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Purpose of the Article
The purpose of this article is to share the research findings of a 12 month study (December 1999–November 2000) which investigated preservice teachers’ perceptions of the ELITE programme which had been implemented at the Institute during the 1999/2000 academic year. The main objectives of this study were:
| a) | to investigate why students choose the level and types of use of the ELITE programme; |
| b) | to investigate the reasons for the frequency and duration of use; |
| c) | to explore why students choose to take the number of self-evaluation tests attempted and the timing of these tests; |
| d) | to investigate the complex nature of how students acquire IT skills through an in-depth analysis of qualitative data on student perceptions of the programme; and, |
| e) | to gather data to assist future refinements of the ELITE programme to benefit students. |
Research Background
Ever since the advent of technologies into society and the work place, teacher education programmes have struggled with the question of how to teach and apply the wide variety of technologies that are available to enhance the teaching and learning process (Wetzel, 1993). To date researchers investigating the uptake of computers by teachers worldwide frequently conclude that teacher education programmes need to provide instructional models and exemplars for classroom implementations of computers (Cox, 1998; Kearsley, & Schneiderman, 1998; Lee, 1999; Robinson, 1998). Other studies (Neiderhauser, 1996; Sherwood, 1993) had shown that there is a need for training programmes to develop self-directed IT users and this necessarily entails significant changes to teaching and learning environments of the practitioner.
More recent research also suggests that both current and prospective teachers do not feel adequately prepared to integrate technology into classroom activities (Abdal-Hagg, 1995; Office of Technology Assessment, 1995; Topp, Mortensen & Grandgenett, 1995). This strongly suggests that teacher education programmes need to examine methods for training prospective teachers to not only be technologically literate but also to understand the unique issues involved with technology in schools and be skilled in integrating technology resources and tools into classroom activities. These expectations concur with the requirement of the Education Department for all preservice graduates to attain at least the“competent” level of IT skills when they graduate in 2000-2001. These requirements aim to encourage teachers to attain both knowledge of educational technology issues and skills using technology tools in their future professional settings.
Methodology
Sample
Participants of this study comprised 312 Bachelor of Education (Honours)(Primary)(4 year) degree students (Year 2: N = 202; Year 3: N = 110). The sample was selected because these students were the first two cohorts to have utilised the ELITE programme. A total of 91 useable questionnaires were returned giving a response rate of thirty per cent. The total sample of 91 comprised 10 male, 72 female and 9 unspecified. (It should be noted here that the student population at this Institute is predominantly female).
Interviews
A random sample of 42 students (M=13; F=29) was selected for in-depth interviews of 15-20 minutes duration. Eighteen were Year 2 and twenty-four were Year 3 students. Although this method was time-consuming, the one-to-one interaction allowed the interviewer to probe individual responses to obtain more in-depth answers.
Instrumentation
An anonymous online questionnaire was used to gather data regarding the student’s use of the ELITE programme. The questionnaire included items on (a) types of use, (b) time spent on ELITE, (c) use of self-tests within ELITE, (d) frequency and duration of use, (e) skills application, (f) perceptions of self-competence levels, and (g) usefulness of the ELITE programme. All questions were constructed with the Likert-type scale response option except for two open-ended questions which were included in the final section of the questionnaire. One of these questions asked for views on the effectiveness of the programme and improvements needed while the second asked students to describe their feelings and perceptions regarding use of self-paced learning systems for acquiring IT skills and knowledge.
For the interviews a set of questions was designed to structure the actual interviewing process and to ensure a degree of consistency. Each interview was audio-taped (with the respondent’s permission). Simultaneously the interviewer wrote extensive notes for each of the questions asked. As soon as was practicable the recorded data was transcribed.
Data Analysis
The questionnaire data were imported into SPSS using a Generic Survey Engine. Descriptive statistics was used to compute frequencies and cross tabulations of data. Qualitative data from the open-ended questions of the questionnaire and the interviews were also analysed and will be used to build up a picture of the typical experiences of the students and detect any trends and patterns of usage which may emerge.
Results
Student self-perceptions of IT competence
The results of our survey showed that a high proportion of students had “average” to “proficient” levels of computer skills prior to using ELITE (82%). Only 12 per cent indicated that they had “below average” computer skills and only 6 per cent rated their computer skills as “poor”. For subsequent analysis it is important to bear this in mind since only a very low proportion of students had entered the Institute without IT skills. The question arises as to whether these students with their self-perceived level of IT competency will continue to persist in their attempts to gain more IT competency and to integrate its use across the other modules studied.
