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 Integrating Role of Teachers
ICTs in higher education
Education in Geo-informatics has undergone remarkable development with the introduction of a number of related courses at graduate and postgraduate level in India. By 2004 one may even find it being named as at least one of the many papers in different undergraduate colleges teaching Geography, Geology, Planning or other Geo-Sciences. However, the curriculum leaves something to be desired particularly in the relatively non-professional colleges. In many cases, the lack of required infrastructure, combined with partially trained teachers, indicates that the curriculum is still at a nascent stage. Introduction of information and communication technology (ICT) can provide solutions with inputs from both within and outside. Execution of ICT requires new competencies of faculty members. The burden of integrating e-learning lies mainly on the shoulders of the teachers, therefore, any planned process should take into account the capabilities and limitations of the teachers and should be directed as steps and manner that suit each teacher. Teachers can get more and more creative in integrating all possible interaction as the experience with the course evolves and as the overall experience of the college teacher evolves. Undoubtedly, digital learning resources have the power, if developed and deployed appropriately, to significantly enhance the learning experience in Geo-informatics. Teachers will, however, always be needed.
ICT and teaching faculty in higher education
On a college campus there are constant reminders that knowledge acquisition is the main focus. In that sense the campus of an institution of higher education may be viewed as a “safe haven”. Higher education focuses on how to maintain the “trusting environment” image where students can be stimulated to acquire knowledge on certain subjects, evaluate their level of learning, and in the process enhance their own value proposition through existing faculty. Therefore, somewhere ICT have to create surrounding environment trustworthy enough to build confidence to fall in the category of ‘sure learning’. In ignoring this, the crevice between conflicting agendas of University and techno-industry will widen.
However, it may be basically assumed that a higher education teacher already has a viewpoint on the subject matter s/he teaches and an opinion on how it should be taught. A teacher usually has some teaching material he had already accumulated, prepared and used. Different branches have different terminology, different learning objectives, different emphasizes, etc. For example in remote sensing evaluating the patterns emerging from spectral signature can be one learning objective, while in GIS – thematic linkages and query analysis is important learning objectives. If dealt appropriately, these can be readily augmented in designing reusable learning objects.
Nevertheless, ready availability of technology in institute of higher education may not necessarily propel ICT integration in traditional academic set-up. This is despite the fact that in June 2001, Kirori Mal College became the first institute where successful on-line admissions process was completed in India. Despite this the academic dimension is almost missing. Although it made statements about the needs to promote the use of ICT on a fitness for purpose basis, it did not provide any clear direction or states how ICT should be used. For that matter, up to now the institutional teaching and learning strategy had said little in depth about the potential for exploitation of ICT. What emerges is a fact that, the solutions may target measures revolving around faculty with Technology and Students integrated around it.
But in doing so, in traditional higher education there exists certain bottlenecks, which underlie even after the availability of the required technology. They are common for any discipline. The identified bottlenecks in the introduction of ICT in traditional academic set-up are:
- teachers have to make a move to new education, but they lack time;
- teachers fear that ICT will dislocate them;
- teachers are unsure of the security provisions for their study material, and
- perceived unreliability of networked services and local computing services.
The reasons to have a stated policy for on-line learning developments revolving around teachers emerges from a fact that they are the major spearhead of anchoring learning ships to the shores. The policy should therefore aim at:
- making faculty more accessible to students with all types of study needs,
- increasing the potential for innovative forms of study, thus improving the quality of our offering through geovisualization
- providing flexibility of study mode and giving students of all type an extra skill by increasing their exposure to the spatial datasets which otherwise may not be readily available to them
- remaining competitive because increased exchange of study material will nurture quick updates especially relevant in fast expanding spatial data infrastructure
The sharing and dissemination of good practices is popular with staff developers in western academic institutes. However, it is important to remember that what is a good practice in one situation may not be for another. This is particularly true with respect to the use of ICT to support teaching and learning where the success of an approach can be very context specific. In disseminating ICT, the approach should shift from a complex technology approach to simple technology approach. The over-emphasis of service providers on the complex technology, is a turn off to most staff who want simple ideas and ideally, simple technologies to help them deliver the pedagogic model that they are comfortable with. This is not to say that technology should drive the pedagogic approach but rather, the technology developers (who, maybe, are from outside India) should have faith in existing faculty to use any new technological expertise sensibly, to facilitate and improve student learning.
Faculty’s reaction to ICT
Evaluation data were collected from the faculty members with an open ended questionnaire and at times informal discussions and chats. The sample comprises the lecturers, readers and professors teaching in University of Delhi. Based on the comments and administrators experiences, following observations are worth mentioning:
- For the most part, teachers possessed basic computer skills. Unlike the scenario a few years ago, the initial resistance to computers had gone down.
- Initially, the teachers were primarily concerned with their own comfort levels in adopting the new technology (self concern). Having acquired competence in this area, their focus shifted to implementation (task concern). Having gone through these two stages, their concern moved on to how the innovations could help their students to learn.
