The Standard Appropriate for the Degree and Licensure Area
The ISTE Standard:
- Standard V. Instructional technology facilitators actively reflect on their practice.
- Standard 5b. Instructional Technology Facilitators link professional growth to their professional goals.
Educational technology promoters actively seek professional development to maintain the leadership roles of teachers, technical experts, and lecturers in the use of modern and new technologies. Full professional development and participation in local and global professional learning communities allows them to explore creative applications and enhancements to improve professional practice and student learning.
It has been found out many teachers and lectures, while being at the forefront of science, fall behind with the ability to use modern technologies in their professional lives. Thus, not all teachers are able to use Google disk or cloud systems to store or access information and rely on outdated resources that are far less convenient and credible. This often results in inability to interact with students effectively as teachers are unable to efficiently integrate technologies into their subjects.
The Requirements for the Artifact
The course EDTC6035 (Integrating Technology into the English Language Arts, Social Studies, and Informational Skills Curriculum) focused on the necessity to incorporate technology into the education process and showed what difference the use of technology made in similar settings. Technology is seen not only as a means of facilitating teachers’ work but also as a means of making a teacher’s work more effective. The theoretical base for my project lies in studies featuring that the increase in technological prowess of teachers lead to an increase in the number of students interested in the subject.
The final project for this course consisted of completing a project on Google Docs, its focus being helping teachers to learn successful interaction with students through this particular program. The textbooks used in this course is Brown, A. The Essentials of Instructional Design: Connecting Fundamental Principles with Process and Practice by Brown & Green. The textbook is instrumental in revealing the connection between the teachers’ ability to use technology and the quality of their interaction with students.
How the Selected Artifact Is a Good Example of the Objective, Competency, or Standard
Since Standard V states that “Instructional technology facilitators actively reflect on their practice”, I chose “Creating Google Documents” for my project as a subject that can easily be used at my school by students and teachers alike. The project was based on instructional ADDIE design model and consisted of five stages: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (Hanafi et al., 2020). At the analysis stage, I carefully studied the teachers’ needs in school environment in terms of the technology necessary to make their lessons more productive to instill knowledge into students’ minds. Moreover, I specified which teachers need special training with Google documents, what they did not know and what needed to be taught to improve the teaching process at school.
In the analysis process, I came to a conclusion that older teachers who are about to retire should be excluded from training program, since they have low motivation and great difficulties in learning to use Google Docs application. All other teachers, apart from those who were found to be knowledgeable about Google Docs, took part in the project. At a design and development stages, I drew up instruction of what the teachers were supposed to do in order to learn to use the application. My instruction comprised creating Goggle Documents, editing them and saving changes. The practice also comprised creating sections, inserting videos, learning the function keys, adding spreadsheets, and sharing images. After the learning sessions which took place for two days, practical assignments were given to teachers so that they could demonstrate their newly-found knowledge in practice. Finally, a short test was planned to measure the level of teachers’ knowledge.
At the implementation stage, the planned design was put into practice and teachers were educated to use Google Docs. Afterwards, a short test was given. At the evaluation stage, I assessed the results of the project. It turned out that all teachers who took part in the project demonstrated sound understanding and comprehension of the material and were able to create Google Documents in conditions close to real professional settings. When I collected opinions on whether the course was useful for professional aims, the absolute majority of teachers said that it was beneficial. It allowed them to share the material and knowledge in an engaging way instilling pupils with the desire to study. Thus, the project can serve as evidence that “instructional technology facilitators actively reflect on their practice” since learning the basics of Google Documents allowed the teachers to make their lessons more engaging and interesting for the pupils.
The Potential Change of the Content, Strategy, or Design of the Artifact
In deciding which ISD model to use for my project, I selected the ADDIE design model that presupposes five stages of project development. By designing my instruction with this model, I feel that each step is precisely what it should be, well thought of and leading to a single aim of educating teachers to use Google Docs effectively. I do not feel that any changes are necessary since the implementation of the project was small-group tested and highly acclaimed by professional teachers themselves. However, to be ready for technological problems that may arise at the implementation stage, I fell it would be beneficial for me to test the equipment beforehand to make sure that everything is working correctly. This way, I can make the necessary adjustments if needed before the education starts and not in the process of it.
How the Artifact Is Representative of Future Career Goals and Plans
This project enhanced my knowledge on how instructional design models help to make the project concise, precise, and its results measurable. The importance of analyzing each step within a project cannot be overestimated since all steps are interconnected and each adds to the credible results of the project. Evaluation was conducted through a questionnaire distributed among the teachers who took part in the project. The questionnaire offered them to assess their level of digital skills before and after the targeted education and say whether new knowledge facilitated their work and made it more productive. The absolute majority of teachers provided positive feedback and this fact lends me confidence in my abilities as a technology facilitator. In addition, I have understood the importance of careful planning and feedback at all stages of the design model. These processes help me to make sure that the education is effective and beneficial for those involved in it. My project relied on modelling strategies that can further be used by teachers in their own work.
My future career goals include using different model designs to educate the staff on diverse issues. The ADDIE design model used in this project served to show how the implementation of design models can be beneficial for education processes. In the future, apart from ADDIE model, I plan to use other design techniques to instruct staff depending on the needs and aims of the education processes devised. By using design models, such as ADDIE, ASSURE or ISD model designs, I plan to get insights into how these models can be used by teachers in classroom environment to make their lessons more engaging and effective. I plan to share the process of model implementation with school teachers and everyone interested in making their instruction interesting and effective.
Reference
Hanafi, Y., Murtadho, N., & Ikhsan, M. A. (2020). Reinforcing Public University Student’s Worship Education by Developing and Implementing Mobile-Learning Management System in the ADDIE Instructional Design Model. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, 14(2).