An online course to help teachers "use technology to enhance learning": successes and limitations.

         The technology information age mandates that teacher education
         programs integrate technology into the curriculum. Yet, as the
         demand for technology use in K-12 classrooms increases
         nationwide, many teachers feel unprepared for this task
         (Sprague, Kopfman, & Dorsey, 1998). Traditional face-to-face
         teacher education and professional development curricula are
         challenged to help teachers stay current in the fast-changing
         domain of technology integration. However, online delivery may
         provide the answer to this need. This qualitative inquiry
         examines the effectiveness of an online course whose goal was
         to help new teachers effectively integrate technology into
         their teaching. Results indicate that although some
         participants achieved an enriched understanding of using
         constructivist technologies, the actual nature of learning
         these new technologies in an online format may have interfered
         with their ability to apply them to their teaching situations.

The technology information age mandates that teacher education programs integrate technology into the curriculum. Yet, as the demand for technology use in K-12 classrooms increases nationwide, many teachers feel unprepared for this task (Sprague, Kopfman, & Dorsey, 1998). In 1995, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) issued a report stating that "technology is not central to the teacher preparation experience" and that "most technology instruction ... is teaching about technology ... not teaching with technology across the curriculum" (OTA, 1995, p. 165). Since the release of the OTA report, many teacher preparation institutions have incorporated technology into their teacher education programs in a variety of ways (Beck & Wynn, 1998; Carney, 2000; Duffield, 1997; Harry, 2000; Laffey, Musser, & Wedman, 1998).

This article examines the effectiveness of an online course whose goal was to help new teachers effectively integrate technology into their teaching. Online delivery of courses is becoming more and more prevalent. The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) reports that in 1997-1998 58% of all post-secondary institutions offered internet-based courses, and 82% reported that they had plans to increase their internet-based offerings over the next three years (NCES, 1999). The academic community has analyzed online learning in numerous ways. However, prior research attention has focused on policy issues, such as curricular ownership, teaching loads, accreditation, revenue streams, participation rates, and general effectiveness of online courses (Cleary, 2001; Guernsey, 2001; Larson, 2000; Carnevale, 2000; Carr, 2000a; Hackbarth, 1997; Kahn, 1997). Although such inquiries are important, this investigation focuses on the effectiveness of online learning for modeling project-based, constructivist learning principles for teachers. Specifically, this article describes ways of implementing constructivist principles in an online course to promote effective uses of technology by teachers and addresses through qualitative methods the following areas of inquiry:

* How effective was the course in achieving its goal of getting teachers to adopt constructivist uses of technology in their teaching?

* How did the course's online characteristics impact, if at all, teacher adoption of technology in teaching?

LITERATURE

The need for teachers to effectively integrate technology into their teaching has been well established through government reports (OTA, 1995) and national standards on teaching and learning (NCATE, 1997). Although "effective integration" could arguably have several meanings, a constructivist approach that requires that teachers not simply use technology themselves but the technology into the hands of the students has frequently been adopted.

Even though implementation models exist for such integrated uses of technology (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2002), recent and historical data indicate that integrated technology implementations are not common. In 1995, the OTA reported that although 5.8 million computers were available in K-12 schools in the United States, few teachers integrate them into their classroom activities (OTA, 1995). Further, Becker's (1991) report on the results of the 1989 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (I.E.A.) "Computers in Education" survey tells us that in spite of significant advances in both hardware and software available to classroom teachers, basic skills practice and learning about computers continue to be the predominant activities. This same result is reported in the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organization's report on teacher and teacher-directed student use of computers (Becker, Ravitz, & Wong, 1999). Once again, a very small percentage of teachers reported using computers and software in a constructivist fashion. For example, only 4% of English teachers had their students use presentation software on at least 10 occasions and only 5% of science teachers had students use simulation or modeling software that frequently (Becker et al., 1999). In fact, among computer-using teachers, word processing software is the computer application used most frequently. So, still, computers continue to be used more as an extra activity, rather than as an integrated part of the overall classroom learning experience.

