<div> <div> <div> <p>In the last two decades, higher education researchers have reported numerous benefits of integrating technology tools in course instruction and their subsequent impact on the students’ learning process. In spite of the accumulation of the large amount of evidence and multiple calls to adopt technology tools in instruction, traditional lecturing is observed to dominate and continue being the preferred mode of instruction in STEM courses. One of the major reasons for the shortage of large-scale adoption of technology-based instruction is attributed to the lack of knowledge and skills of STEM instructors on how to effectively integrate technology tools into their courses. Most faculty development programs that are organized to help instructors build the necessary knowledge and skills end up introducing different technology tools to the instructors without truly helping them understand how to contextualize the tools based on the course requirements and learning needs of the study. This study aimed to understand the experiences of how engineering faculty in India learn to integrate technology tools as part of a 6-week faculty development program. </p> <p>Seven engineering faculty from a single institution attended the 6-week program to redesign a course of their choice by integrating educational technology tools. A conceptual framework called Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) was used to understand how the instructors learned to integrate technology tools into their respective courses. TPACK is a widely used framework that depicts an instructor’s knowledge of educational technology as a multifaceted construct that is combined with their knowledge of the course content and pedagogy. A qualitative case study approach was used in this study to understand how the engineering faculty developed TPACK and highlight the challenges that they encountered while integrating technology tools into their courses. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the data that was collected through semi- structured interviews, reflection journals, and final reflections. </p> </div> </div> <div> <div> <p>11 </p> </div> </div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <p>The findings from the study indicate that the faculty developed TPACK in three stages. In the first stage, they developed basic knowledge of content, pedagogy, and technology (also called basic sub-domains of TPACK). The faculty in the next stage formed mental models to intersect and understand the interrelations between the three basic sub-domains. In the last stage, the faculty developed TPACK by building a meta-conceptual awareness of how to utilize the knowledge gained in stage two to address the limitations in their current mode of instruction and the learning needs of the students. It was observed that the faculty after developing TPACK started to emphasize on a more student-centric mode of instruction. The faculty reported to encounter challenges while constructing mental models as they were unable to critically reflect on their courses. They faced difficulty while identifying and integrating technology tools as a result of low- technology self-efficacy. Faculty reported to overcome these challenges and receive support from the other participants as a result of a community of practice that was established prior to the start of the faculty development program. The study at the end provides recommendations to faculty developers on how to design and facilitate effective workshops that are aimed to help instructors integrate technology tools. A model which was developed from the findings of the study is provided to promote large scale integration of technology-based instruction in universities. </p> </div> </div> </div>

This dissertation focuses on the effectiveness of scaffolding in technology-enhanced science learning environments, and specifically the relative merits of computer- and teacher-based scaffolding in science inquiry. Scaffolding is an instructional support that helps learners solve problems, carry out tasks, or achieve goals that they are unable to accomplish on their own. Although support such as scaffolding is necessary when students engage in complex learning environments, many issues must be resolved before educators can effectively implement scaffolding in instruction. To achieve this, this dissertation includes two studies: a systematic literature review and an experimental study. The two studies attempted to reveal some important issues which are not widely recognized in the existing literature. The primary problem confronting the educator is how to determine which of the numerous kinds of scaffolding will allow them to educate students most effectively. The scaffolding forms that researchers create are often confusing, overlapping, or contradictory. In response to this, the first study critically analyzed the ways that researchers have defined and applied scaffolding, and provided suggestions for future scaffolding design and research. Moreover, studies tend to focus only on computer-based scaffolding rather than examining ways to integrate it with teacher-based instruction. Although researchers generally recognize that teacher-based support is important, research in this area is limited. The second study of this dissertation employed a quasi-experimental design with four experimental conditions, each of which include a type of computer-based procedural scaffolding (continuous vs. faded) paired with a type of teacher-based metacognitive scaffolding (early vs. late). Each class was assigned to use one of the four conditions. The findings indicated that students receiving continuous computer-based procedural and early teacher-based metacognitive scaffolding performed statistically better at learning scientific inquiry skills than other treatment groups. Students using faded computer-based procedural and early teacher-based metacognitive scaffolding showed the worst performance. However, among the four groups there existed no statistically significant difference in terms of the effect on students? ability to learn science knowledge. Moreover, teacher-based metacognitive scaffolding did not have a significant impact on either science content knowledge or scientific inquiry skills.

Technology-enhanced instruction has a great potential to support the learning process. However, the engaging power of technology can become a distracting factor if it is not deployed properly. Unfortunately, the current literature in instructional design and user interface design is broad and not easily accessible by construction faculty. This dissertation presents a framework to guide the development of technology-assisted instruction for the classroom. The framework developed is called EDDE which stands for four conceptual steps involved in the creation of a technology-supported teaching tool: Explore, Design, Develop, and Evaluate. EDDE contains a novel synthesis of the literature in instructional design and user interface design as well as survey data of student subject matter knowledge and information technology background. A computerized tool called EDDEaid makes accessible the large store of knowledge supporting EDDE. Assessment of EDDEaid is presented with evaluation results from nine university faculty that teach construction subjects as well as through critique of and changes to an existing interactive learning tool. EDDE and EDDEaid are found to contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the deployment of technology-enhanced instruction and provide support to construction faculty developing learning tools. / text

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