A case study of designing technology enhanced learning in an elementary school in Singapore

Tay, L. Y., Melwan, M., Ong, J. L., & Ng, K. R. (2017). A case study of designing technology-enhanced learning in an elementary school in Singapore. Learning: Research and Practice, 3(2), 98-113. doi:10.1080/23735082.2017.1350737

Background

The authors highlighted that research findings regarding the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on students’ learning had been inconclusive as obstacles to the effective use and integration of ICT still existed.

Aims

The study investigated how elementary school teachers had designed technology-enhanced learning experiences for their students. It also examined the contextual challenges and considerations that teachers needed to contend with when they integrated ICT into their lesson design.

Sample

The participants comprised ten teachers from lower, middle, and upper primary, teaching English, Mathematics, and Science in one of the three elementary-level future schools under the FutureSchools@Singapore programme.

Method

An ethnographic case-study approach was adopted to examine the experiences of the teachers in a future school, that is, the whole school had wireless Internet coverage and each student had their own computing device. The teacher interviews were audio-recorded. The authors adopted an analytical framework which classified teaching-learning activities into six different types: (1) acquisition, (2) inquiry, (3) practice, (4) production, (5) discussion, and (6) collaboration.

Findings

• The results showed that the design of the English lessons integrated a wide range of the teaching–learning activities.

• The teaching–learning activities of the Mathematics lessons focused primarily on acquisition and practice. The math teachers used varied online resources for students at different levels and most of the online resources used for Mathematics lessons were for content.

• For Science, lesson design focussed on student access to online virtual experiments such as the You-tube videos to help them acquire and discuss the new concepts. This allowed the students to practise and verify the scientific concepts they had learnt.

• A wide range of teaching-learning activities was integrated into the co-curricular activities.

• The data suggested that the English writing, scientific inquiry, and co-curricular project-based types of lessons supported a wider variety of teaching–learning activities than did the Mathematics lessons, which focused more on acquisition and practice.

Implications

The authors highlighted that the depth of the students’ learning depended, to a large extent, on how lessons were being designed. Teachers also needed to be cognizant of how ICT was used for teaching and learning for the various subjects and of other contextual factors, such as the technological infrastructure and school administration.

Original article retrieved from Taylor & Francis.