Jerry Willis - University of Houston

Title: Information Technology and Teacher Education: What We
Know and What We Need 

This presentation will overview what we know about the use of
instructional technology in teacher education including rates
and patterns of both use and training, perceptions of recent
graduates, models of use and integration, and barriers to wider
use. T he final section will discuss the types of research and
scholarship needed in teacher education. I will argue that
traditional research models are largely irrelevant to the field
at the moment. We need fewer control-experimental studies and
more project s that develop instructional materials and models
that take advantage of current multimedia, hypermedia, and
computer technologies. 

A major issue in the field is whether experimental studies of
"traditional" instruction versus a technology-supported
instructional strategy such as simulation or hypermedia provide
us with conclusions that can be generalized to broad categories
of technology-supported instructional strategies such as
simulations or hypermedia. I will argue that at this point in
the development of our field, instructional packages, even when
they are labeled as "simulation," "multimedia," or "hypermedia"
are so different from one to another that no general
conclusions can be drawn from empirical studies that focus on
one example or instance. 

Instead of trying to conduct research that "proves"
simulations, or hypermedia, or multimedia as a generic category
is "effective" we should be developing additional
technology-supported instructional packages and using formative
evaluation procedures to ensure that the packages are
effective. Summative studies, particularly studies that focus
on one program and try to generalize the results to all other
programs in the same general category waste energy and
resources. Summative studies come after package s and
procedures are developed. That is too late. Formative research,
on the other hand, guides the developers as the product is
being created and enhances the quality of the final product. 

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