Evaluating Technology for Learning - Term Paper Example

Evaluating Technology for Learning Identification of a Teaching Situation The continuous prevalence of several devastating hurricanes hitting the coast of the United States has been having several severe mitigating consequences. Residents living in the towns and cities that are affected by the hurricanes normally do not have any access to adequate clean water and relatively standard sanitation facilities. It is with this in mind that I would develop a program that could be taught to various community health workers and nurses that could have the potential of providing them with the necessary skills and education on how to best educate the community on how to protect their families and spread the stem of water borne diseases that are now becoming a common occurrence whenever an area happens to be hit by a hurricane. The proposed program will focus on areas that are generally perceived as being high risk areas in regards to the threat of being affected by hurricanes. With a few relatively easy modifications, the program will also be modified and expanded to other cities and areas outside the United States that happen to face the same threat. After going through the program, the nurses and various community health workers would be equipped with the necessary knowledge that would help them educate the affected communities and potentially prevent the loss of lives as a result of persons getting infected by some preventable water borne diseases. The health workers and nurses would be able to achieve this via encouraging the various communities to implement measures that would ensure that the whole community is safeguarded from any potential infections. Potential Technology to be used in the Learning Program The most suitable technology that can potentially be used in the proposed learning program would be, the use of web based resources such as data technology in distance education Data technology would mostly involve the use of some common technologies such as computers, internet connection, World Wide Web based computer applications such as computer learning systems, facsimile (fax) and electronic mail (e-mail) (Kidd & Chen 2009). These resources are easily available and most people already have some basic knowledge on how to operate these technologies. The SECTIONS Framework Model Both SECTIONS and ACTIONS are acronyms. ACTIONS as an acronym can be seen to have letters that represent the words Access, Costs, Teaching and learning, Interactivity/ user-friendliness, Organizational issues, Novelty and Speed. SECTIONS can be seen to indicate Students, Ease of use and reliability, Costs, Teaching and learning, Interactivity and Organizational issues (Bates & Poole, 2003). Bates modified the SECTIONS framework model of media selection from the ACTIONS framework Bate (2003) that he had previously developed. The ACTIONS model was modified so as to be able to carefully take into account two significant factors. The first factor being that since the model has been designed to help form a framework for long distance learning, to help students who cannot be able to attend the normal conventional classes, the first criterion needs to be modified from access to students. The second factor that cause the amendment was that the original ACTIONS model was seen to include ease of use with interactions (Bates & Poole, 2003). This should not be the case as ease of use should in itself be a critical criterion. Application of the Proposed Learning Model to the SECTIONS Framework S-Students The program will be intended to reach a wide range of students who are mainly demographically concentrated in the coastal areas where hurricanes are prone to cause massive damages and endanger human health as a result of the resultant threat due to water borne diseases. The target students will already have attained the academic prequalification of being qualified nurses or community health workers. The main aim of selecting this demographic of students is mainly because students who are already in the workforce tend to be attracted to online learning and have already developed the self discipline and necessary study skills that are required to undertake such a program. It will also be attractive to them since they can be able to undertake the learning program mainly on a comfortable part-time learning schedule and effortlessly carry on with their normal work duties. Students undertaking the program will be required to have a computer and access to the internet from either at home or at work. The program will be conducted fully online and students will not have to physically appear at the campus at any time. Most cities in the United States have relatively fast internet connections though as a precautionary measure, the use of video’s and live online streaming will be kept to a minimal so as not to inconvenience students who might happen to have relatively slow internet connections (Kidd & Chen 2009). E-Ease of Use and Reliability The learning program will be relatively easy for the students to effectively learn how to operate and use as it will mostly be based on their already existing knowledge on computer and internet usage. The learning program will incorporate the use of a short interactive multimedia tutorial that will be designed to offer further help to students who might be experiencing problems with some aspects of the program. In the event that a student still happens to be experiencing problems after going through the tutorial, a live chat option will be availed that will advance to them the extra necessary help that they might require (Tileston 2010). Emphasis will be placed in ensuring that the learning material is presented in a visually appealing interface to the students. Learning experts and professionals will be heavily relied on to ensure that the interface will be intuitively easy for both the teachers and students to use and the learning material will be as relevant as possible. Special attention will be paid to the material to ensure that navigation by the students on the website is made easy. The use of animated graphics and videos will be minimized as it has been noted that such features can result in a slow delivery of the learning material which can often be quite frustrating and discouraging to the students. The website and all study related material will be conveniently situated in a dual server so as to ensure that the learning material is readily available to the students in the event that a part of the server happens to go offline. The selection of the host server will be based on the availability of adequate back up power supply and technical support, high-speed internet access and a guaranteed twenty four hour and seven days a week reliability. Before any updates can be made to the learning software, ample time will have to pass so as to ensure that the software developers have managed to work out all the bugs in the program that early users of the upgrades may happen to