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New Generation Instructional Information Technology and the Management of Teaching and Learning
D.S.G. CarterFaculty of Education, Curtin University of Technology
Western AustraliaEmail: [email protected]
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference (September 11-14 1997: University of York)
Abstract
The recent experience of curriculum change suggest that information overload is a health hazard, and, rather than supporting change efforts, it has become a bottleneck tending to inhibit school improvement and curriculum reform. Information management for decision support is crucial to innovation and implementation success. A new generation of instructional information management systems (IIMSs) are now becoming available at affordable prices. These tools, which are professionally driven rather than for the purpose of scientific management, seek to integrate the school community with the web of relationships between curriculum, teaching, assessment and school organisation. In this demonstration and presentation an example of an Instructional Information Management System (IIMS) will be rendered transparent, and implications for collaborative information-based work cultures considered.
Over the course of the last decade it has become evident that systemic educational
reform, at all levels of the education system, has become a cross-national
preoccupation. Central to the reforms is a concern to raise educational standards
developed variously by state education agencies, universities and colleges,
professional associations and registration bodies, the corporate sector and
government agencies, with input from a range of stakeholder groups. Recent
experience with large scale planned change, however, has illustrated the swamping
effects of extensive information provision which overwhelms those undergoing the
processes of change, and those who are charged with managing its implementation.
This has, in effect, tended to work against the implementation of planned change,
rather than promoting it ( Hall and Carter 1995).
In the flurry of activity associated with effecting educational improvement and
change, the latent power of new technology for information processing does not
appear to have been fully exploited in order to manage curricular operations and
change processes in an integrative, systemic and comprehensive fashion. The
reasons for this are complex and go beyond the scope of this paper. In this turbulent
educational environment, increasing pressures for accountability have resulted in the
proliferation of a multitude of standards to help specify what it is that educational
institutions should be accomplishing via publicly funded instructional programs.
One of the consequences of these externally generated pressures for more precision
in student monitoring and reporting against socially desirable outcomes, is to present
educators with a dilemma as to how they might meet the individual needs of
students, while maintaining consistency of quality against a set of standards.
Accountability, in the sense of being able to define precisely and show relationships
between system variables and student learning, proves to be an important but elusive
task without recourse to information management technology to meet the increased
societal expectations of schools colleges and universities measured in terms of 'value
for money' for the educational resources expended. To this end new information
technology has an increasing role to play in managing information for decision
support from the classroom to the boardroom.
Computer Managed Teaching/Learning Systems
Several Computer Managed Learning (CML) products are commercially available to
teachers and trainers under the general label of ‘instructional management systems’.
It is obvious that all have different features, however, and, depending on how one
defines instruction, some of these systems may not be true instructional management
systems. For example, a management system which works to identify learning
deficits in students by managing objective and test question item banks; test
generation and scoring facilities, and student analysis and reporting may be more
appropriately termed an ‘assessment management system’. Some assessment
management systems include the capability of managing instructional resources
along with objectives, and can be used to guide the selection of instructional
resources where additional teaching is considered to be necessary.
Good assessment management systems are useful at pointing out ‘weak’ areas of an
instructional program by comparing students’ performance against objectives.
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Generally originating in the 1960’s mainframe environments, these systems are
traditionally termed ‘computer managed instruction’ or CMI systems. They are not
particularly good at helping educators identify causes of problems and analysing
relationships between curriculum, instruction and assessment.
Instructional Information Management Systems (IIMSs) broaden the concept of
assessment management by providing information management ‘upstream’ of the
assessment process. Ideally, IIMSs (by definition) should be able to manage critical
information at every step of the complete curriculum and instructional design
process (ie designing, developing, delivering, assessing, and evaluating instruction).
Student assessment in a well designed IIMS is only one aspect of a much broader
information system which manages information that is required as other
instructional decisions are made ( Bloch, Hedburg and Harper, 1994).
