Technology improves performance

Abstract

The educational debate about the use of technology to improve learning performance, strangely, continues among policy makers even today, writes Gerry White on DERN. For example, a recent report that compared educational success in several countries, as measured by international tests, omitted the necessity and the benefits of using technology to improve student achievement. Such out-dated education reporting can be misleading for policy makers and educational leaders. A systemic review that synthesised the findings of over forty years of research has been recently made openly available by the American Educational Research Association in the Review of Educational Research. The study titled What Forty Years of Research Says About the Impact of Technology on Learning: A Second-Order Meta-Analysis and Validation Study quantitatively synthesised ‘findings from a number of meta-analyses addressing a similar research question’ (p. 6). The research question was ‘the effectiveness of computer technology use in educational contexts to answer the big question of technology’s impact on student achievement, when the comparison condition contains no technology use’ (p.6). The study, using a rigorous systematic approach, examined the use of technology as an in-class instruction supplement ‘compared to traditional, nontechnology instruction’ (p. 7). It excluded studies of distance education and fully online learning from its analysis of studies published during or after 1985. ‘In total, 25 effect sizes were extracted from 25 different meta-analyses involving 1,055 primary studies that included approximately 109,700 participants’ (p. 13). The study revealed a significant small to moderate effect size favouring the utilisation of technology as a support for instruction and a ‘higher average effect size compared to technology applications that provide direct instruction’ (p.16). Interestingly, the analysis also found that the ‘average effect size for K-12 applications of computer technology was higher than computer applications introduced in post-secondary classrooms’ (p. 16). So what do these findings mean? The effect size magnitude found in the analysis of primary studies indicated that the mean for technology integration was at 62% compared the nontechnology environment. That is, ‘the average student in a classroom where technology is used will perform 12 percentile points higher than the average student in the traditional setting that does not use technology to enhance the learning process’ (p. 17). The reviewers go on to suggest that instructional design, pedagogy and teacher practices are important aspects of technology use but that technology is not a consistent type of intervention. That is, there are several technological modalities, tools and strategies for learning and ‘its effectiveness, therefore, depends on how well it helps teachers and students achieve the desired instructional goals’ (p. 17). The authors argue that the effectiveness of technology may depend on the goals of instruction, pedagogy, teacher effectiveness, subject matter, age level and fidelity of technology implementation. They report that effect sizes were higher when technology was used to support cognition than presenting content which leads to their conclusion that, ‘one of technology’s main strengths may lie in supporting student’s efforts to achieve rather than acting as a tool for delivering content’ (p. 17). In the light of this rigorous and comprehensive analysis of studies about the use of technology and student achievement, teachers need to have strong technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (2006, Mishra & Koehler) to be effective in education today. Both initial teacher education programs and in-service professional education learning programs need to include technological, pedagogical and content knowledge for education to improve. Technology has been found to significantly improve learning performance. ------------------------------------------------------------- Gerry White is Principal Research Fellow: Teaching & Learning using Digital Technologies, Australian Council for Educational Research This article was first published on the Digital Education Research Network (DERN) Read the full article on DERN (free registration required) Photo: Flickr / dbkin