School & Community the Use Thesis

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, 2007).

The use of the Cognitive Tutor not only enriches students' experience at the academic task-level but also impacts the teachers' instructional practices and relationship with her students (Level 3) A district-wide survey of high school teachers using the program reveals that the Cognitive Tutor allows them more time to provide individual assistance to students; gives them the opportunity to adjust their instructional practices as a result of students progressing in problem solving; and makes Algebra more interesting and relevant to students (Schneyderman, 2001). These views imply that the use of the program makes teaching less burdensome in the sense that the teacher acts as facilitator of learning rather than instructor, which is one of the arguments for educational technology in general.

Due perhaps to the wide acceptance of the use of Cognitive Tutor and other instructional software in American classrooms, the "No Child Left Behind" Act called for the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to conduct a national study to determine the actual contribution of this technology to students' learning (Dynarski et al., 2007). A total of 16 reading and math software products were evaluated for their effectiveness in 1st, 4th, 6th, and 9th grade students The main findings of the study are quite unexpected -- test scores are not significantly higher in classrooms using selected reading and mathematics software products. For reading products, effects on overall test scores were correlated with student-teacher ratio in 1st grade classrooms and with the amount of time that products were used in 4th grade classrooms (Dynarski et al., 2007).

Research evidence on implementation factors may suggest some explanations for the above findings. First, there are teacher-related issues. Technology products places demands on teachers' time and skills as they have to prepare the product, transfer the students to computer labs, maintain the technology, and monitor and help students as they use the software (Dynarski et al., 2007). Many teachers also feel that they have a significant need for professional development on how to manage classroom activities that integrate computer technology (Adelman et al. 2002 in Dynarski et al., 2007).

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In the ED study, although teachers underwent training and were confident at the end to use the products in their classes, their confidence dropped to some degree after they began using the products in the classroom (Dynarski et al., 2007). This may have been due in part to technical difficulties, which is another implementation factor issue. For instance, computer access may be limited, hardware can be unreliable, computer networks unstable, and technical support inadequate (Cuban, 2000 and Culp et al., 2003, in Dynarski et al., 2007). In the ED study, however, technical difficulties were considered "minor" as they were easily corrected or worked around (Dynarski et al., 2007).

These observations show how the other levels of school organization may affect the success of novel learning tasks and instructional design. Specifically, the teacher's belief about her efficacy and classroom management practices (Level 3) can send implicit and explicit messages to her students, that in turn may influence their academic performance (Eccles and Roeser, 1998). Hence, one of the recommendations of the ED study is to evaluate a second batch of students with the same teachers' implementing the products in their classroom. They hope to see the effect of teachers having prior experience and improved skills in using the products on students' performance (Dynarski et al., 2007). School resources (Level 5) in terms of adequate materials and technical capacity are also thought to be important for children's learning (Eccles and Roeser, 1998). Hence, it would be worthwhile to include recommending the upgrade of school computer networks and labs for Phase 2 of the ED study.

In summary, computer software such as the Cognitive Tutor can be beneficial for middle school and older students to improve their academic outcomes in challenging subjects like Math. For younger students such as those in grade school, the effectiveness of some computer software seems to be influenced by teacher and school factors.….....

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