Length of use of computers prior to using ELITE
Students were asked to report their use of common IT applications. The first five in the list – word processing (98%), internet (90%), email (80%), presentation software (73%) and spreadsheets (59%) all showed high levels of use. However, students were not proficient in use of database (15%) and authoring software (7%) although 66 per cent did indicate that they had used other applications e.g. ICQ and other software not specifically mentioned in this list.
What level and type of applications do students attempt to complete when they use the ELITE programme?
In response to this question, examination of the data revealed the following results shown below. Frequencies and cross-tabulations computed for the relevant sections of the questionnaire in response to this question are also outlined.
For the type of use of the components within ELITE none of the students indicated that they had tried ‘all’ or ‘nearly all’ of the components. Figure 1 above shows the different percentages of those who indicated that they had attempted “some sections only” as compared to those who had attempted “more than half of the programme”.
Use of “more than half” of the email operations component of the ELITE programme rated the highest (48%) as compared to 32% for internet browsing, 31% for word processing and 28% for computer operation. This contrasted inversely with the responses of those students who used only “some sections of the programme” with word processing rating the highest response of 52 per cent. What can be inferred from this result is that the extent and depth of usage of ELITE reflects the area of most need to students i.e. email, internet and word-processing.
When the data for students with one to three years’ computer experience werecross-tabulated with the extent of use of components of the ELITE programme it appeared that very similar patterns as the entire sample evolved. For each component the highest response was for the used ‘some sections only’ for all four areas of computer operations (50%), word processing (46%), internet browsing (43%) and email (46%) (Figure 2) below. This data also showed that it was fairly consistent with the other categories of ‘used more than half” and ‘all sections’ for all four areas of the programme components. The ‘all sections’ category meant that students may have tried ‘all’ of one component but did not imply that any students had tried ‘all sections’ for all fours components of the ELITE programme.
Time spent on ELITE at the Institute and outside the Institute
A general observation of the hours spent indicated that students had the tendency to spend from one to two hours on ELITE whilst they at the Institute and but could afford to spend more time of up to ‘three to five hours when outside the Institute (e.g. working from home or the hostels). For both instances, use of the email component of ELITE rated the highest score which probably explains the needs of the students. It was understandable that email being one application that all students have to use throughout the course so rated the highest percentage for time spent (one hour) both at the Institute (43%) and outside (31%) of the Institute (Figure 3).
It was also not surprising to note that use of the ‘internet browsing’ component dropped from 28% to 13% for the ‘one hour’ use category for students who used this component at and outside the Institute respectively. This may explain the fact that students may not have stable connections to work on this component from home and may also indicate that fewer students attempt to dial-up to access this component.
Another observation which can be inferred from this data is that students perhaps could not afford to spend from three to five hours on the programme whilst at the Institute but were more prepared to do so from outside and this definitely has implications for future planning. This finding was also supported by interview data where it was frequently commented “that the ELITE programme should have been entirely accessible on the Internet long ago so that they had better opportunities to attempt the components since they do not have the time to stay back at the Institute and this proved most inconvenient. Students also could not rely on the ‘download” option as often they were not able to download the components needed and often failed to do so. This was mentioned as a deterrent to use of the programme from home.
Frequency and duration of use
The pattern that emerged from this data clearly showed that between 31 – 34 % of students used the ELITE programme only once a semester for all four components. Thirty-four per cent used the programme once for ‘computer operations’; thirty-three per cent used it once for ‘word processing; thirty-two per cent used it once in a semester for ‘internet browsing’; and thirty-one per cent used it for ‘email operations’ (Figure 4). It would appear that students attempted the components once and most likely spent from ‘less than half an hour’ to about ‘two hours’ on each component (Figure 5 below). The pattern of work seems to be that once students are logged in they seldom spent more than two hours on each of the components averaging a minimal 2% across all components.
How many times and at what stage of progress do students attempt the self-tests?
Data gathered which provided some answers to this question are analysed below. On average 23% of students spent one hour on the self-tests whilst only 4.5% spent two hours and 6.5% spent more than three hours on the self-tests.
Turning from hours to when students were asked to indicate at which stage of their progress through ELITE did they attempt the self-tests, an examination of the data shown in Figure 6 indicated that on average about 30% attempted them at the end of the entire ELITE programme; 21% underwent pre-tests even before they started to try the ELITE programme; 23% systematically took self-tests at the end of each component; and a lesser portion of students (16% on average) tried the self-tests after each sub-section of each component as directed by the programme. In general this can be explained by the fact that individual students may have personal preferences and as shown by the data and will progress through the programme in their own way and attempt tests when it seemed appropriate or when they were confident about a particular component. The varied data in no way suggested that self-tests were taken at any specifically noticeable juncture for all students.
