Scaling up from the Pioneers: The TeleTOP Method at the University of Twente

At the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology, University of Twente, in The Netherlands, pioneer faculty members have been making innovative use of WWW-based course support sites since 1994. By 1996, seven instructors were active; by the first part of 1999 more than half the faculty were involved, and the rest will be joining soon (in a systematic plan, all the first-year courses in 1998, the second-year courses and many of the senior electives in 1999, etc). In addition we are working with other faculties, to support the same progression. How are we doing this? In this article, the TeleTOP method (http://teletop.edte.utwente.nl) will be described, showing clearly how it has developed based on an implementation model and the experience we had already acquired with innovative use of the WWW for our courses. The eight aspects of the TeleTOP method, including the pedagogical principles, the change strategies, the instructor-engagement strategies, and the technology, wi ll be described, and illustrated with examples from the courses that have now been redesigned. In particular, results after the first year in terms of usage, of instructional choices made by the instructors, of the diversity of instructional approaches that are supported, of the on-going formative evaluation, and of the adaptation of the TeleTOP method for another faculty with a different pedagogical culture will be given. The applicability of the TeleTOP method to other faculties and settings is discussed.     

Environmental education

Teachers are under scrutiny as never before. Politicians, parents and pupils invest a great deal of capital in teachers' ability to deliver the goods, notably in terms of national test results. In this essay I challenge the view that a teacher's role and value should be defined solely with respect to measurable outcomes, and argue that the influence of a passionate teacher can be powerful, motivating and even life-transforming for pupils. Teachers' affective influence is neglected at its peril, not least because it provides for considerable personal satisfaction and moral agency.     

Images in mirrors: Recollections,alternative explanations and modes of cognitive functioning

Students' conceptions of how objects are seen directly, and in mirrors, were explored in an analysis of their written and drawn responses to common visual phenomena depicted in cartoons with brief text. Students in Grades K-10 (n=214) completed a questionnaire and some were interviewed. Evidence was sought to support an hypothesis for increasingly sophisticated responses related to the concepts of sight, light, reflection and image. The developmental model used in this analysis was the updated SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1991; Collis & Biggs 1991). It appears from the results that different modes of functioning can interfere to produce factually incorrect recollections of experience particularly in the age group 7 to 13 years approximately. Also, this is associated with the common spurious conception that mirrors have a lateral inversion property. Explanations involving light were extremely rare and its role related to the production of an image ‘in the mirror’ but not to the perception of an image in the eyes. Specializations: science education, students' understandings of phenomena in science. Specializations: cognitive development, evaluation, mathematics and science education. Specializations: mathematics education, students' understanding of chance and data concepts.     

Towards a theoretical basis for students' alternative frameworks in science and for science teaching

As there is nothing as practical as a good theory, there is a continuing need in the field of science education enquiry to look for theories which help to interpret the findings about students' alternative frameworks and to inform the design of teaching strategies which relate to a research focus on ‘how the student learns’. The developmental model of cognitive functioning based on the SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982) as updated in 1991 (Biggs & Collis, 1991; Collis & Biggs, 1991) is being applied in this way. Questionnaire data from two large studies of science learning of Australian students (conducted by ACER and NBEET) are being re-analysed in terms of the current theory. This paper illustrates the theory and describes a plan of further research. Specializations: science education, students' understandings of phenomena in science. Specializations: cognitive development, evaluation, mathematics and science education. Specializations: mathematics education, students' understanding of chance and data concepts.     

Singaporean and Australian Students' Understanding of Vision

A model for the development of an understanding of how people see has been proposed on the basis of a questionnaire and interview study of a cross-section of Australian school students. The model, based on the SOLO model of cognitive development (Collis & Biggs, 1991), involves the building of connections between the eye, light and the object seen in the Ikonic and Concrete Symbolic modes of cognitive functioning. In order to assess the viability of the model across cultures, the questionnaire was administered to 116 primary and secondary school students in Singapore. This paper reports some details of how the model was supported in its most important respects. The few discrepancies might be explained in terms of environmental, linguistic and/or teaching factors.     

Building on Learner Contributions: A Web-Supported Pedagogic Strategy

Since 1997, the authors have been involved with the increasingly widespread use of a Web-based course-management system called TeleTOP not only in their own university but also in other universities and training settings. The implementation of TeleTOP was accompanied with an emphasis on a pedagogy that was new to almost all of the instructors involved: that of shifting the focus in a course from the presentation of content to the facilitation of learners making contributions to the course TeleTOP environment, contributions that serve as subsequent learning resources for others in the same course and can be re-used as resources in other versions of the courses and other settings. This article describes the theoretical basis for the approach, illustrates how the pedagogy works in practice and gives some of the results. Construire à partir des apports des apprenants: une stratégie pédagogique par Internet. Depuis 1997, nous avons été impliqués, de plus en plus, dans l'utilisation d'un système de cours appelé TeleTOP, non seulement dans notre université mais aussi dans d'autres établissements de formation. Nous avons implanté TeleTOP grâce à une pédagogie nouvelle aux yeux de la plupart des enseignants: celle consistant à passer de la simple présentation du cours à la possibilité pour l'étudiant de participer à l'élaboration même du cours TeleTOP. Ces contributions ont pu être utiles à d'autres étudiants mais ont aussi pu servir à l'élaboration d'autres versions de cours. Dans cet article, nous décrivons les bases théoriques de notre approche, nous montrons comment cette pédagogie fonctionne dans la pratique, et donnons quelques résultats. Das Einbauen von Anfängerbeiträgen: Eine Web-basierte pädagogische Strategie. Seit 1997 sind wir mit der zunehmend verbreiteten Verwendung eines Web-basierten Kursmanagementsystems, genannt: TeleTOP, befasst , nicht nur in unserer eigenen Universität, sondern auch an anderen Universitäten und Ausbildungsstätten. Wir haben die Einführung von TeleTOP schwerpunktmäßig mit einer Pädagogik begleitet, die fast allen betroffenen Ausbildern neu war: nämlich, dass im Laufe eines Lehrgangs der Fokus von der Darstellung des Inhalts zur Möglichkeit, über Eigenbeiträge der Lerner selbst Kursmaterial zu TeleTOP hinzuzufügen, das anschließend für andere Kursteilnehmer oder auch für andere Kurse als Lernressource wieder genutzt werden kann, gerichtet wird. In diesem Artikel beschreiben wir die theoretische Basis für unseren Ansatz, erläutern, wie die Pädagogik in der Praxis funktioniert, und teilen einige unserer Ergebnisse mit.     

A Model for Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Statistics

ABSTRACT

As in other areas of the school curriculum, the teaching, learning and assessment of higher order thinking in statistics has become an issue for educators following the appearance of recent curriculum documents in many countries. These documents have included probability and statistics across all years of schooling and have stressed the importance of higher order thinking across all areas of the mathematics curriculum. This paper reports on a pilot project which applied the theoretical framework for cognitive development devised by Biggs and Collis to a higher order task in data handling in order to provide a model of student levels of response. The model will assist teachers, curriculum planners and other researchers interested in increasing levels of performance on more complex tasks. An interview protocol based on a set of 16 data cards was developed, trialed with Grade 6 and 9 students, and adapted for group work with two classes of Grade 6 students. The levels and types of cognitive functioning associated with the outcomes achieved by students completing the task in the two contexts will be discussed, as will the implications for classroom teaching and for further research.