Students and Changing Academic Achievement with Technology: A Quasi-Experimental Preliminary Investigation." Computers & Education (2008): 376-80. Print.
This
article describes how through the use of technology, many advances can be
made throughout the realm of higher education. Studies have shown through the
use of technological devices such as computers, there has been a general
increase in the participation and mannerism changes from students of today. The
technological advances have not hindered students of today but have created a
positive impact on education, and also inhibited an ease of use not only for
the students but also the educators.
The main author, Adam C. Carle has a
Ph.D. in psychology and currently is an educator at the University of North
Florida. He dedicates his time for the research for both the physical and
mental health of children and adults. His work has encompassed large populations
of people, spread across the country; therefore his survey data is at a very
large scale; especially the psychology of the use of technology on humans.
Engagement was one of the key words
used throughout this article. The term engagement was used in the idea of how
technology increased student engagement and how it was beneficial for the
students to have access and use this technology throughout their education.
Another key term in this article was a
TEC, or a technology enhanced classroom. By using both a control and
experimental group to determine which classroom was more proficient, the TEC
proved to be more valuable to both the students and educators who aided in the
conduction of the experiment.
“Increased engagement; broadly defined
to include numerous aspects of class participation, class interest number of
completed assignments, informal and formal student collaborations, other
required and optional student work and interactions, as well as student
initiated attempts to incorporate the material into their life; correlates with
increased academic achievement” (Carle 376).
“Using a standardized measure of
student engagement, results showed that TEC students endorsed statistically
significant changes in their reported levels of engagement. Recording small
group discussions, providing timely formative feedback explicitly tied to each
group’s discussion using the recordings, and delivering the recordings of each
class as podcasts lead to increased engagement. With regards to grades, TEC
students also showed statistically significant improvement in their academic
achievement.”(Carle 378).
“Additionally, because technology
certainly comes at a financial cost, Universities and professors need to
empirically and systematically assess the consequences of technological
additions to the classroom” (Carle 379).
This article has significant value because it depicts a real life scenario in which both a typical classical educational setting is compared against a new and improved technology based education setting. It helps explore my research question since it is first hand research, and it is depicted in a very explicit manner therefore making it a very helpful article.
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