Summer 2006

Innovation in education

Power is in the process

One of the core aims at the Centre for Innovation and Learning (CLI) is to encourage teachers to integrate the use of multimedia into their programs. Alan Elliott demonstrates how this is achieved.

The CLI promotes and fosters innovation in teaching and learning and provides leading edge, technology-based educational services, products and facilities to government schools and TAFE colleges throughout NSW. CLI has a key role in supporting teachers and learners in improving the quality and outcomes of learning experiences.

To achieve this the Centre models best practice in materials development, gives ready accessibility to digital resources on the Teaching and Learning Exchange (TaLe) and supports trials and investigations into innovative teaching practices.

When we design resources at CLI, we focus on flexibility of use, opportunities for users to develop their knowledge and skills, quality feedback and opportunities to achieve success and mastery. Meaning and knowledge are built up through texts, images, symbols, interactions and sounds. Students learn in different ways and the challenge is to develop innovative learning strategies in an increasingly personalised and connective learning environment.

At an individual resource level, the emphasis on ‘innovation’ in the institutional name places obvious responsibilities on the developers.

The challenge as a learning designer and project manager is to make sure that an educational resource is not just ‘badged’ as innovative but is demonstrably innovative for a wide range of learners. Where and when do good educational materials become innovative? Can you have quality educational materials without innovation? Is innovation about the application of technology to traditional materials? How do you get an innovative balance of materials and technological methods to achieve added value? All these questions are considered during the resource development process.

As the authors of Integrated E-learning, Implications for Pedagogy, Technology and Organisation argue, innovative e-learning is not just about digitising traditional materials. It is about developing and applying appropriate approaches.

In an educational environment where there is an overload of available content and ‘no shortage of virtual learning environments, technical fixes and enthusiasts’, the challenge is to be innovative with existing media and produce high quality learning experiences.

Best practice

CLI resources focus on the right balance of pedagogy and technology to engage students in new dimensions in:

• exploring and experimenting
• thinking and working creatively
• reflecting and planning
• using feedback and self-assessment
• creating new knowledge.

What we do to apply best practice

What is the magic in creating high quality learning materials? Solid pedagogy drives every step and decision. Many of the elements of a project like Investigating Pompeii and Herculaneum, a support resource for the new Ancient History core study for the Higher School Certificate, illustrate the application of appropriate approaches. This resource aims to help students construct a mental image of Pompeii and Herculaneum at the time of their destruction in AD 79. It supports student learning through:

• still and video digital images of wall frescoes, building remains and conservation techniques
• a range of extracts from primary and interpretive writings
• hyperlinks to specialist websites which cover everything from vulcanology to a typical day at a public bathhouse
• source-based questions with timely access to checks to guide student analysis and responses
• unique video clips of Herculaneum
• ‘Think about’ activities designed to stimulate individual thought or group discussion.

Through the application of Flash computer software, an interactive site map takes learners into the streets and buildings of the ancient cities, zooming in to reveal roll-over information and pop-up digital photographs of artefacts and ancient inscriptions. The learner can choose how and when to discover the cities. Individuals, small groups and whole classes can enjoy the investigation. It brings to life the two Roman cities buried at the time when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

Innovation can be incremental yet very powerful. Small positive educational design elements of one resource can flow on to many other resources and foster continuous improvement by writers, instructional designers and media professionals. In this way the design features of the Pompeii and Herculaneum resource are providing a platform on which developers across all learning areas can build.

My relatively short experience with developing digital resources, after many years in schools and experience as a print-based resource developer for distance education, has confirmed that innovative multimedia resource development is a collaborative undertaking.

Developing the Pompeii and Herculaneum resource involved two major types of teamwork. The first included the use of external expertise and sources, in the form of the goodwill and materials from a recipient of the Premier’s Westfield History Teacher’s Scholarship, the British School at Rome, who run the Herculaneum Conservation Project and a two-day workshop, which included distance education and classroom teachers and topic experts.

The second type of teamwork continually astounds me. It is about relationships and collaboration within and among the project team at CLI. This team consists of a rather unique combination of professionals—teachers with a variety of classroom experience, graphic artists, video and audio specialists, computer programmers and quality controllers.

The professional teachers are heavily out-numbered but the whole team understands the CLI vision. Moreover, individually we understand the power of quality products, strikingly animated graphics, digital photographs, well-edited video, clear navigation and accessibility for the widest range of learners. The syllabus determines the learning outcomes, the project manager determines the learning approach and then the diverse team negotiates and forms common understandings about the look and delivery method of the multimedia resource. And most every time this generates innovative changes to ‘products, processes or services’. It is a continuous search for the balance of pedagogy, technology and innovation. Richard E. Ferdig argues that ‘the concept of negotiation reminds both groups that they are entering into a dance with the intended outcome being a recursive, dynamic creation of technology that supports pedagogy and pedagogy that is fundamentally changed by virtue of its integration with technology’.

Conclusion

The value of innovations should be judged pedagogically (i.e. tied to pedagogic goals and pedagogic assessments). The CLI educational resources, which are exposed on the Teaching and Learning Exchange for online access by Department of Education and Training teachers, reflect the use of technology and pedagogy to support quality teaching and learning. Visit www.cli.nsw.edu.au/cli/index.shtm

The team of learning designers and media professionals make sure that an educational resource is not just badged as innovative but that it is innovative, so students can enjoy deep learning and a culture of enquiry, while teachers feel confident using technology as an educational tool.

References

Ferdig, RE (2006). ‘Assessing technologies for teaching and learning: understanding the importance of technological pedagogical content knowledge’, British Journal of Educational Technology, 37 (5), 2006, pp. 749–60.

Jochems, W et al. (2004). The Open and Flexible Learning Series: integrated e-learning, implications for pedagogy, technology and organisation, Routledge Falmer, London.

CLI resources mentioned

Investigating Pompeii and Herculaneum

To access these and other resources, go to the Teaching and Learning exchange (TaLe) website: www.tale.edu.au

You can also contact CLI directly with queries about product availability by emailing cli.customerservice@det.nsw.edu.au

Alan Elliott is senior learning design officer, HSIE, at the Centre for Learning Innovation, in NSW.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au