Teaching Tech in the Field:
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Gregg Brownell and Nancy Brownell
Bowling Green State University
“Experience is not what happens to you; experience is what you do with what happens to you.”
- Aldous Huxley
The Program
The Master of Education program in Classroom Technology was designed and implemented in 1995 after a regional needs assessment regarding technology education for teachers. The program, described in more detail in Brownell, Haney & Sternberg, (1997) was originally based upon standards from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) (ISTE, 1992; NCATE, 1992; ISTE/NCATE Project, 2005a; ISTE/NCATE Project, 2005b). As those standards evolve the program is periodically updated. The program comprises 33 semester hours, is designed as a part-time program for the working teacher, and is completed in 26-29 months. Students are admitted into the program as part of a cohort and progress through the program with their cohort. Participants take courses over fall and spring semesters, as well as over summers, in a prescribed, predetermined sequence with their cohort. A list of program courses, presented in the currently prescribed sequence, follows.
EDTL 631 Survey of Computers in Education (3)
EDTL 611 The Curriculum (3)
EDTL 633 Hypermedia for Educators I (3)
EDTL 634 Hypermedia for Educators II (3)
EDTL 636 Networks for Learning (3)
EDTL 632 Classroom Technology Planning in Education (3)
EDTL 630 Media Literacy Across the Curriculum (3)
EDFI 641 Statistics in Education (3)
EDFI 642 Research in Education (3)
EDTL 635 Classroom Technology, Problem Solving, and the Curriculum (3)
EDTL 638 Seminar on Classroom Technology and Learning (3)
Of these courses, six (EDTL 631, EDTL 633, EDTL 634, EDTL 636, EDTL 632, EDTL 635) are heavily hands-on, lab-based courses. Of the remaining five courses, EDTL 630 has a hands-on component and EDFI 641 may contain a hands-on component. Depending on staffing and scheduling, the following courses may be offered as web-based: EDTL 631, EDTL 636, EDT 632, EDFI 641 and EDFI 642. By design, and from student feedback, web-based courses are kept to a minimum of between two - four throughout the program. Upon completion of the program, students have fulfilled requirements for Ohio’s Computer/Technology Endorsement. The endorsement is applied to the student’s current teaching license or certificate.
To date the program has 315 graduates. Enrollment is, depending on the time of the year, between 95-125 students in six to nine active cohorts. Cohorts comprise 15 to 18 students each and may comprise 12 to 14 students in special circumstances. No cohort is started with less than 12 students. At any given time up to three cohorts may be on-campus and up to six will be off-campus. Off-campus cohorts attend all courses in their program at a local school district facility, utilizing an appropriate computer lab. Off-campus cohorts are usually within a 60 – 75 minute drive from campus, although in one cohort was successfully offered at a location over 2 hours away.
The Good
The structure of the program and the use of off-campus locations for courses have produced multiple benefits for both students and administration. Maintaining a cohort structure in the program yields positive academic and personal benefits for the students. Students express a number of positive experiences, including experiences of bonding as a group; of receiving cohort support, both academically and during difficult personal experiences; of knowing each other well enough to critique each other’s work in a manner that’s mutually comfortable, and of gaining strong respect and admiration for each other’s strengths. Students, who are often trepidatious about upcoming courses, such as statistics, have repeatedly praised their cohort peers for help with understanding of concepts. Students have also reported that the variety of grade levels and areas of expertise in their cohorts have given them greater awareness of relationships between grade levels, content areas, and environments. For instance, in one cohort, a second grade teacher, a high school English teacher, and a physical education teacher were surprised by insights gained into how they were mutually impacted by each other’s curricula, instructional techniques, and school policies. The bonding of students in cohorts can lead, and has led, to educational collaborations outside the program and to positive impacts in their schools.
Across the program instructors encourage students to take their learning during a course and, in meeting the course requirements, create projects that they will actually use in their current education position. Besides being an efficient, effective way to integrate more technology into the schools, students perceive (rightly) that instructors view their time as important and respect the work they need to do and the time it takes to do that work. While maintaining standards this helps build a bond that a cohort and instructor share. We believe the prolonged engagement (26 months) with concepts and skills related to technology and time to implement ideas in the classroom, along with the bonding effect in the cohort, and quality instructors leads to augmented learning benefits for students.
