Educational Technology Beyond Content

This book is the outcome of a research symposium sponsored by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AECT]. Consisting of twenty-four chapters, including an introduction and conclusion, it argues that informational content should not be the main element of education, and that to provide more for learners, it is necessary to go beyond content and address other skills and capabilities. It also discusses the false premise that learning is complete when the information is known, not when learners seek more: their own directions, answers, and ideas. The authors assert that the ability to synthesize, solve problems and generate ideas is not based on specific content, although education often focuses solely on teaching content. Further, they state that content can be separated from the learning process and that instructional design and educational technology must be about the skills, habits, and beliefs to be learned.

The text explores the concept of innovation, and analyse and compare different dimensions of innovation found in the various case studies; the transfer of innovation and the mechanisms of change; on an innovative online case study database on education innovations that has been designed to be used by education practitioners to support organizational leadership, international collaboration and reflective practice in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) eEducation Leadership initiative; on a project aimed to support the establishment of communities of practice for education practitioners facilitated through an extendable online database that can be used to contribute and share case studies of their own ICT-supported pedagogical innovations. It discusses roles of the teacher and the anticipated changes to the education profession at a system level, in the coming decade on the basis of emerging changes observed in the case studies, and leadership issues at the school level. The book analyses change mechanisms for different kinds of innovation and how different contextual and cultural factors interact to bring about the changes observed.

Highlighted are the pedagogical, organizational, cultural, social, and economic factors that influence the adoption and integration of emerging technologies in distance education. Advice is offered on how educators can launch effective and engaging distance education initiatives, in response to technological advancements, changing mindsets, and economic and organizational pressures.

The proceedings of the International Symposium on Open, Distance, and E-Learning (ISODEL 2021) share ideas, either research results or literature reviews, on distance education, media, and education in the digital era. Some recent issues consist of innovative education in the digital era, new media Industry 4.0, Digital Education Transformation, Character Building, Vocational Education 4.0, and Preserving Future Children Characters and Culture. It is expected that the proceedings will provide new insights to the knowledge and practice of education and education technology research. Therefore, such parties involved in education research such as academics, practitioners, business leaders, and others will benefit from the contents of the proceedings.

This book gathers the best papers from the HKAECT-AECT 2017 Summer International Research Symposium. Revealing the complex interactions between communication and learning, which are represented by the symbol “X” in the title, it provides a platform for knowledge exchange on the new ecology for education in the digital era. It also equips readers to handle complex issues in both communication and education, and clarifies the difference between practitioners and academics in communication and in education.

In Issues in Technology, Learning, and Instructional Design, some of the best-known scholars in those fields produce powerful, original dialogues that clarify current issues, provide context and theoretical grounding, and illuminate a framework for future thought. Position statements are introduced and then responded to, covering a remarkably broad series of topics across educational technology, learning, and instructional design, from tool use to design education to how people learn. Reminiscent of the well-known Clark/Kozma debates of the 1990s, this book is a must-have for professionals in the field and can also be used as a textbook for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses.

Overall we come away from this project with a renewed sense of the complexity of evaluating the implementation and impact of technology in teacher education. In the post-PT3 period the federal government turned to large-scale experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of educational technology but these have produced little in the way of understanding what types of technology work in various content areas under various conditions. PT3 and its approach to evaluation can be viewed as the pioneering period of educational technology evaluation in teacher education. It was a time when evaluators were just beginning to develop appropriate standards that could be used as evaluation criteria. It was a time when the accumulated wisdom of the evaluation field with regards to the primacy of mixed methods and multiple indicators of outcomes was just beginning to take hold. PT3 evaluators understood the importance of treading the line between summative and formative evaluation, and the relationship of evaluation to the improvement of educational practice. In a world where the policymakers now clamor for simple quantitative evaluations linking teacher preparation to pupil achievement scores, we are reminded that the causal chain from teacher preparation to in-service performance and student achievement is fraught with externalities, complexities and a less than equal playing field. Collectively we still have not figured out how technology may be adding value to education beyond any potential impact on superficial standardized test scores. We have as a nation, ignored the call of cognitive psychologists who in 2000 called for a new frame of reference for learner-centered, community-centered , assessment-centered and content-centered educational processes. They understood that the high stakes accountability systems hinder educational innovation and the release of technology's potential to unlock new ways of knowing and learning. Looking back now on the accomplishments of the PT3 program within our current political context, we see a need for more nuanced evaluation models that examine the relationship between pedagogy and technology integration, with a realization that teacher preparation programs will vary in their approaches to both. Some will focus on skills-based approaches, others on the relationship between pedagogical content knowledge and technology integration. The PT3 program served as an important incubator and test-bed of appropriate evaluation practice; we are already looking back at the program for lessons on how to move forward. We hope this volume may serve as a reminder of lessons for the future.

Today, new media is both augmenting and extending the traditional classroom with a variety of technology-based tools available to both students and faculty, and has created "new" virtual classrooms for anywhere, anytime availability to education. Despite the enormous potential for technology to support the educational enterprise in this emerging "creative" economy, technologies are still not yet fully integrated in the classroom and their association with educational outcomes is as-yet unclear. This book profiles scholarly work from around the world to examine closely the effectiveness of the newest media in education at bridging the gaps among and between teachers, students and subject matter at all levels, from K-12 through adult education. These pieces are theory-based investigations with implications for future research, theory and application. Contributors examine how the fields of education and new media have evolved and are continuing to evolve pedagogically and practically, from predominantly instructivist, with a passive, one-way teaching format; to constructivist, including teacher- and learner-controlled, sensorially immersive and socially interactive exchanges. This book will be of interest to students and faculty in the areas of new media in education, including distance learning, online learning and "virtual" learning.