The content of preservice teacher technology courses is undoubtedly a significant factor in influencing how teachers use technology in their classrooms (LaFrenz & Friedman, 1989). A 1989 survey on computer courses for education majors at institutions across the United States found that these courses varied significantly in terms of textbooks used and content areas addressed but, generally, students were taught applications such as spreadsheets, word processors, and data management (Lintner, Moore, Friske, Mlynarczyk, Thomas, & Wiebe, 1991). It appears that preservice teachers walk away from these courses knowing something about computers and some things about various software applications (e.g., spreadsheets and word processors), but have not actively used or even seen demonstrated computers used in constructivist ways or computers used as tools that can amplify and increase engagement in learning experiences.

Research suggests that the best way to prepare preservice teachers to incorporate technology in their teaching is for teacher education faculty to model technology use in methods courses (Carlson & Gooden, 1999; Munday, Windham, & Stamper, 1991). If teacher educators do not model effective uses of technology as a tool for teaching and learning, then preservice teachers are less likely to include technology tools in their own instructional practice (Zehr, 1997). Handler's (1993) research revealed that teachers who report being better prepared to use technology when they graduate have more technology experiences in methods courses and student teaching than those teachers who report being inadequately prepared to use technology (see also Harry, 2000; Rowand, 1999). It is evident that today's teacher educators must learn how to model technology as a tool for teaching and learning so that tomorrow's teachers will include technology tools in their classroom practice.

Sprague et al. (1998) suggested that effective models for the purpose of teaching technology use to faculty should include five components: (a) awareness of the potential technology can offer, (b) opportunity to explore technology integration possibilities, (c) time to master learning the technology, (d) applying the technology to teaching, and (e) reflecting on teaching. These components, along with access to hardware and software, provide a basis for professional development that enables teacher educators to model technology as a tool for effective teaching and learning. Likewise, Rodes, Knapczyk, Chapman, and Chung (2000) argued for the need to gradually move teacher education experiences and practicing teachers away from their expected passive modes of learning that they practiced and perfected in face-to-face learning situations to the more learner-centered strategies necessary to implement constructivist and project-based learning in online environments.

Certainly such professional development experiences can be offered successfully in a face-to-face environment. However, just as in other professions such as engineering where practitioners must constantly update their skills, practicing teachers must also have convenient and constant access to professional development training. In particular, technology integration is a fast-changing topic for which practicing teachers need frequent access to new techniques and applications. In fact the demand for effective technology integration by teachers is such that the educational community would benefit from face to face as well as online environments (Rodes et al., 2000). As Polselli (2002) described in his study of online training supported with mentorship to increase teacher technology integration, online delivery of technology integration content may provide the answer to this need. Further with the increasing numbers of post-secondary institutions offering online courses and degrees (NCES, 1999) such offerings--similar to the one described in this study--are likely to become common in the coming years.

This article speaks to the intersection of these needs--the need for teachers who can effectively integrate technology into their classrooms and the need for continuing education of teachers in online formats. This study addresses these issues by examining the impact of an online project-based, constructivist course on technology integration on participants' understanding and application of technology integration skills and their reflections on developing these skills in an online format.

METHODS

Participants

Participants were 48 first-year teachers (47 women and 1 man) enrolled in a graduate education course on effective uses of technology in the classroom at a large mid-western university. All participants were in their first semester of graduate course work and were participating in a special masters program for students who had just completed their bachelor's degree in K-12 education. The entry requirements for the masters program were stringent--including a 3.0 or higher undergraduate grade-point-average (GPA), acceptable scores on the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), or the Miller Analogies Test (MAT), and strong recommendations from student teaching supervisors. These admission criteria taken together with the fact that none of the 48 students dropped the course led the instructors to conclude that these were hard-working, high achieving, students.

From an information sheet that students completed at the beginning of the course the author and a second instructor ascertained that 60% (n =29) of the students had never before participated in a completely online course. Eight percent (n = 4) had previously taken an online course and seventeen percent (n = 8) had taken either a correspondence course that was not online or had participated in at least one web-assisted course. The remaining seven students did not respond to this item.

