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Encourages Contact Between Students and Faculty
Electronic mail, web pages and course management systems, such as WebCT, increase opportunities for students and faculty to converse and exchange work much more speedily than before, and more thoughtfully and "safely" than when confronting each other in a classroom or faculty office. Total communication increases and, for many students, the result seems more intimate, protected, and convenient than the more intimidating demands of face-to-face communication with faculty.
Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students
Study groups, collaborative learning, group problem solving, and discussion of assignments can all be dramatically strengthened through communication tools that facilitate such activity.
Encourages Active Learning
The range of technologies generally fall into one of three categories: tools and resources for learning by doing, time-delayed exchange, and real-time conversation.
- Supporting apprentice-like activities in fields that themselves require the use of technology as a tool, such as statistical research and computer-based music, or use of the Internet to gather information not available in the local library.
- Simulating techniques that do not themselves require computers, such as helping chemistry students develop and practice research skills in "dry" simulated laboratories before they use the riskier, more expensive real equipment.
- Helping students develop insight. For example, students can be asked to design a radio antenna. Simulation software displays not only their design but the ordinarily invisible electromagnetic waves the antenna would emit. Students change their designs and instantly see resulting changes in the waves. The aim of this exercise is not to design antennae but to build deeper understanding of electromagnetism.
Gives Prompt Feedback
Teachers can use technology to provide critical observations for a student; for example, video to help a novice teacher, actor, or athlete critique his or her own performance. Faculty (or other students) can react to a writer’s draft using the "hidden text" option available in word processors: Turned on, the "hidden" comments spring up; turned off, the comments recede and the writer’s prized work is again free of "red ink." Computers can also provide rich storage and easy access to student products and performances, through the use of electronic portfolios.
Emphasizes Time on Task
Students and faculty alike can make better use of time when they can get access to important resources for learning without trudging to the library, flipping through card files, scanning microfilm and microfiche, and scrounging the reference room. For faculty members interested in classroom research, computers can record student participation and interaction and help document student time on task, especially as related to student performance.
Communicates High Expectations
Many faculty report that students feel stimulated by knowing their finished work will be "published" on the World Wide Web. With technology, criteria for evaluating products and performances can be more clearly articulated by the teacher, or generated collaboratively with students. General criteria can be illustrated with samples of excellent, average, mediocre, and faulty performance. These samples can be shared and modified easily. They provide a basis for peer evaluation, so learning teams can help everyone succeed.
Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning
Technological resources can ask for different methods of learning through powerful visuals and well-organized print; through direct, vicarious, and virtual experiences; and through tasks requiring analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, with applications to real-life situations. They can encourage self-reflection and self-evaluation. They can drive collaboration and group problem solving. Technologies can supply structure for students who need it and leave assignments more open-ended for students who don’t. Fast, bright students can move quickly through materials they master easily and go on to more difficult tasks; slower students can take more time and get more feedback and direct help from teachers and fellow students. Aided by technologies, students with similar motives and talents can work in cohort study groups without constraints of time and place. |
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In March 1987, the AAHE (The American Association for Higher Education) Bulletin first published "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education." With support from Lilly Endowment, that document was followed by a Seven Principles Faculty Inventory and an Institutional Inventory (Johnson Foundation, 1989) and by a Student Inventory (1990). The Principles, created by Art Chickering and Zelda Gamson with help from higher education colleagues, AAHE, and the Education Commission of the States, with support from the Johnson Foundation, distilled findings from decades of research on the higher education experience. Reprinted here with permission.
SOURCE: Chickering, A.W., and Gamson, Z.F. (1991). Applying the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. Number 47, Fall 1991. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.
For additional information about the seven principles and technology, see Technology & the Seven Principles [http://www.tltgroup.org/Seven/Library_TOC.htm]. |
