5. Effective Access: Teachers’ Use of Digital Resources

5. Effective Access: Teachers’ Use of Digital ResourcesBethany Carlson and Sharon Reidy
http://www2.edc.org/GDI/news_effective_access.htm

This research was done in the area of science and technology instruction. It explores how male and female educators from different racial/ethnic groups perceive and use digital resources. In this paper, the authors describe the need for a better understanding of the cognitive frameworks used by high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educators as they search for digital resources and conceptualize the integration of digital resources into their teaching. At the highest level, the study expects to answer these questions
• What are STEM educators doing with educational resources and what would they like to be doing?
• What kind of technical and educational supports do educators want and need?
• How do teachers find Web-based resources?
• What design features meet the needs of STEM educators?
• What is the relationship of gender/race/ethnicity to educators’ perceptions and use of digital resources?

Two surveys were created on-line using a Web-based survey tool in order to explain the discrepancies and parallels between developers’ understandings of teachers’ needs and what teachers express as their needs. Then the authors designed focus group protocols in order to delve further into the needs of educators.

The guiding question of the educator focus groups is
“How do you FIND Web resources and INTEGRATE those resources into your teaching?”

Focus group participants includes 10 teachers who work together to describe ideal features and services of a STEM site, and they reflect on how Web resources could better meet the needs of individual students. Focus groups will be followed by in-depth interviews or case studies with educators that will include Human-Computer Interaction research and explorations of various digital resources. Data will be triangulated to confirm key findings. The preliminary findings reported that of the 10 focus group participants, eight used the Internet for lesson planning and activities at least some of the time, while two never used the Internet in their teaching. The teachers who used the Internet cited the abundance of information available as their main reason. The two teachers who did not use the Web each gave a different reason; one teacher claimed lack of knowledge and skills around Internet use, and the other said that the curriculum had no room or need for extra resources. The majority (5 out of 8) of the focus group participants who use the Internet regularly for their teaching said that the time required to find usable/appropriate resources on-line was their biggest frustration. They characterized their search for Web resources as always having to go from site to site rather than being able to find resources in one place; they begin their searches using a search engine (Yahoo or Google) or at a favorite educational site (NCTM or Math.com). Three teachers were frustrated most by difficulties getting computer access for their class, either because of scarce computer lab availability or because of frequent equipment breakdowns. When reflecting on finding resources appropriate for individual students, the focus group teachers most often described the Web as a source of supplemental practice problems for a struggling student and/or as a way to increase student engagement.

Relevance: This study of teacher cognition in STEM classroom has shed some light on my research methodology. As I am interested in using focus group in the process of data collection, I am not sure yet when will be appropriate to conduct the focus group. Some researchers have confirmed that the focus group method can yield freer and more complex responses and reveal some hidden issues that can not be accessed from individual interviews. This research has shown the best way how to use the focus group and followed by the interviews in order to get the well-rounded information about teacher concepts towards technology and instruction no matter it was done in non-language classroom context. If the focus group is conduct at the preliminary stage, the opinion will be useful for refining my survey tools and may elicit the general views of using IT in educational context. However, I need to work out what will be the best way to use the focus group in my study.