According to total quality management practices, we cannot continue to rely on the
method of detection of defects if we want to learn how to improve quality. A good
IIMS, then, needs to assist educators in the management and analysis of all aspects
of the curriculum cycle in which candidates for assessment and analysis include
intentions (outcomes and curriculum) and process (teaching and learning) as well as
product (learner performance - students’, teachers’ and supervisors’).
Well constructed Instructional Information Management Systems (IIMSs),
employing relational data base technology, are designed specifically to allow for the
unobtrusive and automatic acquisition of data describing the core operations of
education and training institutions (Burger; 1995). They can be used to formalise
and capture the interlocking cycle of relationships between curriculum, instruction
and assessment within a given context. They underpin and support information-
based practice for managing student centred learning. By acquiring skills in the use
of IIMSs, integrating data on curriculum, state and national guidelines, professional
needs and competencies, student demographics and performance, practitioners can
begin to identify and understand those relationships and patterns that contribute to
overall system and institutional improvement in which student learning is paramount
(Carter and Burger; 1994).
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The curriculum as lived out in the every day experiences of students is multifaceted
and changing. Thus, two-dimensional models appearing in a range of curriculum
documents do not, and cannot, adequately represent the dynamic nature of learning
context, curriculum processes and associated knowledge structures. To be
responsive to these, the curriculum of each institution has to be locally crafted in
order to capitalise on local talents, with local insights in order to specific student
needs. Sophisticated IIMSs enable instructional leaders to determine the curriculum
scope and sequence they desire, while enabling each of their teaching staff to be
actively engaged in curriculum development activities in an on-going way.
Information management and professional accountability
It is recognised, generally speaking, that second order changes which have occurred
behind the classroom door, reflecting advances in new information technology, have
at best been piecemeal where change has occurred at all (Fullan, 1992; p. 10). The
reasons for this are complex and go well beyond the scope of this paper.
Nevertheless, at the junction of teaching with learning, the introduction of the
microcomputer together with advances in communications technology, provides us
with the latent capacity to transform both including the organisational structures in
which teaching and learning are embedded.
Ideally, IIMSs (by definition) should be able to manage critical information at every
step of the complete curriculum and instructional design process (ie. designing,
developing, delivering, assessing and evaluating instruction). Student assessment in
a good IIMS is only one aspect of a much broader information system which
manages information that is required as a range of decisions about teaching and
learning and associated processes are made. Sophisticated IIMSs which combine
those functions that lie at the heart of any educational institution, such as curriculum
development, instruction, evaluation and assessment, allow for the formation of
information rich environments with great transformative potential. In short the
computer, when interacting with a professionally informed mind, acts as a magnifier
of human capacities that enables us to perceive yet further possibilities previously
beyond our comprehension.
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Informating educational environments
There are two ways of using technology to achieve information rich environments.
One is for the purpose of automating: the other for informating. While there are
some who clearly seek to use technology for the former purpose, it tends to become
mechanistic and to isolate the human element from the process itself. Automating
then is not a satisfactory means for supporting teachers and administrators and for
educational problem solving. To informate1, however, is to empower educators as
professionals. It is in this context that instructional leaders can work with staff and
students in order to resolve the question of what information has to be readily
available and easily accessible for them to understand the nature of certain
educational processes and to execute instructional and curricular events.
In the information rich environments created by the use of an IIMS, where
information can be shared ecologically within and across the academic community,
explicit connections between internal and external environments and their various
components becomes a practical reality. When configured and used in this way
information management technology can provide, for example, the means for:
· ascertaining which curriculum elements are included in daily instructional plans,
· monitoring student grouping practices;
· tracking students student performance and recreating instructional histories;
· facilitating the development of teacher made learning materials;
· enabling the management of material resources;
· differentiating the form of assessment programs across different time spans and
subject areas, and,
· effecting curriculum alignment to external references, benchmarks and standards
on a continuous, routine and substantially unobtrusive basis (Carter, 1993).
