Re-creating graduate teacher education classrooms: multiple technology formats and collaborating instructors.

This article describes a teaching experiment investigating the impact of using multiple teaching strategies and innovating while teaching collaboratively. The objective of this study was to examine the use of collaboration in trying a combination of face-to-face meetings, web courseware, and interactive two-way video in a graduate course. The major finding from interview data, surveys, courseware records, and instructor journals was the value of combining technology is synergistic if a sense of community is established and if instructors understand and capitalize on the strengths of each technology. The secondary finding was the power of collaborative teaching as a means of professional development for both instructors.

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    Teachers learn just as their students do: by studying, doing, and
    reflecting; by collaborating with other teachers; by looking closely
    at students and their work; and by sharing what they see. This kind
    of learning cannot occur solely in college classrooms divorced from
    engagement in practice or solely in school classrooms divorced from
    knowledge about how to interpret practice.
    Linda Darling-Hammond

Darling-Hammond (1997) emphasized the potential importance of graduate education if it models good practice and is engaged with teachers' daily practice. It then follows that graduate teacher education should model innovative teaching practices and innovative uses of new technologies. Distance learning technologies have the power to increase opportunities for communication and sharing among teachers, as well as to bridge the divide between graduate teacher education and the PreKindergarten-12 classroom. This article shares the results of our collaborative effort to combine distance-learning technologies (web-based courseware and interactive two-way video) with the traditional face-to-face format in a graduate course on teaching, learning, and curriculum for practicing teachers. More specifically, we intended to design and deliver a multi-format course that provided opportunities for the type of teacher learning Darling-Hammond described.

Distance education is growing rapidly internationally and nationally (McIsaac & Gunawardena, 1996). Universities encourage the use of distance learning technologies for several reasons: to improve student learning, to provide additional access to education (McIsaac & Gunawardena), to accommodate needs of nontraditional learners (McCormack & Jones, 1998), to thrive in an increasingly competitive academic marketplace (Jones & Pritchard, 1999), to scale courses up in numbers or geography, to broaden their range of course offerings, to make efficient courses with lower enrollment, and to show that the institution is on the cutting edge of technology use. Some universities have emphasized the use of technologies, especially the Web, to the extent that critics have said they are "engaged in a frenzied drive to the web-based cliff" (Harmon & Jones, 1999b). Instructional technologists warn against giddy excitement about the promise of new technologies, such as Reeves' (1998) comment that "the World Wide Web does not guarantee learning any more than the presence of a library on campus guarantees learning" (p. 3).

Because of the rapidly changing nature of technologies such as the Internet, research too often must follow, rather than lead, development and instructional use. For that reason universities are facing learning to use new instructional media that do not yet have a substantial research and theory foundation (Hopper, 2000). Firdyiwek (1999) noted that course design and delivery may be driven more by technology than by pedagogy or research. Technology might include web courseware, interactive two-way video, the use of internet sites, and more task-specific technology (e.g, scientific calculators).

Both web courseware and interactive two-way video may be classified as distance or distributed learning. McIsaac and Gunawardena (1996) defined distance learning as "structured learning in which the student and instructor are separated by time and place" (p. 403). The United States Distance Learning Association (1999) defined distance learning as "[encompassing] all technologies and other forms of learning at a distance." Distance learning is much older than latest technologies; it also includes courses conducted by correspondence, broadcast technologies (such as radio and television), and telephone-based technologies (audioconferencing, fax, video image delivery). Johansen et al., (as cited in McIsaac & Gunawardena) have categorized distance learning technologies into four types: (a) same time and same place, (b) different time and different place, (c) same time and different place, and (d) same place and different time.

Harmon and Jones (1999a) have proposed a way to classify educational web use of a course as informational (web is used to provide reference information such as the syllabus and contact information), supplemental (some course content is provided), essential (classes meet face-to-face, but students must also participate online), communal (classes meet face-to-face and online and content is provided in both environments), or immersive (all course content and interactions are online).

RESEARCH METHODS

Research Objectives

This course provided an opportunity to explore two research questions:

1. How can technologies be combined effectively? and

2. What is the value in collaboration when innovating with technology?

Participants

The 26 students who registered for this course were predominantly Educational Specialist (Ed.S.) students; the remainder were doctoral students, including a few students in concurrent Ed.S./Ph.D. programs. They were teachers, counselors, media specialists, or reading specialists in 10 different school systems in the metropolitan Atlanta area. They taught in elementary schools (10), middle schools (7), and high schools (9). They ranged in teaching experience from 3 to 23 years. Their average number of years of teaching experience was 14. Two of the 26 students were male.