Do students consider use of ELITE as an effective way to acquire basic IT skills
Responses to the question “Which of the four components of the ELITE programme did you find helpful?’ shown in Figure 7 below indicated that more than half of the students (51 to 58%) found all four components helpful with a much smaller percentage of students (10 – 15%) stating that they found the programme ‘very useful”. In contrast only a very small proportion (10%) for computer operations chose the ‘not helpful’ category, while almost a quarter of the students (24% for word processing, 21% for internet browsing, and 24% for e-mail operations) chose the ‘not helpful’ category.
When this data was correlated with the students who had one to three years’ computer experience, the findings appeared very much the same.
Usefulness of Self-tests in ELITE Programme
As a means of ascertaining whether students found ELITE an effective way to acquire basic IT skills they were asked to respond to the question: “Were the self-tests useful in helping you to proceed to the other sections of ELITE?” a total of 64%, 68%, 67% and 68% of students responded positively (very useful, useful and quite useful combined) for the four components – computer operations, word processing, internet browsing, and email operations respectively.
Data from the interviews confirmed that although there may have been some difficulties in using the ELITE programme as discussed earlier on, students generally felt that the programme had been useful as a means to learn IT skills by themselves (52%), that ELITE was user-friendly (55%); that computer-based tutorials were a good way to begin to learn how to use computers (55%).
The interview data consistently pointed to the fact that assistance was often hard to get when they were working on the programme. This was also supported by the data gathered from the questionnaire. In spite of the fact that the ELITE programme was meant to be a self-directed learning programme, students appeared not to be ready to learn in this way. This reveals the tendency of our students to depend on face-to-face help rather than attempting to problem-solve first and then ask for help. This is definitely an area which needs further exploration as students at the Institute are not familiar with independent self-paced learning and will need much assistance and guidance to cultivate a more independent approach to this type of learning in the future.
Interestingly an overwhelming proportion (90%) of students responded more positively than negatively when asked to state whether the ELITE programme was effective in helping them acquire IT skills. A breakdown showed that sixty-five per cent indicated that the programme was ‘quite effective’, followed by 23% for the category “effective’ and 2% for the “very effective’ category. Only 10% mentioned that it was ‘not effective’.
Perceptions and Views of Students on ELITE
Initial review of our data revealed that student perceptions of ELITE were varied and at times the feelings were similar yet at times they differed considerably. Data from the questionnaire and interviews are analysed below.
In response to the question “How successfully have you transferred your IT skills acquired in the ELITE programme into the other areas of your study”, responses were more positive than negative although a higher percentage (48%) did select the ‘quite successfully’ category as compared with 19% for ‘successfully’ and a very small 4% for the ‘very successfully’ category. Nearly one-fifth (19%) stated that they had not been successful at all in transferring their IT skills and 10% were ambivalent and did not specify any category.
In-depth interview data showed a contrast in that only 19% of the interviewees felt that the skills were transferable into classroom use. Related data also indicated that although interviewed students were positive (55%) about this way of learning they nevertheless were not so confident and could not transfer their skills into the classroom. Various reasons were offered such as the lack of time, inaccessibility of the programme from outside the Institute and the lack of familiarity with this mode of learning. A few students stated that they “preferred the conventional mode of learning where they could sit down with groups of friends to discuss what they were learning and not have to work alone on the computer’, although a small group of students did find ways around this problem by forming their own study groups to discuss and compare their progress through time.
To provide further analysis cross tabulations of the results for students with one to three years’ experience were carried out that revealed very similar proportions to that of the entire sample. It can be deducted from this data that students with one to three years’ experience perceived it to be easier to transfer their skills whereas for those with less experience it was more difficult. It would also imply that this mode of self-directed learning was perhaps more suited to students with some experience rather than for novices.
It was promising to find in the data gathered that a total of 73% (‘very confident, confident and quite confident’ combined), portrayed the view that they were more confident in using computers for teaching. The majority of students (75%) also perceived the use of ELITE as having provided them with some foundation to enable them to keep abreast of IT developments in the future.
So far in the two areas discussed above – transfer of IT skills and ability to keep abreast - not surprisingly similar results were revealed when data for the more experienced group (1-3 years) were cross-tabulated.
Although on the whole students maintained that it was important to acquire IT skills for various reasons (48% for professional development; 24% felt it was required; and 29% recognised the need to update oneself) the interviews did give the impression that they were at times unsure about how ELITE could assist them.
