Education 4

Teaching and Learning with Technology Assessments

This unit has two different assessments that will be submitted at different points in the term and together equate to 4,000 words. There will be time in class to discuss both parts of these assignments and opportunities for some reasonable support from us as you prepare for them. Further information about the two parts follow:

Part 1 (25%): Reflective essay (1,000 words)

For this essay, students will conduct a critical analysis of their own previous experiences of using technology for teaching and/or learning in relation to different learning theories. The essay may draw on students’ experiences using technology as a teacher or learner in an informal or formal context. Importantly, the essay should make substantive links between this experience and relevant or appropriate learning theories. Thus, students’ critical reflections of their own personal or professional experiences should be well supported by relevant academic literature and theoretical frameworks. 

This essay will be submitted halfway through the unit, which will also provide students with additional feedback for the final submission. This part of the assignment will be due at 12 noon on November 4.

This assignment draws on your own personal or professional experiences with using technology. It might be your work as a teacher or previous experiences as a school or university student. Equally, it is fine to draw on more informal learning contexts that occur in everyday life. The formality of the ‘learning’ experience is less important than your ability to connect and reflect upon the use of technology to a theory or approach related to learning. This will likely be a theory that we have discussed in class but could also be one that we haven’t. If you have questions about whether your idea is suitable, just ask.

A successful assignment will demonstrate your ability to describe and connect the experience to a learning theory and then critically reflect on that experience.  How was learning supported? What were the challenges? What factors were involved? What role did technology play? What new insight have you gained about this learning experience by considering different perspectives on learning? What might this mean for future teaching or learning experiences? While this is a more personal, reflective assessment, it still needs to include supporting literature and properly cited evidence that relates to the situation. This in turn will help strengthen the critical reflection. There is no set structure or format for this assessment but the following is a suggested guide on what it might contain:

• Context – What is the situation? What is the technology and how was it used?
• Learning – What learning was involved in this situation? What theories or approaches help you understand it? What role did technology play?
• Critical reflection – What was the learning experience like? What was important or notable in the situation? What worked? What could have been improved? How was technology involved and in what ways did its use relate to different understandings of learning? How does this experience relate to existing literature in the field and theories about learning? What insights about learning and technology can you gain from this experience?

Part 2 (75%): Academic essay (3,000 words) –

This part of the assessment asks students to critically examine how technology can be used for learning or teaching. To do this, students should choose a particular type of technology and examine how it can be and is used in a particular learning context. The technology could be – but does not have to be – one that has been examined in lectures. As with Part 1, the learning context could be either a formal, educational one or a more informal learning environment.

The aim of this part of the assessment is to take a critical in-depth look at how technologies relate to learning in a particular context. The essay should be supported by concepts drawn from relevant and up-to-date literature around the chosen topic, and by a theoretical framework that systematically relates teaching and learning with technology. 

This essay will be submitted at the end of the unit. This part of the assignment is due at 12 noon on January 13 2020. There will be an opportunity to receive informal feedback from me before the due date, to be discussed in more detail

This assessment requires a more academic approach than the previous assignment, meaning that it is focused more on critical assessment of existing research and literature related to technology in learning and teaching contexts. What is important about this part of the assessment is demonstrating that you have read relevant literature and considered a range of existing evidence around the topic of your choice and that can critically evaluate this literature with a conceptual framework. There are different ways you could approach this in relation to the theories we have looked at in class. For example, you can choose to examine a particular technology by seeing how it supports a certain learning theory – or you might examine its affordances in a particular context.