The two instructors (also the researchers) were teaching collaboratively for the first time, although they had collaborated as researchers. One had experimented with web-based courseware for the previous two semesters (including a section of this course); neither had used interactive two-way video.

Method

Data sources included chat room transcripts, bulletin board postings, web pages, e-mail messages, transcripts of interviews, written evaluations, instructor journals, and the instructors' analytic memos. One advantage of some technologies, such as WebCT (WebCT, 1997), is that they document communications and record statistics on each student's activity in the environment. WebCT provides archives of transcripts of chatroom discussions, bulletin board postings and responses, and web pages created for the course. Each instructor archived all e-mail about the class. Each student was interviewed for his or her final. Portions of those interviews relevant to this study were transcribed. Students were given two opportunities to evaluate the course in written form: the standard university evaluation form and one designed by the instructors to inform their teaching and this research. Every student was also given a draft of this article when they came for their final interview and asked for feedback. Instructors also kept journals and analytic memos throughout the semester.

Data was coded, categorized, and themes were identified that addressed the research questions. Triangulation of data sources was used to confirm results. As in all qualitative research, additional themes emerged that will also be discussed in the results section.

Technology

Under the North Central Commission on Institutions of Higher Education (1998) definition, this course as a whole might be categorized as distance learning or "a formal educational process in which the majority of the instruction occurs when student and instructor are not in the same place" because a majority of the instruction did occur at a distance. The format of seven class sessions was face-to-face, five were online, and four were done by interactive two-way video. Other technologies were used throughout the course including e-mail, wireless laptops, and older technologies such as videotape, audiotape, facsimile, telephone, and mail.

The web-based software used was WebCT (WebCT, 1997). Three of the capabilities of this software were used: bulletin boards, chat rooms, and posting of web pages. By Harmon and Jones' (1999a) categorization, the web use in this course would be categorized as communal web use because the classes met in person and online, and content was provided in both environments.

The distance-learning technology was the Georgia Statewide Academic Medical System (GSAMS). It is one of the world's largest two-way interactive video (H.320) networks with over 400 sites in places ranging from elementary schools to rural hospitals. In this study and course, the central site was a classroom at Georgia State University (GSU). The GSU site is a room with tiered seating for about 40 students. Microphones are hung at six-foot intervals throughout the room. One portable clip-on microphone was available also. Video screens at the front and back of the classroom showed the remote site.

Only one receiving site was used. It was one of the Gwinnett County (Georgia) Public School office buildings. At this site, 12 students sat around a rectangular conference table. One portable microphone sat in the middle of the table. Video screens on two sides of the table showed the GSU site.

Using Johansen's (as cited in McIsaac & Gunawardena, 1996) types, the face-to-face meetings in this course would be classified as same time and same place. The bulletin board and asynchronous lesson would be different time and different place; chat rooms are same time and different place. No technology used in this course would fall into the category of same place and different time.

Nature of the Course

This course, Dynamics of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Development, is one of three required courses for Ed.S. students from a variety of education disciplines: art, counseling, English, foreign language, instructional technology, language and literacy, library and media technology, mathematics, middle childhood, music, reading, science, and social studies. The graduate catalog states that this course "explores the theory, research, and practice of curriculum development in school subjects and the aspects of effective teaching and learning" (GSU, 1999).

Two texts about educational change were used for the course: Linda Darling-Hammond's (1997) The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work and Seymour Sarason's (1996) Revisiting "The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change," which revisits his 1971 book, The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change. During the first class session, students read a chapter from J. Abner Peddiwell's (1939) The Sabertooth Curriculum. Students commented that these readings from 1939, 1971, 1996, and 1997 gave them a sense of the persistence of the challenges of educational change. The readings were timely because Georgia's governor proposed, and the state legislature passed, a major educational reform bill during that semester.

Political Climate

One year before this study, a new governor took office in Georgia and immediately named a group to study and make recommendations for changes to be made in the state. The resulting bill was released to the public during the first week of the semester of this study and was voted on by the legislature during the semester in which this class took place. Some of the more controversial issues in the bill included changes in the Georgia policy for teacher employment commonly referred to as tenure and threats to funding for the middle school concept and the arts. This political climate made the class readings especially relevant and discussions on educational change especially fervent.