encounter. This will be done in efforts to try and reduce the potential odds of the program destabilizing or crashing as a result of faulty upgrades. C-Cost The university offering this course already has some online learning programs that it happens to be offering. As a result of this, the proposed learning program will use the already existing infrastructure in terms of site licenses for computer software and hardware, system support staff, servers and video conferencing equipment. Some of the major costs that might be incurred in the implementation of the program generally includes costs such as some copyrights, the cost hiring professionals to develop the content and delivery of the course material. Efforts will be made to ascertain that teachers using the program are adequately compensated for all their efforts. Most institutions normally fail to pay these teachers who often have to expend extra time developing technology based learning material to be used in the program. As the number of students increases, the amount of remuneration given to the tutor will also increase due to the increased work load on the teacher (Palloff & Pratt 2007). The program is expected to benefit from grants that are normally afforded to the institution to help in facilitation and adoption of various learning technologies. Teaching and Learning The learning program will always ensure that it constantly motivates the teachers as well as the students with the aim of ensuring its success. Appropriate technology such as availing the option of videos and graphics to students who have fast and reliable internet access will be used while ensuring that the content of the videos and the relevance of the learning material is of utmost top quality (Tileston 2010). The learning program will be designed in such a manner that emphasis will be placed on two aspects; the first being that the program ensures that the students acquire the necessary knowledge of facts, concepts, laws, events, principles, rules and ideas and the second aspect being that students will be encouraged to ensure that they work and use the knowledge that they have gained to develop relevant skills. Students will need to show general skill and knowledge in preventing and controlling the spread of water borne diseases by the end of the course. Various assessment strategies will be incorporated into the program to evaluate both the success of the program’s design as well as gauge the students’ performance. The use of multimedia based question and answer tests as well as various assignments to be completed and uploaded by the students to their accounts will be found to be of most benefit. I-Interaction and Interactivity The proposed program will ensure that it maintains high levels of inter-activeness in line with most of the existing theories of learning that happen to suggest that the learning process must be interactive for it to be effective (Palloff & Pratt 2007). Students will be able to interact with the learning material’s originator as well as their lecturers via e-mails and live chats. Various blogs and discussion boards will be made available for the students in the program so that they can be able to interact with other students and share ideas. The feedback given by the students via e-mails and discussion board messages will be carefully noted down and used to further develop and improve the system (Kidd & Chen 2009). O-Organizational Issues Before the implementation of the learning program, it will be of paramount importance for it to obtain all the necessary support from the college’s management. This is to ensure that the lecturers and students using the program do not in any way face any difficulties such as inadequate technological support due to the failure by the administration to employ person who will work in this capacity (Palloff & Pratt 2007). The learning program will initially incorporate the use of books and other learning material that the lecturers will find easy to obtain and upload into the system. Later on, when it receives full support from the organization’s management, it will incorporate the use various videos and audio clips that will be prepared with the help and support of other relevant departments in the school (Palloff & Pratt 2007). As a result of the plan to incorporate the program into an already existing online education system, the program is predicted to receive the full support of the management as its cost of implementation and general operation will be found to be minimal. N-Novelty The proposed technology will prove to be innovative as a result of its usage of the use of downloadable audio visual case studies. These case studies will be recorded in areas that happen to experience the after effects of a hurricane. This will help prepare the students in the handling of the real life cases they may happen to come across. To facilitate the easy distribution of the audio visual case study video clip files, the learning program employ the use of some of the current common rapid file sharing websites such as rapidshare.com (Palloff & Pratt 2007). S-Speed The proposed learning program will be easily upgradeable as constant research will have to be conducted with the aim of ensuring that it remains relevant and incorporates any new technological advances. Learning and technological experts will be contacted in this respect. The website material will be reviewed periodically by the tutor to ensure that it keeps up to date with any recent advances in the field. Links to various online resources will also be constantly reviewed to alleviate any potential unavailability of necessary data as a result of the links not working (Palloff & Pratt 2007). Why the Application of Frameworks is necessary in the Selection and Use of Technology The use of frameworks in the selection of technologies to be used is quite important as a result of the fact that most educators constantly face the urgent need to make decisions as to the appropriate technologies to be incorporated into the learning process. With the rapid pace at which technology is currently advancing, it is of paramount importance to implement the use of a framework that will guide organizations, and educators to ensure that any technology selected will be able to satisfy all the set learning objectives (Bates & Poole, 2003). References: Kidd T. T., & Chen I., (2009). Wired for learning: an educators guide to web 2.0. Charlotte, N.C.: IAP, Information Age Pub. Tileston W. D., (2010). What every teacher should know about student motivation. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin. Palloff M. R., & Pratt K. (2007). Building online learning communities : effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass. Bates T & Poole G., (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in higher Education. Retrieved on 20th Nov, 2012 From: https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201320_04/MS_NURS/NURS _6320/Week%202/Resources/Resources/embedded/6320_effect.tchng.pdf. Read More