Significant Advancements in Technology to Improve Instruction for all Students

Abstract

Sharing thoughts on what represents significant advancements involving the education of persons for whom typical instruction is not effective seems simple enough. You think about the work you are engaged in and reflect on how you came to do what you are doing. If you have a record of being persistent in your work, then that becomes the context for your perceptions of significant advancements. While limited as a strategy for framing a vision for the future, the views of an individual do have potential when combined with the perspective of others. Emerging technologies in the realm of instructional change brought about by the Internet provide the framework for the choice of significant advancements, discussed in this article, to improve instruction for all students including students with disabilities. They include the impact of technologies that allow for measuring physiological and motivational responses of online learners that enhance the personalization of online instruction, the impact of wireless computing in contributing to how ubiquitous computing influences learning environments for all learners, and the increased capacity offered by technology to increase sensitivity to variability among online learners and to stimulate research in the important area of inquiry.

Keywords

technology electronic and information change/innovation exceptionalities online instruction e-learning environments

An Introductory Context

A number of factors affect the determination of what constitutes a significant advancement in education. There is no objective approach to verifying what constitutes significance other than the validity of the rationale that underpins one’s perspective. So how does experience factor into determining significance? One can argue that the task of distinguishing significant advancements from routine achievements involves a level of accountability that comes only with experience. Such a perspective requires retrospection, including recalling events and break-through discoveries that did not stand the test of time—that did not make a difference. These memories, in turn, cause one to resist the tendency to make quick judgments and to take some time to translate observations of the past into insights into events and movements that are convincing in their significance today. Such reflection is colored by personal perceptions of how events, new knowledge and inventions, well-intended public policies, and the consequences of leadership in the professional and public arenas have made a difference in the lives of children and youth with a disability for whom typical instruction has not been as effective as it needs to be.

It is through experiencing the unexpected resulting from the emergence of instructional technology that resulted in my selecting three instructional technology capacities as significant advancements in my area of inquiry interest. Advancements in Internet-related technologies spawned the unexpected and work on innovative technologies quickly drove the unprecedented emergence of an educational industry. In my judgment, this rapid growth out-paced almost any interest in the context of understanding the behaviors, cognitive attributes, and learning strategies students needed to transition from learning in traditional classroom instructional environments into the visual display environment of online delivered instruction. Most any combination of technology and instruction early in the history of the Internet became viewed as an innovation and too often without any effort to develop an instructional evidence base for its application. The reference to capacity was carefully chosen because the capacity to do much of the research did not exist. Two decades later, the research still has not been done, but the capacity to do it now exists.

The process of building context is reflection grounded in how one sees the world through the lens of life experiences, including the career path followed, opportunities that came our way, the colleagues we valued and the mentoring received, the work we did, and the power of collaboration that characterized the culture in which we spent our professional careers. In my own case, I cannot overstate the impact that the culture at the university where I have spent most of my career had on how I used my time and continued to learn. Those experiences and relationships helped me appreciate the interdisciplinary initiatives that were extant at this university and would later be central to building the capacity for maximizing the benefit of technology to enhancing instruction. In the context of technology, I had the advantage of being in an idea-rich environment. Many of the ideas were low tech in their early conceptualization but changed quickly when the capacity of technology to support instruction emerged. I was fortunate to become involved with an interdisciplinary collaborative group that included colleagues from engineering, computer sciences, design, pharmacy, educational assessment, and instructional design in addition to special education.

The emergence of the Internet brought with it the need to rethink almost all dimensions of teaching and learning, including revisiting the non-cognitive aspects of teaching students for whom typical instruction was not effective. While the evolvement of the Internet stimulated the development of a new delivery system and remarkably increased access to education for students, from my perspective, it first and foremost transformed the traditional process of how curriculum was developed and integrated into the teaching process. What did not occur, however, was the mounting of an interdisciplinary approach to programmatic research related to the basic elements of transitioning from face-to-face instruction into a heavy reliance on visual displays design via a computer monitor, which after two decades remains possibly the only constant in technology-driven instruction.

This historical perspective is intended to illustrate a continuity of interest in instruction that transcends decades. It is rare in an educator’s career that an event occurs that creates the need and opportunity to reexamine all that she or he knows about teaching and learning. Technology did just that. With the emergence of the computer, the monitor became the common element across all online instruction. Educators were quick to apply the logic of instructional design to creating instructional models for the presentation and organization of information central to meeting the content, assessment, and traditional academic requirements of instruction across subject-matter fields and levels of education. In higher education, the development of courses emerged into a culture of online degrees. Enrollment gains were soon driven by the growth of online instruction, and virtual institutions became a reality. A similar situation occurred in K–12 education. Online courses along with virtual schools and charter schools with a mission of online instruction emerged. A major industry in the commercial sector evolved. This unprecedented change in education was driven by technology and the presumed efficiency of the Internet in making education accessible.