The administrative structure of the program offers a “value-added” component to the students’ higher education experience. Throughout the program the Graduate Coordinator for the program and the Cohort Coordinator ease the experience of negotiating the bureaucracy. Both very accessible to the students, the Graduate Coordinator is primarily responsible for academic issues and the Cohort Coordinator is primarily responsible for fielding day-to-day questions, recruiting, and assisting the coordinator. Students are comfortable always having a person they know who will be able to assist with the many questions that may arise (e.g., billing questions, who to see about financial aid problems, transfer of credit from other institutions, etc.). Additionally, by having students together in a cohort, a coordinator can walk each cohort through any necessary paperwork (e.g., paperwork to apply for the computer/technology endorsement, paperwork to apply for graduation, etc.), oversee registrations, and inform all students in a cohort of processes all at the same time. Since it is important to the cohort structure and experience for the cohort to stay together throughout the program, normally, non-cohort students are not admitted to a cohort class, although there have been a few exceptions. All this helps greatly with the logistics of running the program in a way that benefits students across the board.
Part of the support structure for the Classroom Technology program has been a collaboration between the program, Continuing and Extended Education, and the Northwest Ohio Educational Technology Foundation (NWOET). Because the number of full-time, tenure-track track faculty to teach in the program never approached the ideal number outlined in the original program proposal, when demand for the program grew, the graduate coordinator needed to find another way to keep the standards of the program up while expanding the program to meet demand. The collaboration was formed to address this need. NWOET serves Northwest Ohio by providing instruction and available materials/equipment to districts in its service area. NWOET is located on the Bowling Green State University (BGSU) campus, but is not part of BGSU – its funding is from state sources and from the fee a district pays for its services. In the 1990’s the Graduate College at BGSU allowed NWOET instructors to apply for standing as graduate faculty at BGSU. Such standing is granted if the applicant has the appropriate credentials. The collaboration with NWOET has been significant in helping the program to maintain standards and to expand.
The additional collaboration with the Continuing and Extended Education unit of our university makes a further significant contribution. They assist us with advertising, recruiting, and myriad administrative tasks and paperwork, and additionally provide a tuition reduction for our students. They give cohort students a one-credit instructional fee waiver for each course in the program. Students pay for two credits and get one free. Also, the Graduate College was instrumental in the programs expansion. Ohio has an antiquated law on the books that deems 51% of all courses taken for a degree must be taken, physically, on campus. The Graduate College Dean was a great help in walking the graduate coordinator through a process that can waive that requirement. Basically, a set of relevant paperwork is created that demonstrates the need for the 51% waiver and also shows that the quality of the program will not be compromised by allowing students to take all the courses for the degree at an off-campus site. This document is reviewed by the stated graduate deans who may approve such a change. This successful approach has allowed us to expand as needed and keep the same quality program off-campus as we do on-campus.
Thanks to our collaborators, we have been able to keep a mix of faculty teaching in the program, including full-time tenure track faculty, full-time instructors, NWOET instructors, and, after graduation from the program, practicing teachers who have done exceptional work in the program. With well-prepared faculty, the various measures we use to gather data on the program have yielded consistently solid positive evaluations from students. This data comes from instructor evaluations for each course, a written evaluation completed by each individual in each cohort at the end of their program as well as a focus group in each cohort at the end of their program. Additionally, Continuing and Extended Education does a yearly survey of students and our College does a post graduation survey of all students. The Graduate Coordinator and the Cohort Coordinator prepare and submit a yearly Student Academic Advisory Committee (SAAC) report, which is published on the web. Also, the Graduate Coordinator and the Cohort Coordinator prepare the necessary materials for this program for the periodic NCATE visitation and review of various programs in the College.
The program generates approximately $750,000 yearly in pure profit for the university. All expenses, excluding the graduate coordinators salary (he runs and teaches in this program, and also teaches in a doctoral program and another master’s program) are taken form the gross revenue for the program, including the cohort coordinator’s salary. A small percentage of what is left is allocated to the College (approximately $5,000 - $6,000 per year) with another percentage allocated to the program approximately ($12,000 - $15,000 per year). The gross revenue from the program each year does not include the state subsidy, which amounts to approximately $750,000 per year from the program, hence the figure deemed as pure profit. This is an important consideration at a time when Ohio is consistently rated either 46th or 47th in providing support for its “state” institutions of higher education. In fact, currently Ohio provides only 30% of BGSU’s annual budget.