1 Informating was first coined by Zuboff (1988) and refers to the generation and dispensation of information across organisational boundaries creating an information rich environment that now includes data previously stored in people’s heads, in peoples’ conversations, in filing cabinet drawers and/or on widely dispersed pieces of paper (pp. 9-10).
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For outcome evaluations, supervision and accountability purposes, administrators
can ascertain the extent to which a particular teacher uses a variety of
teaching/learning activities and resources aligned with instructional objectives, or
the extent to which curriculum and its implementation matches external guidelines,
standards and benchmarks, or other performance indicators. The capabilities of the
particular IIMS you will see demonstrated at the presentation are summarised in
Appendix 1. It’s curricular structure is shown in Figure 1.
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Figure 1: IMSeries Curriculum Structure for Outcomes Based Education
Curriculum and Outcomes HierarchyCurriculum Cross References
Because the IIMS automatically records detailed audit trails as teachers and
administrators use it, it become possible to obtain profiles of how the performances
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of students are changing, by viewing sets of records accumulated unobtrusively
through the daily operations of the institution over selected periods of time.
Instructional process
Generally speaking, there is little argument among professionals that helping people
realise their full potential as learners is an ultimate aim of education. How well this
is realised in the context of institutional and national goals depends on how well
teaching staff are motivated to work for constant improvement, and are themselves
provided with the resources and incentives to grow and develop as learners
concerning their own professional practice. In this regard Sarason (1990) makes an
observation that if teachers, as learners, do not perceive that the appropriate
conditions for their own growth obtain, they cannot create and sustain them for
students. From this point of view, student learning is also a function of teacher
learning, continuing development and growth.
For learning to be made effective it has to be closely integrated across different
subject matter areas. For this to occur a 'whole curriculum' perspective concerning
the vertical sequences of learning activities and their integration across content areas
at different year levels is required. Further, the monitoring of student progression
against standards has to take place across different subject matter, in different
learning contexts and employing different instructional processes. In so doing, a
more flexible approach to the use of time and student centred course implementation
modes is implied as individuals progress at different rates.
Monitoring and reporting validly on student learning and progress is a most difficult
thing to accomplish and to demonstrate in practice. To do this effectively, and with
insight, teachers must be able to capitalise on new knowledge, make data-based
professional judgements, and acquire intimate knowledge of the changing needs of
the learner in the exercise of their own creativity and spontaneity. We now have the
on-line information management systems available to resolve at least some of the
problems of curriculum integration; of directing learning sequences, and monitoring
and reporting their effects on learning and achievement from students' initial entry
to the institution until their final graduation and/or departure.
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While a well designed curriculum, aligned to appropriate instructional processes, is
regarded as fundamental to helping each student achieve mastery of the objectives,
and is easily accomplished in principle using the new IIMS technology, slavish
adherence to the textbook and detailed attention to every objective in the curriculum
is not a means to achieving the desired learning. In effect, the latter is likely to
work against the intended result of fully realising student learning potential.
For the instructional context and learning environment to be regarded as potentially
rich, a process orientation is necessary in which a variety of teaching and learning
strategies are present, with students afforded the opportunity to read and discuss
much more widely than is directly required for the immediate achievement of short
term objectives. It is also important to realise that it is not necessary - and even ill
advised - to seek to control all the activities that take place under instructional
processes. What is important is to be able to ascertain their nature at will, and to
direct them differentially to learners as needed, and in the full knowledge of the
extent to which external agencies are also influencing and guiding instructional
processes.
