Engaged Learning with Emerging Technologies

Citation

Inglis, A. (2007), "Engaged Learning with Emerging Technologies", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 451-454. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880710830017

I recall a primary school teacher attending an international conference for tertiary distance educators complaining to me that the conference didn't have sufficient of interest to justify what it had cost her to attend. I was reminded of the episode as I was reviewing this book. University lecturers and schoolteachers operate in somewhat different professional worlds. This is why conferences and professional associations generally cater for either one group or the other. Engaging Learning with Emerging Technologies, on the other hand, tries to bridge this professional divide. To a publisher trying to maximise the market for a new title that may make good sense. However, trying to cater for too wide a market does not serve readers at all well. I will to return to that point later.

Engaging Learning with Emerging Technologies conforms to the popular genre of an edited volume that brings together contributions from an international group of leading researchers around an emerging theme. In any case a core group of contributors, together with the editors, belong to the Learning Sciences and Technologies Group in the National Institute of Education at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, while the remaining contributors who mostly appear to be working collaboratively with the staff at NTU come from the USA, Canada, the UK, The Netherlands, Hong Kong, Korea and Australia. Some contributors are well‐known names, while others may not be familiar to most readers.

One of the difficulties I experienced in engaging with the ideas presented in this volume was the fact that the structure of the book fails to support some of the principles that the authors advocate. The chapters don't seem to follow any logical sequence. Initially, at least, each chapter therefore needs to be approached on its own terms. Given the importance that several of the contributors attach to scaffolding in the development of understanding, it seems paradoxical that more attention has not been paid to way in which the content unfolds throughout the book.

The opening chapter by David Jonassen and Johannes Strobel examines a range of ways in which software modelling tools can assist learners to develop mental models. It is not until the second chapter that the key question likely to be on readers' minds as they pick up this book: “What constitutes engaged learning?”, is addressed. The authors of this chapter, David Hung, Seng Chee Tan and Thiam Seng Koh, promise to make sense of the concept. However, they end up describing teaching models for facilitating engaged learning, which is not quite what we expect, and it is not until much later in the book that we are offered a really adequate explanation.

The next four chapters turn to more practical topics. In Chapter 3 Betty Collis and Jef Moonen make a case for a contribution model of teaching and provide examples of the types of activities that can support such a model, arguing that that the role of technology is to make information communications technologies which now make implementation of courses using this model feasible, scalable and manageable for both instructors and students. Reinhard Opperman and Marcus Specht discuss the types of engagement that is sought in workplace training environments. They focus mainly on on‐demand instruction embedded in work processes and the ways in which information is exchanged amongst members of work groups. This is the one chapter that does not deal with formal education. Seng Chee Tan, David Hung and Marlene Scardamalia use a case study of the use being made of a collaborative learning tool, Knowledge Forum, at the Nanyang Technological University and in Singaporean schools to explore the processes by which technology can contribute to engagement. Chapter 6, by John Hedberg and Susan Metros, is entitled “Engaging learners through intuitive interfaces”. However, it is more concerned with the approach to interface design than with the factors that contribute to making interfaces intuitive. The authors illustrate use of their methodology by reference to a CD‐ROM product: “123 Count with me”. However, the reader is left to take on trust the authors' claims that the principles embodied in the product have indeed led to greater learner engagement.

While this is largely a theoretical work, Allan Yuen's chapter reports on a piece of research. This examined primary school students' participation in online discussion forums in science that was conducted across six catholic primary schools in Hong Kong. Taking a more fine‐grained approach to analysis of participation than is often the case, that included reading as well as contributing, Yuen found evidence that online discussions may not be suitable for all students at this level.