- The negative impact of unreliable networked systems also emerges as a problem in effecting the integration of learning technology as depicted in previous writings.
- The faculty only wishes to be introduced to the platform and at least initially was not interested in further training. The interest is in the newness and not in real implementation.
- Faculty who have been introduced to the platform and who are interested in training, are mainly concerned about the performance or the instrumental use of the platform and about the management of the platforms (students) they expected (task concerned).
- Even after crossing time hurdle, insufficient follow–up support at local level defers use.
- Most faculty members seem to adhere to a teacher centered vision on teaching and learning in an academic set-up.
- Many teachers feared that the ICT would dislocate them. Thus, before actual adoption of e-learning the mindset deters its augmentation. However, history teaches us just the opposite. The new forms tend to add to rather than dislocate: video or DVD has not replaced cinema, T.V has not displaced radio and neither books have been replaced by Internet.
- Over expectations deterred few teachers. This was consequent of sheer hype generated by new medium with too many colorful demos, just as it happened in the bursting of nineties dot.com start ups which rapidly came to be seen as up-starts without a strong foundation. So slow and steady ushering of ICT through blending learning may increase users.
- Many teachers fear that the privacy of their study material is at stake. Due to sharing proposition many of them fear its use. The incentives however may check this.
- Variation in success rate of colleges and schools in ushering ICT emerges from a fact that the approach of implementation is different. Whereas in most schools and even in private or trust run academic institutes of higher education, there is top-bottom approach with compulsory binding for faculty to use it. In most autonomous colleges there is a freedom for teachers to use it.
- With respect to the design of the learning environment created in the modules, assignments and discussions among participants created opportunities to express doubts and uncertainties. For many teachers it was a relief to observe that faculty members other than themselves share similar experiences and questions.
Incremental processes
For an effective role of a teacher in a traditional educational set-up, one envisages a process that enables a teacher to stick to his conceptions of the subject matter and to the way he believes the subject matter should be taught. Following the basic guidelines of digital learning, a teacher may be provided with open and flexible facilities to put his course on the web. In addition various facilities to share and negotiate possible tags with other teachers from same specialization and the technical team (may be from outside) be provided as an incentive. In digital learning, this is important to maintain the interest of a traditional teacher.
The incremental process includes three different processes: one for an individual teacher, a second for a group of teachers teaching similar topics such as teaching GIS to varied audiences and a third the whole group of the college teachers or the faculty of or any other institute of higher education. A technical team supports all of these incremental processes. It is assumed that a teacher gradually improves his course by adding content, interaction facilities by interaction with the learning material or interaction among students, etc., through reuse of his learning materials and maybe even learning materials of his colleagues. The group of teachers of similar courses incrementally, with the help of the technical group, establishes a dictionary of metadata tags that enable sharing and reuse of learning materials. The reusable learning objects created by faculty members can thus become academic outputs just like printed books written by them. As for the third process, the college gradually establishes norms and procedures for developing e-Learning within the college, which enables reusability, collaboration among teachers and some standard interaction facilities for students with creation of Central Support System (CCS).
Creation of Central Support System has many advantages. The main advantages for the teachers, if they augment digital learning in teaching geoinformatics through CCS are:
- Teachers can concentrate on content without worrying about style and formatting.
- Teachers can reuse learning materials. These materials can be their own before or during the processes creating an online course, and can also be learning materials of other teachers.
- Content modules can be used in other contexts as in related courses for different skill levels.
- Automatic generation of Indexes, summaries and glossaries.
- Evolvement of a community of practice.
Competencies required
The ultimate aim of augmenting ICT in traditional classrooms is to enable reliable teaching –learning environment. Such use requires faculty members to have two main competencies:
- to be able to use the e-learning platform instrumentally, and
- to be able to reflect systematically upon one’s own educational practice.
The first competency requires that the faculty member be aware of the platform’s different functionalities. This implies that the user can anticipate how the digital learning environment will appear to the learner and how it will change over time, depending on how faculty can put limits on certain functionalities.
The second competency is more complicated mainly because the process encompasses several other competencies. Faculty members need insight into the processes of teaching and learning. These vary between institutions. The teacher must also be able to design different educational learning environment.
Changing faculty’s conception
A fundamental gap between the initial and desired situations in the teaching–learning environment emerges from faculty conceptions. To bridge this gap it is important to address the participant’s inherent teaching attitudes. Changing conceptions however is not an easy thing to do . There are four critical elements in Ho’s model that can guide the conceptual change:
- self awareness of one’s teaching conception
- confrontation between one’s own conception and practices and between one’s own conceptions and conception of the others.
- exposure to better, alternative conceptions
- commitment building and refreezing
Before faculty members will adopt a new conception, it has to be intelligible, plausible and fruitful. This would imply that there is an emotional element involved as well. The faculty’s interaction with new technology illustrates that teachers only evolve from one stage of concern to another only if the previous questions or doubts regarding self or task are answered and visually demonstrated. Solutions to these concerns are necessary in order to attain conceptual change.