Of the 48 students, 29 (60%) and experienced actual classroom teaching besides "student teaching" (e.g., summer school programs, substitute teaching, and full time teaching). Eight students had experience teaching preschool, working in camp counseling or coaching sports activities (17%) and another eight students indicated they had no additional teaching experience besides student teaching. Last, 69% (n = 33) of the students planned to teach in grades K-5; 13% (n = 6) in grades 6-8 and another 13% in grades 9-12. One student indicated she would teach special education but did not specify a grade level, and the remaining two students did not respond to this item.

Course Description

The instructors taught the online course using Blackboard during an eight-week 2000 summer session. The goal of the course was to prepare new teachers to meaningfully integrate constructivist uses of technology into their classroom teaching.

All projects reflected the constructivist framework we had adopted for the course. Rather than simply learning "about" how technologies can be used to support learning, the course required students to actually use technologies in meaningful ways. Thus, the course modeled integrated uses of technology as recommended by prior research (Carlson & Gooden, 1999; Munday, Windham, & Stamper, 1991). Students were required to use technologies to support learning in disciplines relevant to their classroom teaching assignments. Course projects included creating concept maps, conducting advanced WWW searches and creating a web page of their results, and developing a cognitive flexibility hypertext (see Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1992). All assignments demonstrated and modeled constructivist uses of technology that these future teachers could in turn use with their future students.

Data Sources

Data were gathered from three sources collected at three different times. The first source was an information sheet that students completed at the first class meeting. All 48 students completed this self-report form that in addition to biographical information, collected data regarding past teaching experiences, using technology in teaching, and learning through online courses.

The second data source was a written student reflection completed during the last week of the course. All 48 students completed the course but only 41 chose to complete this final reflective instrument. This instrument asked questions about the technology skills students learned in the course, their beliefs about integrated uses of technology in teaching and their impressions of learning in an online format.

The last data collection occurred four months following the completion of the course when all students were working as teachers. At this time, we conducted a follow-up survey to ascertain how the teachers were actually using technology in their classrooms and how, if at all, the course influenced their use of technology. Twenty-two of the original 48 participants (46%) responded to this survey.

All open-ended items were transcribed and for all analyses the author read through the responses to a single item, created a set of categories based on the combined responses of all participants and finally tallied the participants' responses. All coding was conducted at the phrase level (Miles & Huberman, 1994) to produce the emergent categories described. As a check, a second researcher also coded a subset of the data using categories and definitions provided by the author. Interrater reliability numbers are reported where applicable in the results section. Given the focused nature of the short answer items to which participants were responding (e.g., what technologies did you learn during this class? what does it mean to use technology in integrated ways?), and in an effort to provide an objective account of participant responses and trends (per Miles and Huberman, 1994), the author uses both descriptive narrative and frequency counts to present the results.

To address the first question regarding the impact of this online course on teacher use of technology to enhance learning, the author analyzed participant responses to the following subquestions.

* What technology skills did participants learn during the course? The data source for this question consists of one item from the final week of the course survey that asked participants to list the technologies they had learned during the course.

* How did participants' self reported uses of learning-enhancing technologies change, if at all, before and after the course? The data sources for this question are short answer questions, one each from the precourse and final week of class surveys.

* How are participants actually using technology in their classes four months following the course? This data is taken from a forced-response item from the follow-up course survey.

To address the second research question concerning how the online nature of this course impacted, if at all, teacher adoption of technology in teaching, the author analyzed one open-ended item from the final week of the course survey. The item asked participants about the experience of having to regulate their own learning because of the nature of online classes.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Effect on Participant Adoption of Constructivist Methods

The results for the first research question regarding the effectiveness of the online course towards teacher adoption of constructivist uses of technology are reported in the results of the subquestions previously listed. The first subquestion concerning the technology skills that participants learned during the course was addressed in one item from the final week of the course survey. Table 1 shows the 13 most frequent responses, their tallies and the percentage of the 48 participants that mentioned each response. These items accounted for 87% (n = 211) of the total responses (n = 242). The remaining responses (n = 31) included FTP, EXCEL, MS Word, scanning and general skills such as finding files on the computer.

Many of the most prevalent responses were directly tied to the course's required projects. These responses are marked with "C." For instance, a project designed to help students understand and apply the idea of linking concepts as a way to strengthen learning and transfer required learners to create a concept map using Inspiration--thus the large percentage of students citing Inspiration as one of their learned skills.