Collaborative Teaching

The two instructors planned together before each session and debriefed immediately after each session. Initially, they tried to split responsibilities for leading discussions, but seemed to work best by "tag-teaming" throughout the class period (sharing responsibility for instruction and just jumping in when either wanted to add something or redirect the discussion). The grading for each assignment (two critiques, a written midterm, and three exploration papers) was shared equally.

Formats and Strategies

Face-to-face. The first two class sessions were held on campus, as was every third class session thereafter. The rotation varied slightly to accommodate assignments and the university calendar. The room in which face-to-face sessions were held was equipped with a demonstration computer linked to a projector and a television with a videocassette recorder; the room was also wired for use with wireless laptops.

For each face-to-face session, the instructors emphasized highly interactive activities in order to establish a sense of community that would carry over to the web and interactive two-way video sessions. Those activities included individual introductions, small group discussions of research interests, small group discussions of readings, and small group creation of public relations devices (posters, a radio commercial, a television commercial, Dear Abby-type column, and a pamphlet) to educate policy makers about educational reform. In one face-to-face class session, students reported the results of group discussions on the WebCT bulletin board using the wireless laptops. This recording of group work on WebCT gave all students access to each group's discussion notes.

Interactive two-way video. Almost half of the students were from the northeast region of metropolitan Atlanta. An interactive two-way video site in that region was available for those students for four class sessions. During the interactive two-way video class sessions, class discussions were held in small groups and as a whole class. In the fourth session, one of the instructors traveled to the remote site. In most of these sessions, the class had difficulties with sound and, because the class met from 7:15-9:45, no technical support person was available to help with those difficulties at the main site. For the fifth scheduled interactive two-way video class session, the class met at the two sites, but did not use interactive two-way video. In that session, each student was given a chance to share their research interests with his or her colleagues.

Web courseware. Web courseware was used for chat rooms, bulletin boards, and posting of course material such as syllabus, contact information, announcements, guiding discussion questions, the asynchronous lesson, and grouping for chat rooms. Students were required to post and reflect upon the class readings or discussions weekly (two times a week for 15 weeks). Students were encouraged to keep those postings to a screen or less, but postings still varied greatly in length.

For five of the class sessions the class met in WebCT chat rooms. For each of those sessions, class members decided whether to join an hour-long chat at 7:15 or at 8:15. In the first session, those groups of about 12 to 15 chatted together about the readings.

Asynchronous web lesson. One asynchronous assignment was used during the semester. This assignment was posted as a web page that had links to relevant resources on the Web. Students were to read them and post their summaries on the bulletin board. Instructors set up a separate forum for those postings, which was not used by most students.

Assignments and assessments. In this course, students were required to write five papers, take a written midterm assessment, and take an oral final assessment. The first two writing assignments were short papers in which the student was to react to specific readings. The last three papers were exploratory papers in which students were to pose a question and to research the answer in five-page papers. The written midterm asked students to discuss the readings from Sarason and to apply them to the education reform bill. The final interview assessment posed three questions to the students: to discuss Sarason's, Darling-Hammond's, and their own perspectives on a particular point, to describe what Darling-Hammond might say in a conversation to our governor about his reform package, and to discuss critically Darling-Hammond's ideas for restructuring schools. Students signed up for 20 minute final interviews. They were conducted by either instructor and were done either on campus or at a northeast Atlanta site.

Results and Discussion

Four major themes emerged that will be presented here with triangulated data to confirm these interpretations. First, community building was a critical component in creating a safe and effective learning environment. Second, explicitly identifying particular learning objectives and then carefully and deliberately choosing appropriate technology tools to enhance the teaching and learning of the course was essential. In addition, structuring the learning environment and choosing appropriate teaching strategies was also noteworthy. For example, if the chat room was chosen as the best tool to match objectives, it was also important to provide guiding questions for the discussion, assign a facilitator, and put students in groups of four to six to assure effective discussion for all participants. Third, the combination of technologies proved effective because the multiple technologies did not limit the number of instructional strategies that could be used. Last, collaborative teaching is invaluable as a means of professional development, as well as in exploring new technologies. It provided a rare opportunity for overt examination of practice.

