What impact does technology have on improving teaching and learning?
As any teacher who effectively wields technology will tell you, the answer is achingly obvious: teachers enjoy teaching in a technology-rich environment and are therefore more effective at meeting students’ learning needs; students enjoy learning in a technology rich environment and so they naturally learn more. The research literature is replete with qualitative data, anecdotal evidence, and “feel good” stories about our national investment in learning technologies.
However, for the past twenty years or more, this essential research question has yielded insufficient (or disappointing) quantitative evidence. We now know much about instructional strategies, assessment practices and curriculum design that work, but we still don’t have much data in the way of educational technology that works – until now.
Is the problem that technology has no effect on student learning, as a US Department of Education study recently found, or have we been erroneously framing education research through the lens of medical empiricism?
Perhaps this question is best explained through an analogy: Before a genetically engineered drug for diabetes makes it to the pharmaceutical market, independent, randomly assigned, “double blind” research trials would first be required.
The term “randomly assigned” refers to the process of selecting diabetic patients into the experimental group who would receive the actual drug, or the control group who would receive a “placebo.” The term “double blind” refers to the process whereby the patients selected for the trials, and their doctors, would not know if they were receiving or giving the experimental drug or the placebo. This, generally speaking, is a standard empirical process in medical trials for eliminating as many variables as possible and determining the effect of a single experimental variable – the drug itself
There are many problems associated with overlaying this standard of research into extant sociological contexts – like K12 classrooms.
It is absurd to consider that a teacher would be “blind” to the intervention he or she might, or might not, implement with experimental or control groups of students. It also stands to reason that students in the experimental or control groups could not possibly be “blind” to the technology intervention that they would be using or receiving
While it is not impossible, it is also very difficult for teachers to be randomly assigned in experimental trials. Rather, voluntary teacher participation in Action Research Studies is becoming the norm, if not the “gold standard” for education research
As a company developed by educators for educators, Promethean determined it was our obligation to meet this conundrum head-on.
Promethean commissioned internationally esteemed education researcher and author, Dr. Robert Marzano to conduct independent, third party research on the effect of Promethean’s ActivClassroom Suite of technologies on student learning. Over the past academic year, Dr. Robert Marzano conducted a much-anticipated meta-analysis of numerous action research studies on the direct effect of Promethean’s transformational technologies on academic achievement. His recently published study, “Evaluation Study of Promethean’s ActivClassroom on Student Achievement” represents a breakthrough for educational technology research in general, and Promethean’s ActivClassroom in particular.
Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Marzano at the Marzano Research Laboratory www.marzanoresearch.com in Denver where we discussed the nature of education technology research, the findings from his study of Promethean’s ActivClassroom, and the future direction of this multi-year research and development partnership
The video podcast of this interview has been published in Promethean’s Innovation in Education Thought Leadership Webcast Series. To view the video podcast, please go to www.prometheanworld.com. As always, I hope you find your Promethean experience enlightening.
As any teacher who effectively wields technology will tell you, the answer is achingly obvious: teachers enjoy teaching in a technology-rich environment and are therefore more effective at meeting students’ learning needs; students enjoy learning in a technology rich environment and so they naturally learn more. The research literature is replete with qualitative data, anecdotal evidence, and “feel good” stories about our national investment in learning technologies.
However, for the past twenty years or more, this essential research question has yielded insufficient (or disappointing) quantitative evidence. We now know much about instructional strategies, assessment practices and curriculum design that work, but we still don’t have much data in the way of educational technology that works – until now.
Is the problem that technology has no effect on student learning, as a US Department of Education study recently found, or have we been erroneously framing education research through the lens of medical empiricism?
Perhaps this question is best explained through an analogy: Before a genetically engineered drug for diabetes makes it to the pharmaceutical market, independent, randomly assigned, “double blind” research trials would first be required.
The term “randomly assigned” refers to the process of selecting diabetic patients into the experimental group who would receive the actual drug, or the control group who would receive a “placebo.” The term “double blind” refers to the process whereby the patients selected for the trials, and their doctors, would not know if they were receiving or giving the experimental drug or the placebo. This, generally speaking, is a standard empirical process in medical trials for eliminating as many variables as possible and determining the effect of a single experimental variable – the drug itself
There are many problems associated with overlaying this standard of research into extant sociological contexts – like K12 classrooms.
It is absurd to consider that a teacher would be “blind” to the intervention he or she might, or might not, implement with experimental or control groups of students. It also stands to reason that students in the experimental or control groups could not possibly be “blind” to the technology intervention that they would be using or receiving
While it is not impossible, it is also very difficult for teachers to be randomly assigned in experimental trials. Rather, voluntary teacher participation in Action Research Studies is becoming the norm, if not the “gold standard” for education research
As a company developed by educators for educators, Promethean determined it was our obligation to meet this conundrum head-on.
Promethean commissioned internationally esteemed education researcher and author, Dr. Robert Marzano to conduct independent, third party research on the effect of Promethean’s ActivClassroom Suite of technologies on student learning. Over the past academic year, Dr. Robert Marzano conducted a much-anticipated meta-analysis of numerous action research studies on the direct effect of Promethean’s transformational technologies on academic achievement. His recently published study, “Evaluation Study of Promethean’s ActivClassroom on Student Achievement” represents a breakthrough for educational technology research in general, and Promethean’s ActivClassroom in particular.
Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Marzano at the Marzano Research Laboratory www.marzanoresearch.com in Denver where we discussed the nature of education technology research, the findings from his study of Promethean’s ActivClassroom, and the future direction of this multi-year research and development partnership
The video podcast of this interview has been published in Promethean’s Innovation in Education Thought Leadership Webcast Series. To view the video podcast, please go to www.prometheanworld.com. As always, I hope you find your Promethean experience enlightening.
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