Assessing the Impact of Instructional Technology on Student Achievement
by Lorraine Sherry, Shelley Billig, Daniel Jesse, and Deborah Watson-Acosta
Lorraine Sherry
Shelley Billig
Daniel Jesse
Deborah Watson-Acosta
RMC Research Corporation, Denver
X@XOpenTag003References
X@XCloseTag003Marzano., R.J., Pickering, D., & McTighe, J. 1993.
Assessing student outcomes: Performance assessment using the
Dimensions of Learning Model. Littleton CO: McREL Institute.
Rockman, S. 1998. Communicating our successes: Issues and
tactics. Unpublished manuscript.
Sternberg, R.J. April, 1998. "Abilities Are Forms of Developing
Expertise." Educational Researcher, 27 (3),11-20.
The WEB Project is a five-year Technology Innovation Challenge Grant
that was completed in September 2000. The purpose of this project was
to infuse standards-based instruction in multimedia, digital art,
music composition, and online discourse into the general arts and
humanities curricula of Vermont K-12 schools. Multimedia technology
was incorporated within six academic content areas: art, music,
technology, history/social studies, English/language arts, and
interdisciplinary studies.
Students shared their works-in-progress with a virtual community
consisting of other students, teachers, digital artists, traditional
artists, musicians, composers, Web page designers and other experts.
This was done via a virtual learning environment called The WEB
Exchange, which resided on The WEB Project's server. Through threaded
design conversations, students requested feedback on their works of
art, music, and multimedia. They then filtered the feedback they
received and used it to improve their final artistic products, which
many of the participating students then posted on The WEB
Exchange.
Concurrently, language arts students, aided by language arts teachers
and mentors from the Vermont Center for the Book, discussed
curriculum-related texts. Moderating their own discussions, students
engaged in deep, rich dialogue that focused on standards-based
activities such as responding to text, substantiating arguments with
evidence found in the text, informed decision-making, etc. These
interventions were stable over the last two to three years of the
five-year grant.
X@XOpenTag000Measuring the Project's Impact
X@XCloseTag000One of the research questions posed by the RMC Research
Corporation evaluation team in evaluating this project was, "What is
the impact of The WEB Project on student achievement?" Our intent was
to generalize our methodology to other instructional technology
grants in which student achievement must be reported. Findings from
an online survey of The WEB Project teachers and administrators,
repeated in spring 1998, 1999, and 2000, indicated that a connection
between student motivation, metacognition, and learning processes, as
outlined in a conceptual model developed by Sternberg (1998), might
be applicable.
According to Sternberg, motivation drives metacognition, which, in
turn, stimulates the development of thinking and learning skills.
Thinking and learning skill development further stimulates
metacognition, resulting in the development of expertise.
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