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The sharing and dissemination of good practices is popular. However, it is important to remember that what is a good practice in one situation may not be for another
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Design principles
To improve the functions and functionalities of the e-learning platform, maybe indigenously developed or purchased from outside like Blackboard and Web communication technology, design principles must include two way solutions:
- one to provoke conceptual change in the Faculty’s mind-set during training
- second to take into account the participant Faculty’s stages of concern
In order to provoke conceptual change in the participants during implementation it is important to have planned training sessions, which may include:
- digital learning environment in the form of model or e-learning platform offered to faculty users to distinguish different components of learning environment and their interdependency. This will enable them to analyze their own teaching practice with other participants and thus, will confront them with other conceptions and practices.
- Integrate the faculty’s teaching practice into the training by sharing it as a case study with related group. It will allow participants to confront their conceptions to their own actual practice and hopefully creative actual practice will add to what is learned during training session.
- Elaborate the global scenario in today’s education concept with emphasis on wide knowledge base accumulating daily and readily available too crossing the borders. It offers the faculty an example of an alternative or even better teaching conception than what they adhere to.
- Integrate first realizations of faculty’s learning to the training programme, thus enacting as stimulants to continue the use of e-learning platform.
In order to take into account the participants’ concern one can identify next principles. The learning strategies should include the teachers’ requirements to enable the success rate:
- As teachers prefer to learn and receive support ‘just in time’, the `just in time support’ becomes mandatory for the success in Higher education teaching faculty.
- As teachers prefer to learn at their own speed and in their own surroundings, some flexible learning modules be prepared by the experts for teaching faculty.
- In order to be able to respond ‘just in time’ when faculty members move from one stage of concern to another, individual support should be available at any time and on request.
- Also, some shared material and links be made available on the platform to enable immediate support. This may be in the form of maps, imageries, graphs, tables, symbols, etc.
- As teachers are used to community feeling, creating and maintaining lively online communities becomes important.
Conclusion
Teaching and learning is a process, not a problem. Therefore all solutions in learning for higher education in Geoinformatics need to consider the teaching-learning process and not just preparation of stand-alone reusable learning objects. A balanced and appropriate approach is required. One where there is no single answer, but a whole pack of them based on individual faculty’s mind-set. Successful education of geo-informatics will involve multiple forms of teaching and learning in order to engage, stimulate and extend the learner. Teaching-learning resources should be created to support teaching and learning rather than replace them. The e-learning resources need to be as generic and as reusable as possible across the broad educational landscape and must be versatile enough to accomodate different levels and styles of teaching and learning. Disability issues and technological constraints must be considered. To achieve last aim, emergent metadata and interoperability issues had to be addressed. Further, denying the right dose of faculty’s involvement with visual incentives can slowdown the process. Certainly, for long-term integration of ICT in enhancing GIS Instructional Approaches pivotal role of teaching faculty cannot be ignored especially if academics enhancement is an agenda and not otherwise.
References
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- Hohnbaum, C., and S. Grasset (2002) Creating New Learning Model to Avoid Skill Gaps and to Fulfill the Future Needs of the Knowledge Society, the New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education, Rotterdam, 2-4 September 2002.
- Tillema, H.H. (2000) “Belief Change towards self –directed learning in student-teachers : Immersion in practice of reflection on action”, Teaching and Teacher Education , 16 (5-6), 575-591.
- Gilbert, S.W (2000) A New Vision Worth Working Toward – Connected Education and Collaborative Change (WWW Document) URL http://www.tiltgroup.org/gilbert/NewVwwt2000-2-14-00.htm (Visited 2003, Feb,01)
- Ho, A.S.P. (2000) A Conceptual Change Approach to Staff Development : A model for programa design, The International Journal for Academic Development, 5 (1) , 30-41.
Ibid.
- Hangreaves, A.L. Earl & S. Moore (2001) Learning to Change : Teaching Beyond Subjects and Standards, San Francisco : Jossey Bass.
- Hammond, N., et.al (1992) Blocks to the Effective Use of IT in Higher Education, Compuers and Education, 18,2, 155-162.
- Bennett,R., (2001) “Lecturers’ Attitudes towards New Teaching Methods”, The International Journal of Management Education, (LTSN Buisiness, Management and Accountancy Centre) 2, 1,42-58.
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- Laga, E.S. and J. Ellen (2001) Characterstics of Support Initiative to Stimulate Professional Development on ICT in J. Price , et.al., eds., Proceedings of SITE 2001, Mar 5-10, 2001, 692-697, Norfolk, V.A. :L Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
- Bates, A.W.., (1997) Restructuring the University for Technological Change, Paper presented to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 18-20 June, London. Available at: http://bates.cstudies.ubc.ca/
- Korthagen, F.A.J. & Kessels, J.P.A.M (1999) “Linking Theory and Practice: Changing Pedagogy of Teacher Eduation”, Education Researcher, 28 (4), 4-17.
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