The next subquestion addressed the differences in participants' views on how technology should be used in integrated ways to enhance learning as reported before the course and during the final week of the course. The themes that emerged from the participants' precourse responses (n = 109) to the open-ended question "how do you think technology should be used in integrated ways in your teaching?" fell into three major categories: (a) why one should use technology; (b) modifiers describing the ways one should use technology; and (c) specific technology methods. The first two categories comprised 39% (n = 43) of the 109 total coded responses but as they do not directly respond to the question posed, the author will not report them at this time.

The third category's responses--specific technology methods--comprised 64 of the total responses (59%). The methods, responses, and their frequencies are presented in the first two columns of Table 2. For comparison purposes, the participants' responses to the final week of class question on their plans for using technology in integrated ways are shown in the last column of Table 2.

Seven responses that were not mentioned in the precourse survey emerged in the final survey; these items are denoted by a N/A value (not applicable) in the precourse column. All responses in Table 2 (both precourse and final week) refer to student uses of technology with the exception of "teaching aids," which refers to teacher only uses of technology to support instructional activities (e.g., use spreadsheet to track grades). Interrater reliabilities for the precourse and final week codings were 85% and 83% respectively. All disagreements were resolved to produce the data shown in Table 2.

Last, an item from the four-month follow-up survey provides data relative to the courses' effectiveness in getting participants to adopt constructivist and integrated uses of technology in their teaching. Participants were given a list of technologies (column one of Table 3) and reported how many lessons they had implemented with each of them; these results are shown in Table 3.

The results in Tables 1-3 examined the course's effectiveness on participant adoption of integrated and constructivist uses of technology in their classes. Table 1 shows participants reported learning many types of technology skills during the course. Clearly not all of these skills would directly contribute to implementing constructivist technology integration in the classroom. However the items marked with "C" (directly related to course projects--for example, Inspiration, creating web pages) are arguably tied to such constructivist projects as having students create concept maps or their own web pages. Table 1 also indicates that participants' learning was not limited to student uses of technology but also included technologies necessary for using online course software. For instance, 48% of participants mentioned WinZip and 38% mentioned Blackboard as technology skills learned. These technology skills contributed to the participants' abilities to succeed in the course but are not likely to contribute to their adoption of constructivist uses of technology in the classroom. The author will return to this concept of effort spent on operating effectively in the online environment later in this section.

Table 2, which shows a comparison of participants' precourse and final week of class understanding of how to use technology in integrated ways, reveals several noteworthy patterns. First, the pre and final course surveys did show consistently different responses. The final week of course survey produced much more specific participant explanations of how she would use a particular technology in an integrated fashion. Further, the final survey examples consistently indicated a more sophisticated and detailed understanding of how to use technology in integrated ways. Many of these responses, such as the one below, also illustrated not just integrated technology uses but ones that are arguably constructivist as well.

     I plan on having students create graphs on Excel of their plant's
     growth and then we will compare the growth of these plants by
     looking at the various graphs. Another example of how I will
     integrate technology in my classroom is to have students
     participate in making the classroom newsletter on Microsoft Word.
     I think this is an authentic way to get kids writing for an
     audience.

Such examples provide evidence of participants' understanding the benefits of allowing learners to use technology as a constructivist tool to promote meaningful learning. Fourteen of the 40 participants who responded provided such examples thus providing some evidence that these participants attained an understanding of integrated and constructivist applications of technology in the classroom.

Further evidence of participants reaching this level of understanding comes from an observation regarding rows 18-23 of Table 2. These rows represent newly mentioned technology integration responses from the final week of course survey. These responses only account for 17% (n = 18) of the total responses however as technology-based activities they map directly to constructivist projects assigned in the course.

