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Learning Technologies in Practice – Macquarie University
The international outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the School’s adoption of a new Learning Management System (CANVAS) in 2020 led to all teaching staff being enrolled in a micro credentialed subject of the Macquarie University Master of Education program. It was the School’s intent to equip teachers with the intellectual arsenal to critically use emerging and existing technology in their daily teaching practice.
The course entitled Learning Technologies in Practice was delivered by Associate Professor Matt Bower and explores how rapid advances in technology are changing the way teaching and learning occurs. Teachers have the choice to do some or all of the 10 modules. The School required all teachers to complete the first module “Understanding TPACK in Context’ over Terms 2 and 3 of this year. The entire suite of modules within the unit will remain open for teachers to pursue at their leisure or interest into 2021.
Teachers completed two assessment tasks to demonstrate their understanding of the TPACK model in context. Briefly, Koehler and Mishra’s (2009) TPACK framework, which focuses on technological knowledge (TK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and content knowledge (CK), offers a productive approach to many of the dilemmas that teachers face in implementing educational technology in their classrooms. By differentiating among these three types of knowledge, the TPACK framework outlines how content (what is being taught) and pedagogy (how the teacher imparts that content) must form the foundation for any effective educational technology integration. This order is important because the technology being implemented must communicate the content and support the pedagogy in order to enhance students’ learning experience.
According to the TPACK framework, specific technological tools (hardware, software, applications, associated information literacy practices, etc.) are best used to instruct and guide students toward a better, more robust understanding of the subject matter. The three types of knowledge – TK, PK, and CK – are thus combined and recombined in various ways within the TPACK framework. Technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) describes relationships and interactions between technological tools and specific pedagogical practices, while pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) describes the same between pedagogical practices and specific learning objectives; finally, technological content knowledge (TCK) describes relationships and intersections among technologies and learning objectives. These triangulated areas then constitute TPACK, which considers the relationships among all three areas and acknowledges that educators are acting within this complex space.
The first assessment task teachers undertook was a critical discussion to assess each individual’s capacity to provide evidence-based arguments for learning technology practices, such as arguments for and against the use of relevant tools, or arguments about the affordances and limitations of relevant tools. The second assessment task was an ePortfolio task that provided the opportunities for teachers to showcase their experimentations and pedagogical thinking with relation to the TPACK model. The ePortfolio task allowed teachers to provide original examples (eg screenshot, video, file download) that showcased how the learning technology tools were being used at King’s. The written components of teacher submissions included critical pedagogical reflections related to the use of a plethora of learning technologies being incorporated into learning across the School’s three campuses.
Dean Dudley Director of The King’s Institute