The Bad
As in most institutions, implementing a program at BGSU required a process of submitting detailed information regarding the need for the program, demonstrating that there is a scholarly field of work regarding the program focus, showing that there are adequate resources (faculty) and equipment (in this instance, software and hardware) available, and demonstrating support for the program from within the university community and outside the university community (letters of support from national figures). Initially, the College administration proposed that every new faculty hire would have technology expertise and would teach at least one technology course per year, either an undergraduate course or a master’s course in the Classroom Technology program. Additionally, once a market was shown for the master’s program, up to two new tenure-track hires would be provided, each of whom would have as a primary course load one or more of the master’s courses. While a few new hires did initially teach technology courses, each quickly focused on their primary area of expertise and stopped teaching technology courses. This was no surprise to faculty who had argued that this is exactly what would happen. While the need/demand was amply demonstrated, no new hire in the area of technology was required to teach in the master’s program as their main course load. Hence, the collaboration cited above was started, to both grow the program and keep the quality of the program high.
The cost of tuition, even for in-state students soared during this time. The pay for two credits, get a three-credit course arrangement financed by the Continuing and Extended Education unit helped soften the rising prices for students. Even so, in the last few years, with high tuition and with K – 12 education cutting positions due to their budget crunch, more prospective students tell us they are not starting the program for financial reasons, and we have seen some students who need to drop out of the program because of lost jobs, moves to distant locations for new jobs, and financial problems. On a positive note, our new Governor has signaled that he will be working to stop the tuition escalation of the past years.
About half of the students who leave the program for these reasons come back to the program to complete it. Additionally, a few other students have missed one or more courses due to finances, illness, or personal reasons. When one or more of the courses in a given cohort’s prescribed sequence are missed, flexibility on the part of the student and the program can be necessary. It can happen that a needed course might be available only with a cohort an hour or more away or only in a later semester. Fortunately, in our program to date, few students have been in this situation and no student has been unable to complete the program within a reasonable time. This is partially facilitated by the fact that we have started a new cohort on campus each summer, so that every course is offered on campus within the space of a year.
The program also takes a toll on faculty, particularly on new faculty, due to the commuting time and the idiosyncrasies of school district lab facilities. When a faculty member has to drive about an hour each way, allow extra preparation time to double-check that the off-campus facilities are set-up as needed, and teach a course for three or four hours, it can easily add up to a six- or seven-hour day. The demands can be too much when, essentially, the new hire needs to focus on accomplishing the research, publications and service activities required to eventually gain tenure and promotion. This is understandable and could, conceivably be addressed by close support and collaboration with various levels of administration, and relevant committees, within and without the College. To date, such support has not been forthcoming.
Regarding other personnel in the program, the Graduate Coordinator position is held by a tenured full professor with responsibilities in the program including content upgrades to the program (as needed), advising of students, overseeing admissions, maintaining contact with the Graduate College, reviewing documents for graduation and for application for the Ohio computer/technology endorsement, reviewing and maintaining alignment with relevant state and national standards and writing (and monitoring) a five-year plan for program development, and teaching in the program (four to five courses per year, including summer session). The Cohort Coordinator position has different responsibilities. If the wrong person is in this demanding, essential position, current students may suffer incomplete lab facilities and/or loss of the “value-added” functions cited above, and new cohorts may not be recruited as needed. In such a situation, what results would surely be bad for the program.
The Cohort Coordinator does much of the legwork for the program: contacting teachers and administrators and meeting with Superintendents to explore setting-up a cohort in their respective district; arranging, advertising and holding informational dinners for prospective students in an area where a new cohort may start; screening the lab where a new cohort may start by visiting and going through a check sheet of necessary hardware, software and network (primarily web) access; maintaining records for each cohort, as well as a schedule for each cohort that follows any given cohort through its complete program; assigning appropriate faculty to appropriate courses, from a pre-defined list of possible instructors provided by the Graduate Coordinator, and reviewing schedules with the Graduate Coordinator; teaching one course in the program in each of the fall, spring, and summer terms; coordinating with Continuing and Extended Education regarding advertising, billing and other factors; and representing the program at local and regional technology events, as well as coordinating, as needed with NWOET. This is a formidable job and the wrong match for the position can be bad all the way around, while the best match is the bedrock on which the program is based.
The Ugly
Any program involving constantly evolving hardware and software, located in as many as five to nine geographically distant locations at a time and tied to providing a specific set of concepts and skills, can be challenging. In this context the term “ugly” refers to that momentary (it is hoped) jolt of negativity elicited by a spontaneous unraveling of the policies and procedures needed to keep the program running efficiently and to the degree of quality expected.