Assessment of student performance
With a renewed focus on student learning outcomes, and the trend towards
competency-based curriculum frameworks requiring the close monitoring of student
progress towards the achievement of certain standards; also to provide feedback for
further instruction, or for counselling and reporting, timely information is required
by decision makers. This includes not only what level of mastery was achieved by a
student on a particular occasion, but also the conditions under which the
performance occurred. For decision-support systems to be able to inform and guide
practice, it is necessary to retrieve a comprehensive range of data for any student at
will, and to relate them to other relevant factors such as when certain objectives
were taught to different groups of students, with what resources and activities and to
what effect. To inform decisions, data also needs to be related to student
characteristics, aspirations and needs in order to make judgements when counselling,
making inferences about student mastery, and reporting accurately and meaningfully
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to significant others and ‘the system’. The focusing of relational data on a particular
student performance, at a specific point in a given assessment period, can be
represented as a performance point which is illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The Concept of a Performance Point
In the aggregate, each performance point becomes a data point for the
contextualised construction of a performance profile of student achievement against
any criterion, objective(s), activity, resource or benchmark, need or external
reference managed by and accessed via the IIMS. The pattern of performance
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points shown in Figure 2 allows the instructor to recover information-rich patterns
in student achievement ‘captured’ by the IIMS unobtrusively during the day-to-day
processes of curriculum and instruction. Educators can contemplate them and arrive
at decisions with, and on behalf of, the student, leading in turn to more accurate
diagnoses of learner needs. In effect this provides the basis for individualised
attention and thus enhances individual student progression towards the achievement
of desired objectives and outcomes.
It should be remembered that the functions of those types of assessment that are
learner centred and those which are essentially for the purposes of accountability,
credentialing and reporting, need to be held separate. Both aspects of assessment
imply different sets of relationships between the teacher and learners and learners
with each other. Once assessment data can be readily retrieved and contextually
related to the instructional conditions under which it occurred, it can be used to
contemplate and monitor student performance in a form accessible to students and
their mentors. Further, these data become immediately accessible as feedback for
the further design and implementation of curriculum and associated processes in an
on-going and cyclical manner.
While there is a place for examinations and testing, in the context of student centred
and self-directed learning, an accurate and useful set of performance points for the
enhancement of instruction and learning is more likely to be achieved by reducing
the emphasis on a few highly precise measurements, and moving towards
continuous assessment by increasing the value of many varied and less precise
measurements. The latter might be realised through the use of student portfolio
assessment, for example. To demonstrate increased teaching/learning effectiveness,
student progress needs to be interpreted via professional judgements, together with a
range of student work samples, and referenced to a range of formal and informal
assessments gathered over time. It is difficult to imagine how this might be given
practical effect in the absence of new generation information management
technology.
Conclusion
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As advances in information technology lead us towards more interactive, resource-
based learning environments, the role of the teacher or lecturer necessarily changes
from that of instructor, in the traditional sense, to become a manager of student
learning. In the social dimension of schools, colleges and universities, a parallel
shift in emphasis is needed in order to supplant the instructional dominance of
transmission models of teaching with constructivist approaches to student centred
and student directed learning. To this end, the use of professionally driven
Instructional Information Management Systems(IIMSs), in contrast to Management
Information Systems (MISs) (based on scientific management principles for the
purpose of efficient administration), enable the advocated shift in emphasis to
become a practical reality.
At the start of this paper a dilemma for educators was posited regarding how might
they meet the individual needs of students while maintaining consistency of quality
against a set of standards. It has been argued above that this becomes a practical
reality when appropriate learning environments are constructed, in which
information flows freely between functions and across organisational boundaries. It
also requires the exercise of high quality educational leadership supported by new
information management technology. This is regarded as fundamental in order to
support learning communities in which teachers become students of their own
professional practice, informed by data, normally lost as ‘noise’, but now made
readily accessible to them via an IIMS. The integrative possibilities lie latent in the
technology until realised by informed professionals. In order to realise this ideal,
however, they must be adequately prepared and supported to take on new roles, and
engage in new practices in different institutional settings employing collaborative
work cultures networked via information management technology.
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Contact:D.S.G. CarterFaculty of EducationCurtin University of TechnologyGPO Box U1987Perth Western AustraliaTel (08) 9266 2172Fax (08) 9266 2457Email: [email protected]
References
Bloch D., Hedburg J.G. and Harper, B. (1994) Managing Information Systems in
the School. International Journal of Information Management. 14 (1), 443-
464.