Community Building

The major challenge for teaching in formats (including face-to-face) is establishing a sense of community. This confirms findings by Wiesenberg and Hutton (1996). The challenges of asynchrony and alocality amplify the difficulties of establishing community. For that reason, face-to-face meetings were critical to the success of the sessions conducted in other formats. Instructor and student data confirm the success of efforts to leverage the time spent face-to-face by emphasizing high levels of student interactivity in those sessions. Creating a learning environment that fostered community building was strengthened through our face-to-face sessions.

Student data confirmed instructor journal entries that the face-to-face sessions were critical for the success of other formats, because as one student commented, they "let us connect as people and teachers." The instructors prioritized student interaction in the face-to-face sessions. Data from several students agreed with the comment by one student that instructors "modeled effective techniques that helped them get to know each other." Data from instructor journals and conversations confirmed the emphasis on having "high touch" face-to-face sessions so that students would feel more comfortable with the people behind the names they would see in web chat rooms and bulletin boards, and for the "talking heads" they would see in the interactive two-way video sessions. One student suggested that even more small group sessions would have helped her get to know her classmates better. She thought that the instructors should have assigned groups so that students would interact with different classmates each session. In addition the instructors felt the need for the nonverbal feedback that they got from the face-to-face sessions to help evaluate the success of various teaching strategies and assessing student understanding.

Aligning Learner Objectives with Appropriate Technology Tools

When specific learning objectives were aligned with the most appropriate technology tool or face-to-face session, learning was enhanced. In addition, once the alignment was carefully selected, then structuring the lesson using that tool was critical. The Web provided a variety of tools for this course: chat rooms, bulletin boards, e-mail, and a means for publishing web pages for the class's use. Strengths and weaknesses of each technology tool were documented and suggestions provided for improving the structure and choice of each. Student criticism of these sessions included that it was hard to keep up with multiple strands of discussion. Although students did not report the frustration of isolation found by Cahoon (1998), they were frustrated by the absence of social cues also mentioned by Cahoon.

Just as Dede (1995) suggested, some students especially enjoyed the characteristics of online communication. Students liked that they "had more of a 'voice'," that it was "less intimidating" to speak out, and that it was "nice to be able to get your thoughts out and not worry about ... interrupting someone." One student hypothesized that "less driving time contributed to lower stress and anxiety" and that "many people discuss better in more comfortable settings, such as their homes."

The WebCT bulletin boards were invaluable in continuing the class discussions throughout the week. The number of postings per student ranged from 20 to 89, with an average of 40 postings. Advantages of the use of the bulletin board for weekly postings were that students and instructors continued reflecting on class discussions and continued the dialogue on the bulletin board. This experience agreed with Holt (1998) that online activities such as the bulletin board postings can encourage an increase in reflective thinking by sustaining the conversation begun in class throughout the week. At times, as the reform bill was making its way through the state legislature, some students checked the bulletin board daily for news on the bill.

One disadvantage in how the bulletin board was structured was the number of messages on it soon became unwieldy to download and overwhelming to read because of the number of weekly postings and that a major assignment was also posted on the bulletin board. Students and instructors agreed that use of different forums within WebCT would be an improvement in structure for the use of the bulletin board.

The asynchronous class assignment was published on the web outside of WebCT, but links to it were provided in WebCT. Students appreciated the flexibility of having an asynchronous class session that they could do from any location at a time convenient to them during that week. When internet research can enhance the session objectives, the asynchronous class proved efficient and effective.

Using instructional strategies that optimize each technology is vital. For example, in the face-to-face settings, interaction between students is a critical basis for later communication in less personal forms. In using WebCT bulletin boards, instructors can use multiple forums to help organize the postings. In replying to messages posted by others, students need to post concise comments that clearly reference the previous messages. To combat the disorienting effect of the rapid-fire chat in chat rooms, instructors need to organize students into small groups with group facilitators and provide guiding questions several days before each session.

In selecting interactive two-way video as a technology tool, preferred instructional strategies include lecturing or structuring a discussion so that students get longer and more defined turns to speak (such as doing reports) than might happen in a discussion. To this end, two-way interactive video would be a good tool for achieving learning objectives. Class members and instructor agreed that the interactive two-way video was the least effective technology used in this course. Because it was the first time most of the students or either of the instructors had used interactive two-way video, most students and both instructors were glad to have had the opportunity to try it. Its main advantage was that it was convenient for half of the class. Many students and the instructors agreed that interactive two-way video would work better for a course taught using mainly lecture; in the seminar format of this graduate course, in which discussion was critical, interactive two-way video was awkward and did not enhance the learning environment.

