Reflections of Researchers Involved in the Evaluation of Pedagogical Technological Innovations in a University Setting

It is widely assumed that developments in information and communication technologies are fundamentally transforming and improving higher education. As a part of an ongoing evaluation of technology-supported pedagogy in one university, our three-year research project was designed, on the one hand, to determine if and how selected technologies were beneficial for learning and, on the other hand, to offer professional development for faculty members. In this paper, we reflect on our participation in a pedagogy and technology (referred to as PedTech) pilot project, describe some of the relationships that developed between ourselves as researchers and evaluators and our faculty collaborators, and share what we have learned from this experience. We suggest that a scholarship of teaching approach to evaluating innovations in teaching and learning is one way to support institution-wide adoption.Présumons que les développements dans les technologies de l'information et de la communication transforment et améliorent l'éducation postsecondaire. Par une évaluation continue de technologies pédagogiques dans une université, notre projet de recherche avait deux objectifs de base. Le premier objectif était de déterminer si les technologies choisies amélioreraient l'apprentissage. Le deuxième était d'offrir le développement professionnel aux professeurs ciblés. Dans cet article, nous réfléchissons sur notre participation dans ce projet pilote de nature techno-pédagogique. Nous décrivons les relations développées entre nous, les chercheurs-évaluateurs, et les professeurs collaborateurs, pour partager les leçons et les pratiques de réussite. Nous croyons qu'une approche institutionnelle d'évaluation des technologies pédagogiques innovatrices est un moyen d'étendre cette application

The interaction of goal orientation and interest on students' use of self-regulated learning strategies

Goal orientation and interest are two motivational components of self-regulated learning that have been found to be positively correlated with the frequent use of learning strategies. The focus of this study was to examine if these two motivational components interact to affect students' use of learning strategies. Ninety-four grade 11 students participated in this study. This study was a 2 x 2 between-groups factorial using a post-test only control design. There were two independent variables: goal orientation and task interest. There were three dependent variables: student's total score on main-idea selection, additional cognitive strategies, and of metacognitive strategies. There were significant (p < .05) main effects for task interest and goal orientation on the main-idea selection measure. Students who reported having a high interest in the task were able to select more main ideas from the text than students with low interest in the text. Similarly, students who were offered a reward for finding the main ideas outperformed students who were encouraged to adopt an intrinsic goal orientation. There was also a main effect (p < .05) for interest on the metacognitive strategies measure. High interest students had higher metacognitive scores than low-interest students. These results suggest that interest is an important motivator for the selection of main ideas and in the use of metacognitive strategies. These results also suggest that when interest is low, offering a reward to students may help them to select the main ideas from text