(Floe) General principles and guidelines for designing for teachers as consumers and producers of OER
How to read this draft?
How can OER be designed to best promote their use and their modification by teachers? This work is one step to answer this major question. It aims to identify what designers should know to better design for teachers. It builts on studies and ideas from the field of teacher practice and teacher education related to technology use (OER and ICT in education in general). It is organized it as follow: 1) it proposes several general principles for design relevant to teachers ‘use of technology, and 2) it gives guidelines for designers of OER built on those general principles.
General principles for designing for teachers
Technology isn't the spotlight: Technology should support and encourage the use and the development of quality educational content in order to improve students‘learning. In addition, many teachers are reluctant to use recent technologies because they fear losing their position as teachers due to the Technological Generation Gap between them and their students.
Teachers may not be aware of the relative utility of the technology use: The perceived usefulness of the technology is an important barrier or facilitator in technology use by teachers.
Teachers may think that content creation is a hard task: Teachers may be convinced it is not their responsibility or that they don’t have the skills to create content with technology.
Teachers may not have the needed technological skills and knowledge to use the technology: Initial and continuous teacher education programs don’t prepare them well to use and create content with technology well (very recent research results continue to prove this fact).
Teachers usually are not well prepared to select suitable technology and evaluate its use: As a consequence of the last principle, teachers don’t know on which bases and how to proceed to select technology and how to evaluate technology use by their students. Some motivated teachers develop their own practice, otherwise they usually use the technology used by their “leader” colleagues or the most used technologies (usually the most available).
Teachers usually don’t have time to discover or update their knowledge and skills about technologies: A lot of work to do, discovering or updating technology skills are ranked low in their priority task list.
Teachers usually don’t have time to use the technologies in the classroom (overloaded curriculum, equipment available in laboratories and not in the classroom, lack of support, important student number, etc.)
Teachers usually don’t have the needed technological support to use the technology at its full potential.
Teachers usually don’t have the needed pedagogical support to use the technology at its full potential.
Teacher may usually lack of access to technology in the classroom/school (few computers in the classroom/ dated or inappropriate equipment/ technology available in laboratories not in classroom, etc.)
Teachers work in inclusive settings: they have to meet the special needs of all their students.
Teachers are guided by the curriculum set up by the authorities: They have to comply with its content while using or creating content through OER.
Teachers are strongly influenced by other teachers’ practice.
Education is oneof the sectors the most resistant to change (very conservative): It took more than 30 years to integrate the use of the calculator in schools!
Suggested guidelines
General principle | Suggested guidelines applied to the video use in the classroom |
|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|