Last week I attended the Learning Futures Festival 09 event in Leicester.
In the first keynote Sugata Mitra gave an interesting presentation on his “Hole in the wall” projects and his ideas around self-organising learning systems. His research shows that groups of children can learn many things if they have shared public access to a PC, including computer and Internet skills (many of us with children can vouch for that!), functional English, speaking and pronunciation skills, algebra and biotechnology! (see http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/holeinthewall.html )
The second keynote saw Ralph Schroeder giving an overview of his thoughts on the future of Virtual environments. He outlined 2 “end-states” for the future:
- 3-D video conferencing
- Computer-generated systems (using avatars) such as Second Life
He raised a number of potential reasons why the use of shared virtual environments might not develop, including people’s pre-conceptions that somehow face-to-face meetings are better than virtual ones. I would agree with his point that virtual is different, not necessarily inferior to F2F, and indeed in some situations meeting someone virtually e.g. in avatar form, can be preferable in that it lessens pre-conceptions based on physical appearance.
Following the 2 keynotes there were 2 “intervention panels”, in which a panel of speakers each talked for 5 minutes followed by questions and discussion. The second intervention panel “Creating the future” had an interesting range of speakers: Dave Hall, Registrar at Leicester, John Fothergill, Head of the Engineering Department at Leicester, Aaron Porter, Vice-President (Higher Education) for the National Union of Students (NUS), and Ricardo Torres Kompen from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya.
Dave Hall gave an insightful presentation on some of the challenges of embedding educational technology in HE, which was refreshing coming from a administrator’s perspective. Ricardo used a word which I don’t think many of us present had heard before: prosumers! (as in “The students were prosumers – producing as well consuming content”).
Aaron gave a wide-ranging and eloquent talk about some of the challenges facing HE and society in general over the next few years, and the importance of the changing expectations of our students. From the student perspective Aaron focussed on feedback, interaction with personal tutors, and assessment. He was especially interested in how technology could be used to align assessment methods with today’s educational and work habits. For example, he would like students to be able to write examination answers using a word processor, so they can edit content in the same way as they would in other writing contexts in the course of their learning and future work lives.
Some work has been done on this at the University of Edinburgh. Nora Mogey in her article “The end of handwriting? Using computers in traditional essay examinations” points out the inconsistency of requiring “Net Generation” students to write examination essays by hand when throughout their study (and indeed later on in work) they use word-processing to write notes, reports, assignments etc.
There are of course a number of issues, for example word-processing skills vary (but so do hand-writing skills), and as Mogey suggests “we should match our assessment methodologies as far as possible to the most common study habits of our students”.
The University of Edinburgh carried out a trial in 2006 , and concluded that it “demonstrates an approach to the use of computers in a traditional essay exam which is achievable with minimal disruption to existing administrative processes and which appears to be attractive to a majority of students.”
In the Edinburgh trial the “Exam4” software produced by Extegrity was selected on the basis that “it was felt that the use of a very simple tool would be more appropriate in that it was less likely to confound the mark for the academic content of the exam with a measure of the student’s skill in using a particular word processor.”
Advantages of Exam4 included:
- a proven track record in the USA of stability and reliability
- built-in security which locks down a PC or laptop and prevents access to Internet, hard drive or USB sticks for example
- automatically saves work at regular intervals
- can be installed on users’ own laptops or university PCs
The examination process was exactly the same as normal with the exception that answers were entered on a PC rather than handwritten. Exam question papers were still distributed in hard copy form, but answers were typed. In addition to entering text, tablet PCs with pens were used to allow students to draw diagrams.
Scripts were encrypted by the software and can saved to a designated location. They were then printed and distributed for marking as normal.
Students participating in the evaluation of the trial agreed overwhelmingly that this was a good idea. Some problems were identified with use of the tablet PCs, but the typing of text was fine. However they stressed the importance of having sufficient time to familiarise themselves with the software. Their main concern was the possible impact of differences in typing abilities, as well as consideration of how typed exams might be marked (more harshly) as compared to handwritten ones. For example they thought there might be an expectation that errors should be corrected in a typed essay which might be allowed in a handwritten script. Research evidence indeed confirms that handwritten essays receive higher marks than the same essays typed (e.g. Russell and Tao, 2004, ).
The conclusions of this trial suggest that it is definitely an area to investigate further, especially considering that the software can be installed on students’ own laptops with which they are most familar. So maybe Aaron’s suggestion will become more common practice over the next few years.
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Perhaps the most powerful yet most overlooked advantage of a computer in developing writing skills is as a glorified typewriter. It waits as a blank page which can be written upon, corrected neatly, proofread, edited, added to and rearranged with a minimum of effort, and without rewriting. It allows an approach to teaching writing that is impossible with a pencil and paper, and may have its greatest impact in the earlier years of school.