What did not occur in those early efforts was to engage the cognitive, neural, and learning sciences, nor the field of design, at a sufficient level to research the knowledge base on the capacity of digital visual display designs for purposes of instruction. Of equal importance was a lack of attention to cultural differences and the variability in how learners from different cultures respond to visual display designs typically used in online instruction. While teachers may modify activities for learners by relying on hybrid/blended online instructional strategies, the presentation of information and instructional activities via the monitor, for the most part, is largely the same for all students. The possible exception is those who use the principles of universal design for learning (UDL; Rose & Meyer, 2002).

Significant Advances in a Technology Context

The advances in technologies that have implications for the education of individuals, for whom typical instruction is not effective, far exceed the development of research based resources that focus on learner attributes and what is known about visual display design principles. However, evidence of research interests in the application of emerging advances is beginning to appear in the literature. What constitutes a significant advance in one’s area of interest is a judgment call. This is particularly true when that interest pertains to technology and learning for all students. It becomes even more idiosyncratic when asked to narrow identified advancements to two or three examples. I have opted to focus on three advancements that represent a capacity for conducting research to inform the design of future online instruction for all learners including those for whom typical instructions have not been effective.

From my perspective, we need a more focused interdisciplinary approach to research to better understand learning in the context of visual display designs in digital formats. The visual display capacity of the monitor needs to be researched in the context of what is known about the process of learning and information processing. The current focus on instructional design in the organization of content, support features, assessment, and the integration of online experience within the instructional environment, while important, does not address the inherent impact of technology on the process of learning. For the potential of online instruction to be realized in improved instruction for all learners, especially those for whom typical instruction is not effective, alliances among researchers across disciplines need to be critical to this dimension of research.

Significant Advancement 1

Several technologies are now available for measuring involuntary physiological and facial recognition expression responses to visual displays such as those systematically used in online instruction through use of the computer monitor. Examples of measuring electrodermal activity (EDA) include the Q-Sensor developed by Affectiva, Inc. (Dawson, Schell, & Filion, 2007; Grafsgaard, Wiggins, Boyer, Wiebe, & Lester, 2013) and BioPac developed by Systems, Inc. (Carmel & Macy, 2006). These tools allow for measuring emotional responses and engagement of learners in online instruction. The Q-Sensor is no longer available, but the technology is still supported for those wishing to use it. BioPac is widely used in measuring physiological responses. Technologies for measuring facial recognition expression responses include Affdex developed by Affectiva, Inc. (McDuff, Kaliouby, Kassam, & Picard, 2011) and the Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox (CERT) developed at the University of California at San Diego (Littlewort et al., 2011).

An advantage of these systems is that they yield objective measures of involuntary responses that are not controllable by research participants. This is in contrast to the interview or observational measures that have typically been used to measure the emotional, motivational, or engagement responses of online learners. Whereas these measures allow for recording learner controlled responses, after the fact, the more recent technology devices instantaneously record involuntary responses. The latter have been demonstrated to be reliable measures and more accurately reflect what is occurring on the part of learners than self-reporting. These technologies also allow for researching responses to representations of design principles supported by theory and research under experimental conditions.

Recommended next steps:

Funding agencies should set priorities on research in online instruction that address the need for supporting programmatic research to measure the physiological and facial expression responses of online learners to digital visual display designs. This could result in significant findings related to motivation and engagement features that would greatly increase the effectiveness of digital visual display designs used in online instruction.

Leadership preparation programs in educational technology and instruction should include an emphasis on the importance of understanding the implications of digital visual display designs in the design of online instruction. There is a large body of research that predates online instruction and an emerging literature applicable to the design of online instruction.

Graduate programs in educational research methods could enhance research in this area by either offering preparation or creating access to instruction that address experimental research designs and research conditions that are essential to using appropriate technologies in researching this dimension of online instruction.

Guidelines based on research in measuring responses to the effectiveness of specific digital visual display designs should be created to aid developers of online instruction.

Significant Advancement 2

Technology advancements in ubiquitous computing for purposes of classroom instruction have arrived and are awaiting a response from educators. Inventors of technology have always been ahead of those who adopt and/or generalize innovative applications to instruction. Our personal lives are touched by the ubiquitous nature of technology in ways that are a natural part of our daily experiences. The anticipation of having access to ubiquitous computing has been part of the online instructional culture for a couple of decades. As wireless devices emerged, the reality of ubiquitous computing instructional environments became feasible if not necessary. Ubiquitous computing is now sufficiently available so that it needs to be viewed as natural application in the instructional environment. This means that perceptions of instructional environments must change to be more inclusive.

Ubiquitous computing is more than the instructional environment in the form of space. It is an interactive instructional place. Gay (2009) adds to the perspective of space and place by introducing context that makes space a place. Thus, the context of place becomes the instructional environment without physical boundaries. Ubiquitous computing allows for digital representations of resources, actions, and information to be manipulated and available anywhere in the instructional environment using any device in any format. The consequence of this new environment is the need for instructors and students to learn new behaviors central to teaching and learning in ubiquitous computing intense environments. Hutchins (1990) discusses the importance of dynamic patterns across elements in the realm of cognitive ecology. This becomes feasible in instructional environments under conditions where ubiquitous computing is used. Gay and Hembrooke (2004) indicate that by introducing wireless computing resources into learning environments, one can potentially transform learning communities. This is the significance of ubiquitous computing as an advancement that will make a difference.

