaching during a semester. In this situation, an instructor is required to come up with diversified
approaches in teaching and in assigning homework using technology. Employing an analogous method in this regard
throughout one semester may decrease otherwise the great desire that students hold for learning. By virtue of this analysis,
technology should be incorporated appropriately into the curricular content rather than as a discrete task besides intellectual
learning requirement. For example, searching resources from the Internet is an advisable approach for students to extend
their knowledge base that may not be encompassed in a class lecture. Locating important and useful information from the
Internet as an assignment or a part of a class makeup apparently increases the academic growth of students. However, if this
mode of technology crops up in each of the four courses, for which this particular instructor is responsible, a minimum
learning effect may take place. Students may grow a feeling of tiredness out of this repeated usage of technology and find
learning monotonous and tedious. Exhaustion may distract their attention away from major learning tasks.