It is important not to be distracted by technology, and get carried away with multimedia, interconnectivity and internet access. The keyboard and screen can be used to empower children to master the written word, and produce written output at a level necessary to cater for their learning needs. It can be used to teach sentence construction, grammar, punctuation and spelling, the mundane but essential building blocks of written literacy, without being dependent on good handwriting skills which may be slower to develop.
Production of written output is essential to the learning process in school. A child who cannot write cannot learn effectively, so one of the first tasks of school is to teach the child to write. Writing is a complicated process requiring the simultaneous execution of several difficult activities. There is the content, there is the sentence construction, there is remembering to go across the page from left to right, and remembering what shape the letter “e” is. There is the physical movement of pencil on paper. The coordination and complexity involved in handwriting has been compared to that involved in driving a car.
Up until now, all these skills had to be taught simultaneously, and were deeply dependant on how quickly the handwriting skill developed.
It is no wonder that some children are slow to develop adequate handwriting skills, which retards the whole of their school career. Teachers are aware of students whose written output does not match their intelligence, comprehension or verbal language skills.
This can be because their handwriting skill is not adequate for their learning needs.
A keyboard and screen allows the middle order writing skills to be taught in isolation to handwriting. Handwriting must still be taught, but it is no longer the limiting factor. Handwriting skills may develop with maturity and practice, so that when a student is required to produce handwriting for an exam, not only do they have handwriting skills, they also have something worth writing.
Middle order writing skills include such things as sentence construction, grammar, punctuation and spelling. Sentence construction can be broken down into discreet steps, and leverages from a child’s verbal language skills. When they start school, children already use extensive language skills. They do not know the technical terms for the parts of a sentence, but they certainly know how to use them. The “Davidson Method” of sentence construction uses the advantages of a keyboard and screen (any computer with a text editor) and scaffolds a child’s existing verbal skills into the written form.
Davidson Method for Sentence writing
1. Choose an action word, a verb.
A verb is an –ing word
e.g. chasing
2 Ask who or what thing is doing the action. (noun,object)
dog chasing
3. Ask who or what thing is the action being done to. (noun, subject)
dog chasing cat
4. Describe the things (adjective, phrase).
black hairy ferocious dog from next door chasing mangy yellow cat
5. Ask when or where or how the action is happening (adverb, phrase).
yesterday afternoon black hairy ferocious dog from next door quickly chasing mangy yellow cat across the park
6. Check that the tense of the verb matches sentence. Does it sound right?
Modify verb (auxiliary verb, compound verb)
yesterday afternoon black hairy ferocious dog from next door was quickly chasing mangy yellow cat across the park
7. Add words to make it sound right.
yesterday afternoon the black hairy ferocious dog from next door was quickly chasing a mangy yellow cat across the park
8. Add commas and full stops. (Punctuation)
yesterday afternoon, the black, hairy, ferocious dog from next door was quickly chasing a mangy, yellow cat across the park.
9. Add a capital letter to the first word.
Yesterday afternoon, the black, hairy, ferocious dog from next door was quickly chasing a mangy, yellow cat across the park.
This method allows a sentence to be built logically rather than sequentially, the screen holds the parts in place rather than trying to juggle all the pieces in memory while attempting to write neatly.
It is easier to choose a letter from a keyboard than try to remember the shape of a letter.
Correction is neat and does not require the whole page to be rewritten.
Spelling can be checked as a separate step.
The sentence can be copied by hand to paper when complete to practice handwriting, and it is relevant to the child because it is their sentence with their ideas. There is no need to print the sentence.
There is no dumbing down of the ideas in the sentence to match writing or spelling skill.
Proofreading and editing are being taught as an integral part of writing.
It should be emphasised that this does not replace handwriting. Handwriting must still be taught in the normal way. It does make handwriting more effective by allowing some ideas to be taught and practiced in isolation, thereby increasing focus and effectiveness.
It should also be emphasised that we still need a competent and dedicated teacher to lead the child, to encourage, to nurture. The keyboard and screen is just a different writing tool, with features that a good teacher can use when required.
Computers can be used to increase learning outcomes in KLAs –here-now-today in ordinary classrooms, and bring relief to children who are struggling or giving up because they cannot write fast enough or neatly enough to produce the written output required to cater for their learning needs. Avoid the temptation to reinvent the school system and philosophy of education in order to justify spending money on ICT. Instead look at the problems that are in our classrooms and see if technology can help a competent and dedicated teacher find a way forward.
[...] in HE Posted on February 2, 2009 by rogergardner Many thanks to Andrew Cosgrove for his reply to my previous post on written V typed exams. I absolutely agree with Andrew about the importance [...]