Recommended next steps:

Teacher education needs to develop alliances with disciplines that are engaged in applications of ubiquitous computing to instructional.

Partnering with industry should be made a priority in the process of acquiring familiarity and experience with the evolving applications of ubiquitous computing.

Collaborative relationships with interdisciplinary colleagues and industry could result in professional development opportunities for faculty that would enhance the integration of appropriate content and experience into the teacher education.

Teacher education programs should establish relationships with a district that is willing to share in researching ubiquitous computing instructional environment.

Significant Advancement 3

The emergence of tools and strategies supporting the customization of online instruction in response to learner variability does not represent a significant advancement in itself. However, the realization that there is variability among online learners needing to be addressed combined with the fact that the capacity to study this concern now exists is an advancement. Over the years, the presentation of information via the digital visual display (monitor) has typically been the same for each learner with individualization tending to occur in blended or hybrid environments through the actions of teachers in the methodologies they use in the instructional environment to accommodate variability. Blended and hybrid approaches become the alternatives and they add to the instructional environment. However, they do not compensate for the need to better understand the contributors to variability among online learners. In asynchronous instructional environments, the instructional reliance is on the effectiveness of visual display design features that is also true to some extent in blended and hybrid instruction.

From my perspective, an important area of variability that has not received sufficient attention relates to cultural differences among online learners. Yet, in the United States, for example, cultural diversity is increasing at a significant rate. In fact, in many school districts, students with minority backgrounds now make up the majority. More important, online instruction at all level of education is global in nature. Thus, developing countries have significantly increased access to education due to the Internet. In discussing the implications of cultural differences as a consequence of globalization of the Internet for web design, Barber and Badre (1998) raise three interrelated research questions:

Research Question 1: Are there design elements that can be identified as culturally specific?

Research Question 2: Are there design elements that can be identified as genre specific?

Research Question 3: What, if any, relationship exists between culture and genre as reflected in web design?

Obviously, there are linguistic differences; there are likely more differences that are less obvious warranting attention in online instruction. The authors go on to describe cultural markers—defined as interface elements and features—as the elements that are most prevalent and possibly preferred by a cultural group. Specifically, they found that people from different countries have different preferences when they browse websites, such as colors, pictorial images, and text orientations. In investigating cultural markers and the relationships with genre in website design, Barber and Badre (1998) chose “culturally in-depth” (in native languages) websites instead of “shallow” (secondary languages) websites to understand cultural markers more accurately. If these questions and observations are relevant to web design, one could argue that they are equally important in the design of online instruction. Indeed, the same could be argued for the concept of cultural markers in instruction where the implications for learning may be critical.

The lack of consideration of cultural differences in research on online instruction is difficult to understand or justify. It is hard to argue the case that cultural differences do not exist among online learners. In face-to-face instruction, multicultural education is a major focus in almost all teacher education programs and K–12 curricula. The significance of this issue as an advancement is that the time is right in K–12 and higher education to address the issue. How do we explain the lack of attention to cultural differences in online learning when institutions of higher education are making great investments in marketing their online courses and degrees internationally and most likely using the same display designs that characterize the online instruction they offer to all online students. Whereas in their face-to-face instruction cultural addressing cultural difference is a priority.

Recommended next steps:

There needs to be a concerted effort to determine whether online instruction is culturally neutral or whether there are differences that affect how online instruction should be designed.

Programmatic research on cultural differences among online learners should be encouraged by educational research policy making agencies.

Design standards set by professional organizations should reflect the significance of online instructional designs that respond to cultural differences among online learners.

The online instruction industry needs to assume accountability for ensuring that online resources they market are sensitive to cultural differences among their learners.

The significance of the advancements shared evolved from the perspective that before an educational innovation, for example, before online instruction becomes common practice, the most relevant principles on which it is based need to be researched. Focusing only on the practices that have become extant in online instruction today, without researching how learners process visually and auditorily presented information, places at risk the merits of technology as an instructional innovation. It could be argued that this lack of basic research early in the online instructional movement has placed online learners at risk of not having an opportunity to experience maximally effective instruction. This potentially translates into minimizing the benefits of online instruction for all students. It also begs the question of whether the issues associated with the advancements cited will find their way into research agendas of special educators and other educational researchers. While the new generation of doctoral students may be experiencing moments of interest in research questions relevant to the advancements discussed, the needed research goes beyond the parameters of a dissertation unless there is an interdisciplinary programmatic research initiative underway that they can join as a collaborator. Unfortunately, those seem to be rare. Researching what is being done may make current practices better but will not overcome the reality of not asking the right questions when this all began. It leaves us to assume that the equalizer is the technology and not the instruction or that learners will adapt when their needs are not met.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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