EDC&I 510

The History of Educational Technology.

Fall, 2005.

Bill Winn,

412 Miller,

685-1185,

billwinn@u.washington.edu

Office hours. By appointment.

Web Page: http://depts.washington.edu/edtech/510.html

Here you will find a copy of this course outline, copies of my weekly Powerpoint presentations, copies of some additional readings and links to others.

Email list: edc_i510a_au05@u.washington.edu

You can use this to send stuff that you would like to share to everyone in the course. It will be automatically e-mailed to everyone registered, and to me.

Introduction.

The purpose of this course is to provide a sound conceptual basis for the study of Educational Technology, building on how the discipline got to be what it is today. Depending on how broadly you conceive of Educational Technology, you might claim that technologies have been used in Education, in some way, throughout history. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the use of symbols and the technologies that create, preserve, augment and distribute them, are an inseparable part of human culture, and have been for tens of thousands of years. For the most part, however, the history that this course examines extends back no further than around 60 years, the time at which roots of the field in its current form became recognizable.

Why study the history of a discipline in the first place? Aside from the truism that we learn from past mistakes, or, put another way, that without knowledge of the past we will make the same mistakes over and over again, the conceptual foundations of a discipline are its history. Without knowing the intellectual trends, the fashions, the successes, the mistakes, the pressures and the serendipity that led to current theory and ways of doing research, you will have no anchor point for your own academic and professional development within this field.

Our course is not organized strictly chronologically. It tends to trace themes from their beginnings to the present, returning to the past to begin another theme. However, all of the trends and themes are interwoven, so adhering to a strict chronology would militate against a thorough understanding of how our field has evolved.

Finally, the suite of courses that follow this one in the graduate program (and which are required for doctoral students) build on this course, looking at the present state of research in the field, and at the future research that you (the student) will be doing.

Readings.

There is no text for the course. Readings - either online documents or handouts - will be provided for each class.

Schedule.

Sept. 28. Introduction.

Course outline, schedule, assignments; resources for doing your work.

Definitions: Information, technology, media, etc.

Humans are distinguished from other animals by their ability to represent their ideas symbolically, to project their ideas onto the environment to form culture, and therefore to maintain a continuity of ideas across generations. The ability to do these things, and the technologies that support this ability, rest on four things.

We can make our thoughts permanent.

We can make out thoughts available to others.

We can edit the form in which our thoughts appear.

We can use symbols (all forms of representation) as tools for developing our thoughts.

This course is about the different ways we can use these four strategies to help people learn.

Oct 5. The first 50,000 years (and a peek into the future).

A striking and highly utilitarian aspect of human culture has been the way in which we have created representations of ideas and phenomena in the service of both the arts and the sciences. These representations appeal to our senses as well as to our reason.

The earliest evidence for culture and for intelligence in our species is found in pictures and other decorative arts – paintings and other artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe and Asia. Why did our forbears make the striking visual representations of animals and abstract shapes, found in cave paintings? Why is symbolic representation so deeply embedded in our culture and in our consciousness?

During the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and later, illustration was an indispensable tool of scientists, explorers, philosophers. What is it about this kind of illustration that makes it effective, indeed necessary, for human reasoning and discovery?

At the beginning of the 20^th. century, with the industrial revolution complete and telecommunications already becoming established, it was clear that the human talent for representation would soon be augmented by the ability to connect people together, in part through the use of symbolic communication. E.M. Forster’s fable, The Machine Stops, written before 1914, is remarkably prescient. It anticipates the Internet, and warns of the consequences of humankind becoming too reliant on technology. It is a tale that resonates significantly with what is happening almost 100 years later.

Read: R. White (2003), selection from Prehistoric art, and E.M. Forster (1928), The machine stops.

Oct 12. World War II and "mass-produced" learning.

We move now to look more at the distributive function of communications technology. How to train thousand of soldiers to perform precise and well-defined tasks in a short period of time posed a big problem to military trainers in the 1940's. The answer: The training film. This had a number of advantages: Once you got it right, it could be used again and again, without variation, so that everyone got exactly the same instruction. Also, you could show it to large groups at once. The training film was very successful. After the war, educators looked for ways in which the training film, and other like mass-education technologies, could be put to use in education. Among these were:

Educational applications of broadcast television and radio.

Curriculum reforms, post Sputnik, that used mass media to standardize and improve the curriculum.

Early distance learning projects that used correspondence and the media to let students learn on their own.

The beginnings of self-instructional materials, known as "programmed instruction".

The Internet has grown out of these earlier initiatives.

Read: Work through the UWEO course on developing online courses at http://depts.washington.edu/eproject/index.html Pay particular attention to the lesson on instructional design.

Oct. 19. From Audiovisual and Communication technology to Educational Technology.

The more symbol systems you have for representing information, and the more ways you have to deliver instruction near and far, the more complicated are the decisions about when to use what. In the 'sixties there came a shift away from media and communication towards planning and managing technology in education. (In 1970, the NEA's Department of Audio Visual Instruction split off to become the Association for Educational Communication and Technology.) "Systems theory" was the conceptual model adopted at this time. The significance of this shift cannot be stressed enough. It completely changed our field. Some examples:

• Emphasis on instructional management.

• The "Systems Approach" to education.

• The growth of instructional design and development as the core activities of the field.

• Re-thinking the roles of teachers in educational systems in which technology held equal status to theirs.

• The goal of developing completely predictable and effective instructional systems that students could learn from without teachers.

• A heavy investment in behavioral theories of learning.

Read: Heinich (1985), Banathy (1996).

Oct. 26. Research and inquiry on Educational Technology: Controversies and new directions.