Some of the most useful chapters in the book come towards the end. Geoff Romeo's exploration of what learner engagement means in a high‐school ICT setting fills in many of the gaps left by earlier chapters. This is one of the most accessible chapters in the book and one wonders why it was not placed earlier. Alan Pritchard's wide‐ranging exploration of the psychological basis of engagement provides a robust theoretical foundation for understanding the prerequisites for effective engagement. Kat Tin Lee examines the changes that are needed to the ways in which teachers in schools relate to their professional roles if schools are to become ICT‐enriched learning environments in which learners are truly engaged. Minjuan Wang and Myunghee Kang describe a model for promoting engaged learning in a virtual world. One of the unusual features of this model is that it tries to take account of learners' emotional state – something that most constructors of teaching models have avoided up to now. As the authors acknowledge, this model is still at a theoretical stage. Indeed it requires much more elaboration before it could be applied in an actual teaching situation.

The final chapter by Cathy Gunn considers the opportunities for increasing learner engagement through the use of continuous online assessment. She provides balanced treatment of a topic on which educators often hold strong and discordant views. She concludes that the greatest opportunity lies in formative assessment, but adds that an increased focus on formative assessment will require a significant shift in the predominant teaching and learning model.

This book contains many thought‐provoking ideas, and breaks new ground in linking the application of information and communications technologies in education directly to the theory of learner engagement. Other things being equal I would therefore not hesitate to recommend it strongly to both academic libraries and individual readers. However, it is let down by the standard of the editing. In many respects it reads like a “draft” edition. Typographic errors are frequent and sufficiently noticeable as to be distracting. There are unfinished sentences and punctuation missing. A number of the in‐text references appear without the year of publication. There are also more serious errors. For example, on pages 119 and 122 the reader is referred to a Figure 9, yet there is no Figure 9 in the chapter. While errors like these do not necessarily diminish the scholarly worth of the volume, they do detract from its readability. The readability is also affected by the fact that the contributors come from a variety of language backgrounds.

The sequencing of the chapters, as I have already mentioned, is an issue. Chapters that are closely related in content and treatment are separated by chapters dealing with relatively unrelated topics. For example, the case study in Chapter 5 runs parallel to the theoretical analysis in Chapter 2. Some of the chapters towards the end scaffold understanding of concepts that appear in much earlier chapters. All of these factors are likely to make maintaining engagement with the text a challenge for readers who are not already familiar with the area. The irony of this situation will not be lost on those readers whose reason for picking up the book in the first place is to learn to how to improve their own effectiveness as teachers.

To return to my original point, though, I found that one of those most frustrating aspects of the book is that it doesn't sufficiently take into account the reader's context. Some chapters are addressed to readers who work in schools, other to those who work in universities or even in corporate training. Developmental differences between the learners in these different contexts as well as organisational differences in the ways in which they operate, signal the need for different approaches to teaching. It may be interesting to read about the worlds in which our colleagues in other sectors work. However, it is not as engaging or useful as reflecting on the issues that relate specifically to our own professional responsibilities and challenges. The differences in professional orientation are evident in the theoretical foundations on which the contributors draw. Situated learning (Lave and Wegner, 1991) and problem‐based learning (Barrows, 1986) which have had an important influence across all educational sectors are seen as having been central to the development of a theory of engaged learning. The work on indicators of engaged learning by Jones et al. (1994) at the North Central Region Educational Laboratory (which served the schools sector) is drawn on by several of the contributors. On the other hand, the work of Ference Marton and his colleagues at the University of Gothenburg on deep and surface learning that has had been particularly influential in the Higher Education sector (Marton and Säljö, 1976) rates barely a mention.

Overall, then, I am in two minds about what recommendation to offer to those who might be considering purchasing this book. Many of the chapters make important contributions to the literature of engaged learning and for that reason the book would make a worthwhile addition to a university or departmental library. However, the fact that it tries to address too wide an audience and that acquisition of an understanding of engaged learning is not sufficiently well scaffolded throughout the book, will limit its attraction to individual readers. Given this fact, and the lack of attention to copy editing, anyone considering purchasing it for their own bookshelf might want to consider whether they should wait for a second edition.