Examples, though not abundant, are not difficult to find. One example is when, a highly talented part-time instructor, newly recruited, arrived at the first session of her first class to find that the lab was open for use, but not configured as needed or even as it was configured when the Cohort Coordinator manually checked it after meeting with the district’s Technology Coordinator a week earlier. Another is when, two days before a new cohort was to start, a building principal questioned the presence of the cohort, because none of the participants were from that building. We contract verbally with some districts for use of facilities and have informal or formal written agreements with others. In this case the Superintendent was well aware of the arrangement and had verbally agreed to the use of the facilities, but the end result was an amicable agreement with the Superintendent to move the cohort location.
Faculty with solid technology experience and knowledge, as well as K – 12 teaching experience and a sound understanding of curriculum and pedagogy issues, who are also excellent teachers in an adult setting are not particularly easy to find. From time to time, after the best possible matches have been made between instructors and courses, for seven to nine master’s courses in a given semester, a phone call or e-mail a month, a week, or a few days before the course starts can arrive. The ugly part here is not the instructor needing to cancel at the last minute. Universally these are professional who act professionally and there is a real, understandable reason why they must cancel. Rather, the ugly part comes in trying to fill the slot when instructors are invariably already committed. In any given situation there will be specific technology and pedagogy content a substitute instructor will need to have, as well as the ability to work well with in-service teachers. Even in courses such as EDTL 631 The Curriculum, or EDFI 641 Statistics in Education, or EDFI 642 Research in Education, where technology may not be paramount, appropriate course knowledge and professional experience can be hard to find in a short time. In the, thankfully, infrequent times when we have had to scramble for an instructor, we have had instances in which class meeting times or days have had to be changed to acquire a quality instructor. Both instructors and students have, again thankfully, exhibited a willingness to accommodate each other in those situations. When this occurs, given some flexibility, the cohorts needs can be met and standards of quality maintained.
As stated above, data regarding the program is gathered, analyzed and supplied in various forms and to relevant individuals and units at BGSU as well as accrediting bodies external to BGSU. This data comes from instructor evaluations for each course, a written evaluation completed by each individual in each cohort at the end of their program, as well as a focus group in each cohort at the end of their program. Additionally, Continuing and Extended Education does a yearly survey of students and our College does a post graduation survey of all students. The Graduate Coordinator and the Cohort Coordinator prepare and submit a yearly Student Academic Advisory Committee (SAAC) report, which is published on the web. Also, the Graduate Coordinator and the Cohort Coordinator prepare the necessary materials for this program for the periodic NCATE visitation and review of various programs in the College.
Such a plethora of documentation, which yields, proportional to the wasted hours generating document after document, such a paucity of real, actionable information, must be placed in context. As pointed out by Edgerton (2007) we have entered the age of the “audit culture.” In her words,
“...we seem to be moving increasingly toward what cultural anthropologists, especially from the United Kingdom (Strathern, 2000), are calling an audit culture, especially with regards to public institutions. An audit culture, as described by Shore and Wright (2000) is one based on fear, mistrust, and all the assumptions about human nature that underlie those orientations. … One might assume and hope that our educational institutions will be places that nurture the imagination, enthusiasm, and ingenuity for dealing with the enormous challenges for survival that we now face. And yet, an academic culture based on fear and mistrust is more likely to result in paralysis than genius. We who work in K-12 education are long familiar with an audit culture in the United States. It reaches into the university through departments of education, which are increasingly answerable to the state. United States colleges and universities beyond departments of education are only just now beginning to feel the effects of an audit culture, and to see glimpses into the future with calls for standardized testing to reach into higher education in the near future (note, for example, Margaret Spellings’ Committee on Higher Education). In Britain this sort of accountability has been the rule for over two decades, hence the already rich academic literature on the subject. “ (Edgerton, 2007, pp.1 - 2).
There is a juxtaposition of concepts here that could, indeed, turn quite ugly. In contrast, we place our hopes and efforts on moving away from fear-inducing and time-wasting audits to moving toward a reasonable amount of meaningful data gathered in an environment in which responsibility and authority reside with those credentialed professionals who are accountable for success. This is akin to developing, and respecting, leadership skills at every level of the organization as in Sifonis and Goldberg’s (1996) Corporation On a Tightrope: Balancing Leadership, Governance, and Technology in an Age of Complexity.