The last observation regarding Table 2 is that, with a few exceptions that are described next, there is a notable similarity between the pre and final survey frequencies. Of the 16 response categories that were coded in both the pre and final surveys (rows 1-16), 10 show a frequency difference of 0-2. The remaining six categories with frequency differences greater than 2 include "research topic," "Internet research," "typing stories/word processing," "teaching aid," "developing web pages," and "graphing." It is possible that the differences in the "research topics" and "Internet research" categories--11 to 0 and 10 to 23 respectively--may be due to the increased specificity of responses in the final survey. The somewhat vague topic of "research topics" disappears in the final survey and its 11 responses nearly comprise the increased frequency for the "Internet research" category. The slight increase in responses for both the "develop web pages" and "graphing" categories (gains of 4 and 3 respectively) are small indications that these individuals may intend to adopt constructivist uses of technology in their classroom. There are no obvious explanations for the increases in the last two categories--"typing stories" and "teaching aids"--although it is notable that one of the largest pre/final gains (from 3 to 13 in "teaching aids") is seen not in a student use of technology but rather technologies to directly support teachers. Certainly participants' realization that technology can serve as a tool for the teacher is not a negative outcome, however it does not provide evidence of their intent to use technology in integrated or constructivist ways with their students.

The data from Tables 1 and 2 provide evidence of participants both learning the necessary skills to implement constructivist and integrated technology applications and some intention to implement such methods. However, Table 3, which represents numbers of lessons actually implemented for particular technology activities, indicates that four months following the course, participants have not consistently implemented constructivist uses of technology. Although some of the methods that the respondents used included applications we had used in class and some other constructivist uses of technology (e.g., Netscape composer or other web page development tool, WWW browser, simulations, and spreadsheets), these applications were reported as being used in "one-two lessons." This is in stark contrast to the use of word processing software where five respondents reported using it in 3-9 lessons and six indicated they used it in 10 or more lessons.

Impact of Online Nature of Course

The second area of inquiry--that of the impact of the online nature of the course on participants' learning and adoption of integrated uses of technology--may provide some explanation for the results seen in Tables 1-3. The results for this question concerning the online nature of the course are from the analysis of a short-answer item from the final week of the course survey. This item asked participants about their experiences operating as self-regulated learners--a skill that was necessary to be successful in this online course.

Many participants clearly saw the benefits of working in a self-regulated learning environment. Although not all comments about self-regulated learning were positive, many participants recognized that by having to be responsible for their own learning, their learning was deeper and would be better retained. This student's comment indicates that having to be self-reliant and use the courses' provided resources for answers actually improved her learning.

     What I mean is that I had to figure out how to do everything by
     myself. Because there was no one there to fix all the problems I
     had to learn how to deal with them myself. The benefit is that now
     I know what to do if I should have that problem again, and I don't
     have to depend on anyone else. The type of class forces you to
     think and learn on your own. I think this was better for me than
     having someone tell me how to do everything.

Half of the respondents mentioned this theme. These participants described themselves as being more confident about their ability to learn technology skills on their own, or anticipated their ability to retain and use what they had learned better than from courses that did not require such self-regulation.

Although this result is encouraging, the predominant theme that emerged focused on the difficulties students experienced with learning new technologies in an online format. Of the 40 respondents, 25 (63%) mentioned the difficulty of learning to use new technology tools in an online format. This student's quote was typical: "I feel that this class was considerably difficult because of the topics at hand. Technology I think is a difficult class to implement over the Internet and without one on one contact."

Further, several students observed that having to learn the technologies in an online fashion actually interfered with their desire to learn more about using these technologies effectively to support learning--which they realized was the course's goal, and theirs too. Although this student attributes the problem to her lack of prior knowledge, she clearly states that learning the mechanics of the programs (e.g., Blackboard) interfered with her deeper learning goals.

    I was not knowledgeable enough to be very successful with this
    course. I was so concerned on how to use the program and getting the
    assignment done that I really didn't have time to learn as much as
    I wanted. I had to get help with every little thing I did which
    became annoying, time consuming, and took the place of learning.

Participants also frequently mentioned (15 of 40 or 38%) the need for more explicit modeling of the skills necessary to complete the assignments. As mentioned, this was the first completely online course experience for most participants. And even though the course materials contained examples, tutorials and procedural instructions for how to proceed with every required task, many participants still missed having the kind of modeling they are used to--direct instruction. "It was difficult to have to no one to model for me. I had trouble regulating myself because I only had myself to compare with. I did reflect, but not as I would have had someone looking over my shoulder."

