Computers and Integrated Classrooms: Educational Reform in Two Boxes
Peter C. Facciola, SMCC

For more than a decade I have been privileged to ride the crest of two waves of educational reform: One is the growing use of computer technology in the classroom. Under the mentorship of Dr. Gavriel Salomon, I worked as a member of his research team to explore the effects of educational computing on learning. (See references at the end of this article). The other is the creation of novel learning environments, culminating in my participation in the Dynamic Learning program at South Mountain Community College. These experiences as a researcher and teacher lead me to believe that educators can use instructional computing in innovative learning environments to facilitate educational reform.

Instructional Computing
Teachers introduce computers into the classroom as number crunchers, writing tools, communications media, laboratory assistants, libraries, art studios, personal tutors, babysitters, organizers, encyclopedias, model-builders and thinking tools. In all of these learning applications, students experience two kinds of outcomes: effects with computers, and effects of computers.

Effects with computers, whether cognitive, affective, or behavioral, occur when learner performance is enhanced during computer usage. For example, students who generate more and better ideas while using brainstorming software such as IdeaFisher, experience an effect with technology.

The impact of effects with computers can be dramatic. Students can reach a level of performance on tasks when working with computers which exceeds what they could do alone. In essence, learners and computers form a partnership in which they share the cognitive load. Computers can assume repetitive, time-consuming, lower-order tasks, allowing the student to focus on more complex, higher-order thinking. For example, a full featured word processor such as Microsoft Word</i> allows students to devote time and energy to language choices, organization, argument structures, and theme development that they would otherwise spend on error correction, formatting, and mechanics. Similarly, modeling software like STELLA allows students to test hypotheses, construct theories, and interrelate ideas in ways they would not otherwise be able to do.

Effects of computers accrue when students grow as a consequence of working with computers. One example is when students improve their conflict management skills away from the computer, after playing a computer "game" which simulates conflict resolution strategies. Similarly, writers who compose better essays with only pen and paper after using software which provides composition guidance also show an effect of computers. Thus, effects of computers accrue when learners internalize a new skill or achieve a higher level of mastery of an existing skill subsequent to using an intelligent computer tool.

Clearly, computers offer important opportunities for learning and educational reform. Unfortunately, students often do not take advantage of the opportunities computers afford them. Like working with any other tool, computing requires students to expend effort. They must be mindfully engaged. For example, students won't cultivate higher-order thinking skills when word processing if they don't focus on them. If a student sees the word processor only as a means to fast spell checking, that is the extent of the educational benefit they will receive. When students find an activity unexciting or without real consequences, they are unlikely to take advantage of the opportunity it offers. As with any learning activity, it is the quality of students' participation that matters. Educational computing has the potential to enhance learning, but it will go unrealized unless educators use technology in environments which encourage learners to cull these benefits.

Integrated Learning Environments
Integrated classrooms create environments that invite students to mindfully engage in learning. By bringing together disciplines, people, communities, and institutions in meaningful ways, integration changes the complex of personal, social, and structural factors which constitute the learning environment. Under these circumstances, learning activities closely resemble their uses in the community outside the classroom. Students expend effort because learning is authentic.

As an example, instructors (myself, Yvonne Montiel, Jackie Jaap, Indira Nigam) in a 12 credit block (COM 100, CRE 101, ENG 101, BPC 110) of the Dynamic Learning program typically assign students to integrate research writing, reading, communication, and computer usage. However, without motivation to combine these activities, students view integration as an extra, artificial chore. Therefore, the instructors restructure the assignment, making it more authentic, by asking students to use these general education skills to become change agents on issues they find personally meaningful.

Once we do this, however, almost every aspect of our classroom changes, as well. Students find that they achieve their objectives better in cooperative teams. Time to meet and work in the community becomes more important than time in the classroom. Instructors are transformed from taskmasters to useful guides. Writing, reading, group communication, and public speaking become practical means to relevant ends. As a consequence of integration, students find that research writing, reading, and group and public communication are valuable tools for accomplishing their personal goals.

Our re-engineering of the Dynamic Learning classroom also entices students to mindfully engage in productive uses of computer technology. Our classroom has two work areas: One is set up for discussion and group work; the other has 20 Macintosh workstations. Once we give computing an authentic purpose, the class becomes technology intensive, with much of the work going on at the computers. Students place a premium on computer time for crafting essays, writing letters to public officials, business people, and educators, managing project deadlines, brainstorming, creating charts and graphs, making presentation outlines and slides, organizing ideas, constructing models, conducting library and Internet searches, exchanging e-mail, testing ideas, analyzing survey data, and creating and using art, videos, and music. Because students complete these activities to accomplish their own purposes, they do so of their own volition, with attention to detail, and with concern for their results.

Computers in Integrated Classrooms
Placing computers in integrated classrooms offers enhancements for student performance, both during the time students work with computers, and beyond. By using appropriate computer tools in the proper settings, we can help students achieve learning goals that they otherwise would not or could not meet. In this way computers play a role in the transformation of education from an information transfer based enterprise, to one of knowledge construction. We will not realize this potential, however, unless we introduce computers into learning environments in which the whole complex of personal, social, and structural factors invites our students to mindfully engage in the computer learning tasks we create.

Integrated classrooms can be developed into the kind of environments in which students become mindfully engaged in learning activities. They encourage students to view learning activities as socially significant outside of the classroom. When students use computers in this environment they view them as tools they can use to achieve their personally significant goals. In turn, computers reinforce the transformation of the learning environment in the integrated classroom by facilitating the integration of disciplines, ideas, people, institutions, communities and technologies. Thus, integration invites us to use computers to their potential, while computers help us achieve integration.

The educational reforms offered by using computers in innovative learning environments are substantial. They do not, however, emerge automatically as effects of institutional policy and practice. They arise only through the mindful engagement of the students and educators who comprise our learning communities.

References
Salomon, G. (1992a). Computer's first decade: Golem, Camelot, or the promised land? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.

Salomon, G. (1992b). Studying the flute and the orchestra: Controlled experimentation vs. whole classroom research on computers. International Journal of Educational Research, 14, 37-47.

Salomon, G. (1993). No distribution without individual's cognition: A dynamic interactional view. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed Cognitions. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Salomon, G., Perkins, D. N., & Globerson, T. (1991). Partners in cognition: Extending human intelligence with intelligent technologies. Educational Researcher, 20, 3-9.

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URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/
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