Conclusion - The Best
As with any meaningful endeavor, there are times when, for whatever reason, one asks oneself, “Is this worth it?” In briefly reviewing the good, the bad and the ugly of the last 10 years of this program the answer is a resounding yes. There are times (which could easily fit under the good category) when those involved in the program are, literally, blind-sided by success, as evidenced by the responses and successes of our students. Take for example: the teacher who never before wrote a grant, learning to do that and getting $30,000 for technology for her school; the highly motivated student who took all courses in the program and supplemented them with another six computer science courses to tailor his learning so that he could work in Information Technology support at a university, which he did directly after graduation; the student who, struggled with conflicts with his job throughout his program, then due to budget cuts, lost his job during the last semester of his program, landed exactly the job he wanted in a dream-like subtropical setting, mentioning to us later innovative uses of technology in instruction; the elementary teacher who wrote a text on use of technology in elementary classrooms a few years after graduation; and the multiple teachers, who entered the program as timid technology users and proudly described their progress and the assistance and training they were giving other teachers in their schools after a year in their program.
One cohort, on their own initiative and without the coordinator’s knowledge, made a 15-minute video presentation wherein they analyzed the program and included insightful constructive suggestions for things they would like to see done differently in the future and offered a number of experiences, both with technology and with other cohort members, that they treasured and wanted to share.
To get a feel for that experience, consider the first group to go through the program, the group that started in 1996 (at that point, the program was spread over 30 months). At the close of the program, they designed and had produced a T-Shirt that helped document their experience. On the back of the shirt, they offered a series of experiences from their program, including adding together all the miles they had collectively driven to get to classes. (Remember, this was the first group through the program in the mid-1990’s, so some of the software mentioned is now dated.) The list reads:
“WE SURVIVED
- Being highly engaged, highly technological
- Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration
- 30 months and 166,484 miles
- Two babies
- HyperCard
- Eisner and Papert
- Field trips without directions
- Logo
- Statistics with and without SPSS
- BGSU parking with and without parking passes
- Bursar bills, bills, bills
- Many in-class presentations with their technology glitches
- Web pages that never saw the web
- Multi-colored rubrics
ONLY THE BEST SURVIVED!!!!!”
References
Brownell, G., Haney, J. & Sternberg, L. (1997). Developing and implementing a master of education in classroom technology,
in Technology and teacher education annual, Willis, Jerry, et. al., editors, Charlottesville, VA: Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education
Edgerton, Susan Huddleston. (2007). Progressive curriculum leadership in an audit culture. Paper presented at the
“Curriculum summit on assessment, curriculum standards, and accreditation and their impact on the field of curriculum
studies.” March 17, 2007. Bowling Green State University: Bowling Green, Ohio.
ISTE NETS Project. (2005). ISTE/NCATE program standards: Technology Facilitation initial endorsement. Retrieved
May 13, 2007 from http://cnets.iste.org/ncate/n_fac-stands.html
ISTE NETS Project. (2005). National educational technology standards and performance indicators for all teachers.
Retrieved May 13, 2007 from http://cnets.iste.org/teachers/t_stands.html
NCATE. (1992). Approved curriculum guidelines. NCATE, Washington, D.C., February, 239 - 273.
Ohio Department of Education. (1996). Teacher education and licensure standards: State of Ohio. Ohio Department of
Education: Columbus, Ohio.
Shore, Cris, and Wright, Susan. (2000). “Coercive accountability: The rise of audit culture in higher education,” pp. 57-89.
In Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and the academy. London: Routledge, as cited in:
Edgerton, Susan Huddleston. (2007). Progressive curriculum leadership in an audit culture. Paper presented at the
“Curriculum summit on assessment, curriculum standards, and accreditation and their impact on the field of curriculum
studies.” March 17, 2007. Bowling Green State University: Bowling Green, Ohio.
Sifonis, J. and Goldberg, B. (1996). Corporation on a tightrope: Balancing leadership, governance, and technology in an age
of complexity
Strathern, Marilyn (Ed.). (2000). Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and the academy.
London: Routledge, as cited in: Edgerton, Susan Huddleston. (2007). Progressive curriculum leadership in an audit
culture. Paper presented at the “Curriculum summit on assessment, curriculum standards, and accreditation and their
impact on the field of curriculum studies.” March 17, 2007. Bowling Green State University: Bowling Green, Ohio. |