Analysis of the course follow-up survey seems to confirm the difficulties students experienced with achieving the course's constructivist goals in an online format. Although 12 of the 22 respondents indicated they have their students use computers during class time (versus the teacher alone), the majority of these student uses did not reflect the constructivist principles we had focused on in the course nor did a significant number of respondents report using any of the applications we had worked with during the course.

The four-month follow-up survey asked participants to indicate their objectives for student use of computers. The most frequently cited objective was "to express themselves in writing" (16)--most likely indicating use of a word processor. The next most frequently cited objective was "improving student's computer skills" (15); in this case teachers are focusing on students learning "about" the computer (e.g., what is a computer, mouse, and keyboard skills) versus the constructivist and knowledge construction goals we addressed during the course. The third most cited category was "finding out about ideas or information" (14)--perhaps indicating some sort of web searches. The fourth most cited objectives were "learning to work independently" and "remediation of skills;" both were reported 11 times.

Explanations and Implications

An examination of the relevant literature on this topic and the author's experience with this course suggests that the actual affordances of online teaching environments make it difficult to achieve project-based, constructivist learning outcomes in such courses.

Science instructors, for instance, are struggling with how to create "online laboratories" that don't compromise course outcomes (Carr, 2000b). A major problem they confront is how to make the necessary equipment and tools available to their students. Another instructor expresses the concern "that online lab teaching will develop at the expense of hands-on activities," citing administrative pressure as a cause for this potential phenomenon (Carr, 2000b). Similar to this course, researchers examining online courses in nursing education that required students to learn new technology skills found that face-to-face instruction was best for teaching the actual technology and software skills. They indicated that face-to-face methods not only more effectively addressed the intellectual skill building for using the technologies but also attitudinal outcomes such as confidence to use technology (Zhang, 1998).

An extension of this argument is that the actions required to learn new technologies through online environments interfered with learners achieving the course's constructivist goals. Rather than developing a deep understanding and practicing constructivist applications of the technologies in classroom settings learners ended up focusing on the mechanics of learning the new technologies (e.g., how do I use Blackboard? How do I download Inspiration?). The following student remarked in particular about the difficulty of learning these types of outcomes in an online format. "It was also difficult because we had no prior knowledge of how to use these tools so you can't really learn how to use them over the Internet without an instructor showing you."

Other researchers have found similar results. For instance, Rodes et al. (2000) report that in an online continuing education program for teachers "the absence of the live instructor ... can create a significant level of anxiety and discomfort" for the learners and thus potentially interfere with their achievement of intended learning outcomes (p. 1). Similarly, Hung and Chen (1999) reported that in an online implementation of a social constructivist framework in a preservice teacher course on instructional design, the use of technology in the delivery and implementation of the course hindered students from focusing on the higher level learning outcomes that were intended for the course. Specifically, students were so bogged down in the lower level technicalities and complexities of learning to use the required course technologies (in this case multi media authoring applications) that many failed to reach an understanding of the possible benefits of using multi-media development as a means to encourage higher order thinking.

The actual online delivery tools themselves are an essential aspect of this argument. Comparative reviews of online course package features and the effect of these features on learning outcomes do not exist. Most articles address the features of one delivery package in the context of describing a particular course implementation (e.g., Chen, 1997; Mende, 1999; or Maslowski, Visscher, Collis and Bloemen, 2000). Firdyiwek's review, however, addresses the relationship between learning outcomes and online courseware packages (1999). He reviewed three popular online courseware systems (Web Course In A Box, WebCT, TopClass) specifically for their pedagogical bases and concluded that all three have extensive capabilities for supporting "competency-based teaching of discrete information and processes" (p. 33) and that the tools included represent a behaviorist/empiricist model of pedagogy quite well. However, these systems, according to Firdyiwek, could not support more flexible, open-ended, or qualitative pedagogies.

The author does not claim to attribute the lack of adoption of constructivist technologies entirely to the online nature of the course. Other factors are very likely involved. For instance, written comments from the course follow-up survey indicate that 45% (10) of the new teachers do not have sufficient access to computers and software to implement constructivist uses of technology, while another 27% (6) indicated that they did not have the time to begin effective technology integration. These reasons are commonly cited in prior research (Becker et al., 1999), but prior research also reported that effective modeling of technologies is an effective strategy for encouraging technology integration. By having these new teachers engage in constructivists projects in the course and by the many examples the course materials included, the instructors provided many modeling opportunities--yet at least initially, the course did not consistently achieve its outcomes.