Interactive two-way video's disadvantages included problems with sound quality, and facilitation techniques. One student characterized it as "fragmented" and noted that "the lapses in conversation bothered me." Other students said that it "limited interaction" and that it was the "least personal" method of instruction used in the course. Many students noted that it would be worth overlooking the negatives to connect with someone with whom the class could not communicate in any other way, for example, teachers from some of the restructured schools Darling-Hammond described in the text or teachers from other states experiencing similar reform movements.

Combining Technologies

Data from instructors' journals and debriefing notes was confirmed by data from students that using a mix of technologies including communal web use and the appropriate instructional strategies for each was more effective than any one of the technologies would have been alone. The "high touch" face-to-face sessions complemented the interpersonal distance of web-based courseware and interactive two-way video. Writing to communicate in chat rooms provided opportunities for some students to express themselves who were reluctant to speak out in class. The web-based courseware and the interactive two-way video sessions saved time and money for students.

Collaborative Teaching

Collaborative teaching is invaluable as a means of professional development in general, as well as in experimenting with instructional innovations. It provides rare opportunities for examining own practice, for sharing and solving instructional dilemmas with another professional, and provides a lab in which to try new teaching strategies with a colleague, in some cases one experienced in those strategies. Collaborating encouraged the instructors to make transparent to the class and each other the instructional decisions they were making and the challenges they were facing as they innovated in their classrooms.

As collaborating teachers, usual reflections on teaching had to be made explicit as they debriefed together on each class session and planned for the next one. When they discussed what types of assignments or instructional strategies to use for the class they had to articulate why they thought they were effective. Those discussions caused them to continually re-examine and reflect upon their own practice as teacher educators.

Collaborating as researchers as they studied their teaching made ongoing data analysis a natural outgrowth of collaborative planning and debriefing. As one instructor moved from forefront to background in the classroom, she also could move along the participant-observer continuum as a researcher. At any point during a class session, one instructor could "tag team" with the other and hand over instructional responsibilities so that she could more closely examine something happening in the classroom that might provide rich data about students' responses to the technology. In their roles as co-researchers, they constantly had a peer debriefer for data analysis. In their roles as instructors in the course being studied, they had additional access to member checking with the students in the course because they held the privileged positions of the instructor-members of the course.

Because the students in this course were experienced teachers, they suggested solutions to some of those challenges. Collaborating as teachers provided the perspective of another experienced educator that both the instructors and students said they valued.

The only negative aspect of teaching collaboratively while using new technologies was that it occasionally created opportunities for confusion. For example, papers were submitted to either instructor by e-mail, in person, by fax, or by WebCT's e-mail. Two or three papers (of the 156 written assignments) were lost in the process, but those students simply were requested to resubmit copies. Another example was that when one instructor posted the directions for the midterm on the web and the other described the directions orally in class, the directions confused the students. The instructors concluded that only one person should write about and talk about each assignment.

Final Thoughts

The major finding in this study was the value of combining technologies if a sense of community is established and if instructors understand and capitalize on the strengths of each technology tool. What makes using different technologies or strategies work is the instructor's discrimination in matching educational objectives with technologies and teaching strategies. The secondary finding was the power of collaborative teaching in trying new technologies in university graduate teaching as a means of professional development for both instructors.

Further research should continue to explore ways to establish community in a primarily online community and ways for instructors to evaluate the sense of community among students. It should not be overlooked that an instructor's ability to establish community depends upon such traditional factors as the instructor's teaching style, student willingness to communicate, and the content matter. The use of a new technology adds the factors of understanding the effective uses of that technology tool and understanding how it interacts with more traditional factors.

In summary, this study speaks for trying new technologies collaboratively and in combination with other technologies. Combining technologies allows instructors to use a variety of teaching strategies. Teaching collaboratively with twice as many students is still practical at the graduate level, in terms of credit hour production, and provides the advantage of on-the-job professional development. Collaborating gives the instructors more time to experiment with the new technologies and encourages reflection from two perspectives about how well teaching with those technologies works.

These results support Darling-Hammond's statement about the potential impact of graduate teacher education if graduate teacher education strives to model good practice and if it is connected to the Pre-K-12 classroom. We propose the strategies of combining technologies and collaboration as important tools for the re-creation of graduate teacher education classroom.

References

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L. LYNN STALLINGS

Kennesaw State University 

USA

KAREN KOELLNER-CLARK

Georgia State University

USA

[e-mail]

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