Showing papers by "Punya Mishra published in 2005"

What Happens When Teachers Design Educational Technology? The Development of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Abstract: We introduce Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) as a way of representing what teachers need to know about technology, and argue for the role of authentic design-based activities in the development of this knowledge. We report data from a faculty development design seminar in which faculty members worked together with masters students to develop online courses. We developed and administered a survey that assessed the evolution of student- and faculty-participants’ learning and perceptions about the learning environment, theoretical and practical knowledge of technology, course content (the design of online courses), group dynamics, and the growth of TPCK. Analyses focused on observed changes between the beginning and end of the semester. Results indicate that participants perceived that working in design teams to solve authentic problems of practice to be useful, challenging and fun. More importantly, the participants, both as individuals and as a group, appeared to have developed significantly in their knowledge of technology application, as well as in their TPCK. In brief, learning by design appears to be an effective instructional technique to develop deeper understandings of the complex web of relationships between content, pedagogy and technology and the contexts in which they function.

All or Nothing: Levels of Sociability of a Pedagogical Software Agent and Its Impact on Student Perceptions and Learning.

Abstract: This article reports the results of an experimental study on multimedia learning environments, which investigated the impact of increasing the social behaviors of a pedagogical agent on students' perceptions of social presence, their perceptions of the learning experience, and learning. Paradoxically, in this experiment students detected higher degrees of social presence in both the text only and the fully animated social agent conditions than students in the voice only and the static image of the agent with voice conditions. Furthermore, students had more positive perceptions of the learning experience in the text only condition. The results support the careful design of social behaviors for animated pedagogical agents if they are to be of educational value, otherwise, the use of agent technology can actually detract from the learning experience. ********** Recent research in technological learning environments has begun to focus on the educational benefits of including pedagogical software agents. The work of Reeves and Nass (1996) has demonstrated that in human-to-computer interactions, humans will anthropomorphize the software even to the extent of applying social rules of human-to-human communication to the computer agents. The application of these rules to interactions with a software agent in an electronic learning environment may have educational benefits as well. Pedagogical software agents are animated interface agents in instructional environments that draw upon human-to-human social communication scripts by embodying observable human characteristics (such as the use of gestures and facial expressions). Research in the past few years on the use of pedagogical software agents has expanded to cover a variety of pedagogical roles taken on by the agent. The Teachable Agent Group at Vanderbilt (TAG-V) has developed social agents who play the role of the tutee rather than the tutor. In this environment where students learn by teaching, students are able to adjust the agent's attitude, and teach him or her relevant skills and concepts. The Tutoring Research Group at the University of Memphis, under Art Grasser, has developed a system called AutoTutor, which uses conversational agents that act as dialogue partners to assist learners in the active construction of knowledge. The Pedagogical Agent Learning Systems (PALS) laboratory at the University of Florida, under Amy Baylor, has developed a multiple agent environment called Multiple Intelligent Mentors Instructing Collaboratively (MIMIC) in which the agents act as mentors to students. Research on the MIMIC environment has focused on manipulating the characteristics of the agents such as programming the agents to offer feedback from an instructivist and constructivist theoretical perspective (Baylor, 2002). Baylor has also investigated the impact of using multiple agents that serve as experts and/or motivators to students (Baylor & Ebbers, 2003). The agents in all of the aforementioned environments are responsive to user input. However, even in a more didactic electronic teaching environment, agents can maintain motivational and affective features. According to Atkinson (2002): In particular, it may be possible to structure an example-based learning environment so that a lifelike character can exploit verbal (e.g., instructional explanations) as well as nonverbal forms of communication (e.g., gaze, gesture) within the examples themselves in an effort to promote a learner's motivation toward the task and his or her cognitive engagement in it. (p. 416) In traditional classroom settings "it is difficult to deny that teaching by its very nature involves some sort of intervention in the learning process of students in an attempt to facilitate their acquisition of desired educational outcomes" (Shuell, 1996). One form that this intervention takes is "providing cues as to which information in the material being studied is most important and the manner in which students might process the information" (p. …

Educational Technology by Design: Results from a Survey Assessing its Effectiveness

Abstract: We introduce Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) as framework for thinking about what teachers need to know about technology, and argue for the role of authentic design-based activities in the development of this knowledge. We report data from a faculty development design seminar in which faculty members worked together with masters students to develop online courses. We developed and administered a survey that assessed the evolution of participants’ learning, perceptions, and opinions about theoretical and practical knowledge about technology, and the growth of TPCK. Analyses of the changes between the beginning and end of the course indicate that the learning by design approach appears to be an effective instructional technique to develop deeper understandings of relationships between content, pedagogy and technology and the contexts in which they function.

Teacher moderating and student engagement in synchronous computer conferences

Abstract: Online learning has received a great deal of attention lately, especially in higher education. The bulk of research has focused on asynchronous environments (such as web-based bulletin boards, e-mail systems etc.). Synchronous communication, by contrast, despite its popularity, has received less research attention. Of particular interest is the manner in which instructors manage the ebb and flow of classroom discussion and how this affects student engagement. This dissertation study attempts to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between teacher moderating and student engagement. The primary data source for the study was 44 transcripts collected from 4 groups of college students over 11 weeks of conferences in a moderated synchronous online course taught in a Canadian university. The study used a mixed method design where the results of the quantitative analysis were used to select cases for qualitative analysis to better understand the substantive processes of engaged collaborative discourse. An important part of the analysis was the development of new constructs and measurement methods to measure teacher moderating behaviors and a range of student engagement variables (behavioral, social-emotional and intellectual). The quantitative analysis revealed that student intellectual engagement was a function of both students' participation, and the number and quality of teacher postings. For the qualitative part of the research, the researcher applied discourse analysis techniques to transcripts of interest in order to discover specifically what was happening with teacher moderating. This provided a unified picture of the complex nature of the interaction process in synchronous learning environments as well as an opportunity to identify and present key themes and practices for effective online moderating. In summary, the methodologies and findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of how teachers can provide effective online mentoring and scaffolding to facilitate student engagement with each other and with the subject matter. It also contributes to a better understanding of whether and how a community of inquiry develops by means of synchronous computer conferencing and how students can become invested behaviorally, social-emotionally, and intellectually. This research also informs both research and practice related to the larger goal of improving the quality of online teaching and learning.

On becoming a Web site

Abstract: The course Web site is a critical mediator between the instructor and students in online classes. This requires a shift in how instructors think of their presence and influence on the classroom. This essay, based on the author’s personal experience in designing and teaching online, argues that the design of the course Web site needs to carefully reflect the passions and pedagogical philosophy that drive the instructor. It is also an argument against one–size–fits–all approaches to online course design as instantiated in most course management systems.