Threshold Concepts and Conceptual Change Processes

This paper reviews the idea of threshold concepts in the context of conceptual change processes students experience at the cognitive and social dimensions of learning.  Literature suggests the role of students’ ontological views in the development of their prior conceptions, which could be alternative to scientifically accepted ideas.  It is proposed that students may be able to negotiate such troublesome concepts in a productive way as they engage in the meaning-making process with peers.  Moreover, the social negotiation of knowledge can influence the conceptual change processes students experience in a discipline.  This paper will serve as a theoretical benchmark towards designing a study that will focus on exploring how peer to peer collaboration supports the understanding of chemistry threshold concepts. 

Faculty integration of computer-mediated learning technologies into teaching praxis

The purpose of the study was to examine organizational structural, cultural, pedagogical, and economic (reward system) elements of a traditional research-oriented university for influences on faculty adoption of computer-mediated learning technologies (CMLTs). Emergent driving and restraining societal and organizational influences (Lewin, 1951) on faculty members’ adoption of CMLTs were examined. Faculty members’ perceptions of the extent to which university policies and practices were aligned to support the successful design, development, and implementation of CMLTs were explored. A case study of faculty members, who had led CMLT development teams in a provincially funded Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) initiative at one university between 2000 and 2005, was conducted in four stages. In the first stage of the study, focus groups and members’ checks were held with instructional designers in order to identify potentially information-rich CMLT projects. Findings from this included an examination of the social negotiation process among members of CMLT development teams, and provided the bases for selecting faculty members to invite to participate in the study. Stage Two was a pilot of the faculty interview protocol that resulted in protocol refinement. In Stage Three, seven faculty members and one graduate student participated in interviews and members’ checks of the results. Faculty members were asked to describe their motivations for adopting CMLTs into teaching praxis, any resultant changes to their scholarship of teaching, the compensation they received for time invested in pedagogical and technological innovation, and the extent to which institutional structures, cultures, and policies had supported or impeded their efforts. Stage Four involved an environmental scan of institutional and provincial documentation of the TEL initiative as an avenue to corroborating interview data.In this study, it was found that faculty motivations for CMLT adoption included individual responses to departmental initiatives, curricular renewal and standardization activities, personal-professional development, integrating research into teaching, enhancing student learning, increasing the flexibility of student access to learning opportunities, and improving communications with students. Participants reported a variety of resultant changes to their scholarship of teaching: (1) a shift away from traditional lectures and toward learner-focused tutorials, small group and peer-to-peer discussions, and independent learning opportunities for students accessing electronic learning resources; (2) a new or renewed interest in using innovative instructional strategies and learning environments; and (3) a new or heightened interest in researching educational effectiveness. Organizational support for CMLT projects included fiscal support from the TEL program, and in some cases, additional funding provided by departments or colleges; project management support from the institution; pedagogical support from instructional designers; technical and aesthetic support from information technologists, media developers, graphic artists, and a medical illustrator. Organizational and cultural impediments to successful completion of projects varied across college settings. Lack of sufficient time to devote to CMLT development projects, balancing competing research, teaching, and administrative responsibilities with project activities, and therefore, coping with a mismatch between tenure and promotion requirements and necessary time commitments to CMLT projects were pervasive. Difficulties in coordinating large development teams, the slow pace of acquiring approvals for new programs, problematic project management models, and colleagues’ skepticism about and fear of integrating technology into teaching were common themes. This study surfaced implications for organizational change that could better enable faculty efforts to adopt CMLTs. Expanding tenure and promotion criteria to include CMLT development work (Archer, Garrison, & Anderson, 1999; Hagner & Schneebeck, 2001) and revising intellectual property policies for CMLT artifacts to better acknowledge faculty efforts (Hilton & Neal, 2001; Tallman, 2000) could do much to encourage the integration of technology into teaching. Promoting educational effectiveness research studies (Chyung, 2001), and bringing CMLT efforts in from the margins to become a core activity in the scholarship of teaching (Bates, 2001) could erode current skepticism and fear about technologies displacing faculty members (Olcott & Schmidt, 2000). Finally, in this study, theoretical implications for organizational change were posited. Traditional centralized and bureaucratic management styles are not well suited to supporting CMLT initiatives in higher education (Bates, 2001). A more distributed approach to leadership (Knapper, 2006) could better support necessary efforts to innovate, experiment, prototype, evaluate in order to incrementally improve project outcomes (Suter, 2001), create synergies between teaching and research activities, and garner faculty commitment to integrating computer-mediated learning technologies into contemporary teaching praxis

Learner-centered instructional design and development: Two examples of success.

An environmental scan of the demand for and varied levels of success of online learning products and services suggests that dropout numbers are higher in online learning. One response is to enhance strategies for supporting learners who are engaged in online distributed learning environments. These strategies are examined within the ADDIE framework. A comparative analysis of learner evaluations of two online learning projects illustrates the benefits of learne-centered development and delivery of online instruction. A professional development course for employees of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees written by Maree Bentley, designed by David Murphy, and delivered by the Commonwealth of Learning provides data from the area of non-credit continuing education. An instructional design course by Richard Schwier for the University of Saskatchewan provides data for a credited, graduate-level course. This article resulted in the author being an invited speaker at the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) Distance Learning and Internet Conference 2003 in Singapore. This article has been cited as a source in the report, Megatrends in e-learning provision - Literature review (Norway)

Adoption of Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher Education

This presentation is based on Dr. Parchoma’s recently published (May 2008) book, Adoption of Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher Education. The presentation reports the findings of a study of the influences of organizational structures, cultures, pedagogies, and reward systems in a traditional university for their influences on faculty adoption of technology enhanced learning into teaching practice. The study was undertaken in a research-oriented Canadian university. Eight case studies of faculty experiences in a five-year (2000-2005) initiative are reported. Participants' perspectives of the influences of university policies and practices on the success of TEL initiatives are examined. The roles of instructional designers and IT & media developers in supporting faculty in TEL development projects are explored. Enabling and restraining influences on successful project completion are discussed. Theoretical implications of the overall findings for organizational change in research-oriented universities to support faculty adoption of TEL are posited.Elluminat

Adoption of technology enhanced learning in higher education : influences of institutional policies and practices.

This book reports the findings of a study of the influences of organizational structures, cultures, pedagogies, and reward systems in a traditional university for their influences on faculty adoption of technology enhanced learning into teaching practice. The study was undertaken in a research-oriented Canadian university. Eight case studies of faculty experiences in a five-year (2000-2005) government-funded, technology enhanced learning (TEL) initiative are reported. Participants’ perspectives on the influences of university policies and practices on the success of TEL projects are examined. The roles of instructional designers and media developers in supporting faculty TEL development projects are discussed. Theoretical implications for organizational change in research-oriented universities to support faculty adoption of TEL are posited

Collaborative instructional design, development, and evaluation of a computer-based module for a veterinary medical exercise.

A collaborative team from the College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Medicine, and Instructional Design Group at the University of Saskatchewan designed, developed, and conducted a research study into the effectiveness of a multi-media, interactive module of instruction, entitled, Passing a Nasogastric Tube in a Horse. The purpose of creating this resource was to better prepare learners for their first attempt to perform nasogastric intubation, and to reduce the number of live horses used by the College for demonstration purposes. The project incorporated a learner-centered perspective and utilized the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) approach to instructional design. This article describes the team approach to working through the ADDIE process