In this session, we look at the nature, methods and findings of research in Educational Technology. What research questions to ask and how to find the answers has not been without controversy. In particular, we look at:

• Whether the use of media technologies make any difference to what and how students learn.

• The standards by which we assess the success of using technologies in teaching and learning.

• The unique properties of newer technologies and how they support learning.

• How data from studies have been misinterpreted in the past.

Read: Clark (1983), Kozma, (2000), Richey, (2000), Winn (2004) online.

Nov. 2. Psychological foundations: From behaviorism to cognitive theory.

The systems approach, adopted by the first generation of "educational technologists", aligned itself well with current theories of learning and teaching, largely behavioral. However, it soon became clear that behavioral theories provided an incomplete explanation of how learning occurs and led to a limited set of instructional strategies. Theories of learning based upon cognitive models quickly began to supersede behavioral models. However, educational technology was too new and too entrenched to follow easily along. We look at:

The major differences between behavioral and cognitive theories of learning and instruction.

The assumptions about learning that underlie educational technology, particularly instructional design.

Attempts by educational technologists to develop and cognitively-based framework for the field.

Read: Winn (2003a), online.

Nov. 9. Constructivism, post-modernism and beyond.

In their turn, cognitive theories were criticized for being too "computer-like" in their accounts of learning and for leaving out the important social dimension of learning. Practical cognition is always situated in a context, and the context determines how a person will learn, solve problems, and so on. If knowledge is constructed by learners in a context (something which cognitive theory did not deny), then how we teach, how students learn, and how technology helps both, need to be re-thought in a variety of ways.

How do we use technology to enhance the social dimension of learning?

How do we use technology to scaffold knowledge construction by students, often working with other students and independently from major teacher intervention?

How are the ideas of post-modern scholars useful to our field?

More recent reactions against what is perceived as the non-scientific (even anti-scientific) quality of post-modern scholarship has led to proposals for other frameworks for studying learning. Three of the most interesting are:

Biology: Can the neurosciences inform research and development in our field?

Dynamical Systems theory. What have mathematical models of complex, non-linear interacting systems to say to educational technologists?

"Embodiedness" and "embeddedness".

Read: . Winn (2003b). Online, Hlynka (1996) online.

Nov 16. Inquiry in Educational Technology: Current projects. Note: Meet in Fluke Hall, Bowen Conference Room.

We will use this session accomplish two objectives.

The first is to illustrate a number of the concepts and principles we have looked at in the course, especially those concerning inquiry, through examination of an R&D project we are currently engaged in. This has to do with the construction and testing of complex simulations of natural environments, supported by virtual reality technology.

The second is to let you experience first hand what this particular technology is like, and how hard it is to do good research in our field.

We may have to switch this session with another, depending on the availability of the equipment we need.

Read: Dede at al., online.

Nov 23. Design: A "Linking Science" between theory and practice for Educational Technology.

Recently, educational technologists have devoted time and effort to developing what Dewey called a "linking science" between instructional theory and instructional practice. For Dewey (and for Simon, and Glaser and Reigeluth), such a science is a science of design. Our field was the first to institutionalize design as one of its core activities and areas of research but one of the last to adapt to emerging theories of design within the constructivist framework. Our examination of the evolution of "design" within our field includes:

Design as a pragmatic way to optimize constrained alternatives - – "satisficing".

Review of the assumptions underlying instructional design.

Instructional design theories and models.

What instructional designers really do.

Design experiments.

Read: Simon (1969) and Glaser (1976), Bell et al. (2004)..

Nov. 30. 1. Putting it all together: Teaching and learning using the world-wide web.

The entire course could have been about learning online! However, past experience has taught me that such a focus would distract us from the more fundamental and more important issues that underpin our field. So we will use this session to put together what we have learned about media, technology, research, theory and design by a critical examination of web-based learning. In particular, we will look at:

• How the 'defaults' of the WWW, as an instrument for the transmission of information, reduce the chances that students will learn anything, and what we must do to compensate.

• Cases where the WWW has and has not been successful, according to our criteria, discussed earlier in the course.

• The logistics and management of web-based courses, and how traditional infrastructure must be changed to accommodate online learning.

• Current, local, web course development activities.

Read: [TBD]

Dec. 7. Student presentations.

Students present the work have done for their final project/paper.

Assignments and grading.

Complete all assigned readings before the class for which they are assigned.

Find four articles that describe the use of a technology in some educational activity. Two of the articles should be as recent as possible, the other two at least ten years old - in fact the older the better. In no more than six pages, describe and account for the differences in: What the technologies were, how they were used, who used them (students, teachers, both?), and why they were or were not effective. If the article says nothing about effectiveness, give your own opinion about whether you think they were or not. Submit copies of the articles with your paper.

25% of your grade, due October 26^th

Find four articles that describe research studies of the effectiveness of technology/technologies in an educational setting. Two of the articles should be as recent as possible, the other two at least ten years old. In no more than six pages, describe and account for differences in: The nature of the research questions the studies seek to answer, the theoretical framework and hypotheses, the research methods, the types of data gathered and conclusions drawn from the data. Submit copies of the articles with your paper.

25% of your grade, due November 23^th.

Pick some aspect of educational technology that is interesting to you. This could be related to your subject area (use of CAL in teaching German), a technology (use of virtual reality in education), a type of student (assistive technology for special needs students), etc. In between 15 and 20 pages, write a history of your topic. Your paper should show the origins of technology's role in your topic, its development over the years, and its current status. It should be explanatory and analytical, not just descriptive. Be prepared to give a summary of your paper in a class presentation on December 7^th.

50% of your grade, due December 7^th.