So although the data do not support the conclusion that the online nature of the course was the sole factor in the lack of constructivist adoption from these new teachers, the data do indicate (e.g., the participants' data and the instructors' observations) that the lack of affordances that online delivery packages offer for creating project-based, constructivist learning experiences necessarily interferes with effectively achieving these types of outcomes.

CONCLUSION

Today's teachers' ability to effectively integrate technology in the classroom is a well-recognized need, and one, according to the current literature that has not yet been met (Beck & Wynn, 1998; Becker et al., 1999). This article has described the characteristics and effectiveness of an online course designed to address this need.

Although the online mechanism provided a convenient means for new teachers to acquire these important skills and the course design provided adequate opportunities for modeling and practicing of technology integration skills, results indicate that the course was predominantly ineffective in achieving its goal. Students consistently cited the difficulty of learning the new technologies in an online environment as an impediment to learning and a further literature review found evidence of a lack of affordances in online learning environments for supporting these types of constructivist, project-based outcomes. Implications from this study include the need for further development of online learning tools to support constructivist-oriented, project based learning as well as the need for careful consideration by administrators and curriculum planners as whether certain courses--based upon their desired learning outcomes--are appropriate for complete online delivery.

Table 1

Technology Skills Learned During Course As Self-Reported By Participants

Technology / Skill               f (%)

Inspiration (C)                 37 (77%)

Advanced internet searches (C)  24 (50%)

Blackboard                      18 (38%)

Hypertext / links (C)           16 (33%)

Email attachments               12 (25%)

Downloading software or files    8 (17%)

Creating Cognitive
Flexibility Hypertexts (C)       7 (15%)

WinZip                          22 (48%)

Create a web page (C)           19 (40%)

Netscape Composer (C)           17 (35%)

Digital Camera (C)              15 (31%)

Other Web Page Editors (C)      9 (19%)

Online discussion board         7 (15%)

Table 2

Integrated Uses of Technology: Precourse and Final Week Participant
Methods

                  Frequencies:  Precourse  Final
                                           Week of
                                           Course

 "Integrated" Technology Use
         Responses:

1. Research topics (did not        11         0
specify how)

2. Internet for research           10        23

3. PowerPoint presentations         9         8

4. Writing papers / editing/        7         7
newsletters

5. Email buddies / internet         6         6
communication

6. Typing stories / word            5        10
processing

7. Teaching aids (technology        3        13
used by teacher only)

8. Non computer technologies        3         5
(VCR, TV, calculators)

9. Games                            2         0

10.Graphics / computer art          2         4

11.Discipline specific              1         3
software (spelling, Math
blaster)

12.Develop web pages                1         5

13.Projects                         1         0

14.Graphing                         1         4

15.Multimedia tool                  1         1

16.Learning software                1         0

17.Concept mapping                N/A         5

18.EXCEL / spreadsheets           N/A         4

19.Video camera and video         N/A         3
editing

20.Advanced Internet searches     N/A         2
(e.g. Boolean operators)

21.Critiquing web sites           N/A         2

22.Graphing calculators           N/A         1

23.Scanning / editing photos      N/A         1

Total Responses                   109        107

Table 3

Technology Usage Pattern 4 Months Following Course

Number of Lessons Implemented
Per Activity:                        0  1 - 2  3 - 9  10 +

Technology-based activity

Games for practicing skills          5      5      4   4

Simulations or exploratory          10      4      3   1
environments

Encyclopedias or other CD ROM        9      8      0   1
references

Word Processing                      2      5      5   6

Creating concept maps                0      0      0   0

Software for making presentations   14      4      0   0

Graphics oriented printing          12      4      2   0

Creating spreadsheets or databases  17      1      0   0

Using already created spreadsheets  17      1      0   0
or databases

A multimedia authoring tool (e.g.,  15      2      1   0
hyperstudio)

Netscape composer or other web      17      1      0   0
page tool

World wide web browser               9      3      3   3

E-mail                              17      1      0   0

References

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ROSE M. MARRA

University of Missouri 

USA

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