During the interviews when asked whether they had sufficient time to devote to the completion of the ELITE programme, one-third stated that they had the time, over a quarter mentioned that it was too demanding, another quarter felt that their study schedule was too busy to fit ELITE into their daily schedule, and slightly over one-tenth gave ‘laziness’ as an excuse for not completing ELITE. So far student evaluative data appear to support the notion that the ELITE programme was helpful to them and does assist preservice teachers to use IT more but they also projected the continuing prevalent message throughout the interviews that realistically they did not have sufficient time to spend on self-learning or to even contemplate transferring their IT skills into the any classroom work.
As for the two open-ended questions in the questionnaire students tended to use this as an avenue to voice their complaints mostly related to technical aspects e.g. takes too long to access ELITE, connections too slow, inability to log in; website not found, Chinese glossary of IT terms not available, some components take too long to complete; programme takes too long to complete, no time to spend on ELITE and so on. One regularly mentioned item was that students preferred to have more face-to-face workshops rather than having to work through the self-learning CBTs provided by ELITE although this was not so evident in the questionnaire data collected.
On the opposite end of the spectrum there were a few comments from the interviewees that they found great difficulty coping with the technology as the support services were not readily available and often they could not find the programme or log in, they were unsure about how to proceed without further assistance, there were no in-depth user guides nor a Chinese glossary to help them navigate. Although these comments were not the majority view, they provided valuable data for future specific action to be taken to alleviate these problems as far as possible.
Discussion
The number of respondents is obviously small and thus limits the scope of these findings. Nevertheless, these respondents did seem quite typical of preservice teachers as beginner users of IT for teaching and as students in their early stages of a teacher education programme.
While the group as a whole seemed to have some prior computer experience as reported in their self-perceptions of computer skills, there was a strong indication that individually they were more limited. The lack of time due to heavy programme loads and lack of personal support can encumber the acquisition process and slow or limit progress. The results revealed that students were not quite ready to engage in self-directed learning as a means to attaining the basic IT skills and knowledge. Students also had a preference to do more of this type of work outside of the Institute rather than on campus.
The results also indicate a strong positive correlation between the respondent’s completion rate of components within ELITE and the amount of time they were prepared to spend on the task. In general the group with one to three years’ experience were selective and chose which components they would spend more or less time on. They were also very adamant about their preference for completing these tasks outside of the Institute. During their presence at the Institute they were only able to manage at most up to two hours of work on the programme. A similar set of themes reverberated throughout the data collected from the open-ended questions and the interview data. In spite of the broadly positive views of the respondents of the value and usefulness of ELITE they registered a strong feeling that many serious barriers still exist which inhibit its widespread use.
The data so far is not clear on whether or not these respondents had developed an understanding of the ‘processes’ of use of IT, and the ability to go beyond the confines of the ELITE programme. Of equally great concern is to what extent these students are subsequently provided with the opportunities to apply their knowledge within the various subject teaching areas and the level of ongoing technical support? This would greatly depend upon the success of the IT integration exercise that is currently occurring in all areas of the Institute and the support infrastructure. In spite of the fact that the ELITE programme was meant to be a self-directed learning programme, students appeared not to be ready to learn in this way. Students preferred to have tutors hired to assist them when required. This strongly indicates that students tend to depend on face-to-face help rather than attempting to problem-solve first and then ask for help. Further exploration is needed as students at the Institute are not familiar with independent self-paced learning and will need much assistance and guidance to cultivate a more independent approach to this type of learning in the future.
Endnote
The Hong Kong Institute of Education [http://www.ied.edu.hk] began in 1995 with two-year certificate of education programmes. Its main function is teacher preparation. In 1998 the first four-year Bachelor of Education degree was launched. Together with this development a set of IT Competency Standards and the ELITE programme was developed as described in the paper. Atpresent the Institute is committed to full integration of IT elements across allprogrammes. An audit of programmes in December 2001 revealed that over 1000modules have now integrated IT elements and have incorporated IT relatedassessment tasks within each of the modules. All preservice students nowgraduate with the Upper Intermediate IT Competency Level and more recently forthe 2002-03 academic year, IT tutors have been recruited specifically to supportall students in their IT work in addition to their class-scheduled activities sothat they no longer depend on ELITE alone to enhance their IT integrationcapabilities.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported in whole by a research grant from the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
References
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Figure 1: Extent of ELITE components attempted
Figure 2: Extent of ELITE components attempted by students with 1-3 years’ computer experience
Figure 3: Time spent on ELITE at and outside HKIEd
Figure 4: Frequency of use of ELITE and the components used
Figure 5: Duration of use of ELITE once logged in
Figure 6: When self-tests are taken within the ELITE programme
Figure 7: Extent of usefulness of ELITE components as perceived by students
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