Burger M. (1995) Instructional Information Management Systems and Systemic
Change. In, Jenlink, P. (Ed.) Systemic Change. Touchstones for the Future
School Palatine: Illinois, IRI Training and Publishing Inc.,117-133.
Carter D.S.G. (1993) An Integrative Approach to Curriculum Management Using
New Information Technology. Education Research and Perspectives. 20 (2),
33-45
Carter D.S.G. and Burger, M. (1994) Curriculum Management, Instructional
Leadership and New Information Technology. School Organisation. 14(2),
153-168.
Fullan, M. (1992) The New Meaning of Educational Change. New York. Teachers
College Press.
Hall, G.E. and Carter, D.S.G. (1995) Managing Change in the 1990’s. In, D.S.G.
Carter and M. O’Neill (Eds.) International Perspectives on Educational
Change and Policy Implementation. London: Falmer Press.
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Sarason S.B. (1990) The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform. Jossey-Bass
Inc. Calif.
Zuboff, S. (1988) In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power.
Basic Books, New York.
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Appendix 1Using powerful relational data base technology, IMSeries™ is the first of a new generation of instructionally driven Information Management Systems (IIMSs) for use in education and training contexts. It’s essential features are summarised below.
Curriculum Development and Design
Curriculum
· Defines structure and content· Import and export· Develop, maintain and analyse without using codes· Maintain multiple lists of external standards against which locally
developed curricula can be aligned to meet national, state and local standards
· Combine graphics and formatted text in developing reports
Maintain
· Review and revise common elements (eg., subjects, courses, concepts, objectives, activities, resources, questions and evaluation strategies)
· Control and alter sequences of curriculum elements at all levels of the curriculum
· Easily move and copy sections· Identify gaps and overlaps in student skill development and/or
instructional strategies· Allow users to extend existing, or define new sets of standards against
which local curricula and instruction might be analysed· Store graphics and text-based instructional resources and automatically
manage them as part of the broader curriculum· Print curriculum reports and results of queries to ASCII files, to the
system printer, or to the screen for previewing.
Analyse
· Analyse curricula horizontally and vertically· Determine frequency and location where specific external standards are,
and are not, addressed· Conduct ad hoc queries to obtain any information about curricula and
how they are organised, what content they contain, or where specific content is contained
· Search for specific information (at all levels) based on words and word combinations
Instruction and Assessment
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Planning
· Construct and maintain detailed lesson and other instructional plans for different types of teaching/learning
· Validate what has been taught to each student· Design instruction and assignments that align with student outcomes· Coordinate planning of instruction with colleagues· Examine instructional histories for any student (test scores,
demographics, lessons/instructional episodes implemented, student performance data, disciplinary information and attendance
· Plan for special needs students who are mainstreamed· Access LAN/WAN (including Internet) resource banks· Articulate curriculum and instructional planning across grade levels,
programs and sites.
Delivery
· Group students for remedial/extension work· Locate instructional strategies and resources quickly (regional, district
and within campus)· Scan for available internal and external resources and media· Determine what instruction has occurred during any given period of
time, thus allowing for quick identification and development of student make-up work
· Link CAI lessons back into design processes· Given a selected intervention, examine probability of implementation
success through the analysis of trends and student patterns of performance
· Facilitate student or teacher initiated cooperative learning· Facilitate flexible student grouping strategies while maintaining an audit
trail of instruction delivered to each student
Assessment
· Communicate instructional and evaluation information to parents and significant others in a variety of data forms and formats
· Supports a wide variety of assessment strategies and ways to record student performance
· Maintain electronic portfolios (certification of skills, observational data, anecdotal notes, writing samples, process/content based evaluations, soundbites and QuickTime movies of student performance and rehearsal of competencies)
· Graph performance profiles for any time frame and student outcome(s)· Allow for continuous evaluation of student progress so that instruction
can be more closely matched to individual needs· Develop progress reports for student/parent/system information· Automatically generate tests and assignments· Analyse student performance and growth by any skill, construct,
knowledge area or outcome
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