Overview
While much progress has been made in recent years in the impact that ICT has had on learning and teaching, excellence exists only in isolated pockets. There has been a general improvement across all sectors but the overall impact of the adoption of ICT in learning and teaching does not reflect its potential. This section of the report identifies where progress has been made and where improvement is required.
There is a clear link between appropriate and effective use of ICT in learning and teaching and increased learner motivation and engagement. This is confirmed by learners and by teaching staff. This section of the report identifies a number of examples of the link between use of ICT and increased motivation and engagement.
The issue of the impact of the use of ICT on learner progress and outcomes is less clear. Learners’ use of ICT broadens and deepens their learning. This is notable in relation to learners with additional support needs. The report identifies a number of examples of improvements in learning. However, inspectors found no evidence of increased attainment, in formal qualifications or against nationally defined levels, that could be directly attributed to the use of ICT in learning and teaching.
The impact of ICT on learners’ development of wider skills is evident in a number of ways. They use a broad approach to communication, incorporating sound and images into their presentations. In CLD, ICT enables learners to develop competences that enhance their life chances.
Only in a few centres has the use of ICT in learning and teaching brought about permanent change, with educational gain, in learning and teaching approaches. There are pockets of excellence but the general picture is one of only limited success in achieving such transformation. The report identifies the elements that need to be in place before there can be permanent change with educational gain.
Key strengths
Aspects for improvement
Staff in centres in all sectors found that when learners made use of ICT their motivation and engagement improved. Very few centres had carried out a comprehensive or systematic evaluation of the extent of such improvement or the circumstances under which it occurred but these findings by staff were consistent with external evaluations by HMIE. Learners also reported increased motivation and engagement when they used ICT in their learning but, in a few cases, were demotivated when teaching staff used only a narrow range of ICT resources in their teaching.
In almost all pre-school centres, all learners engaged enthusiastically with ICT in their learning and play. In particular, boys showed marked improvements in their motivation, particularly in aspects of language work. There were also examples of enhanced engagement with learning in those with additional support needs. In primary schools, clear benefits included:
Learners’ engagement with the teaching process increased when teaching staff used the facilities offered by interactive whiteboards to deliver whole-class lessons. However, learners were often demotivated if they were unable to gain access to ICT equipment or materials because of malfunction or insufficient resources.
In secondary schools, more than a few staff found improvements among boys in relation to motivation, time on task, behaviour and attendance. More generally, there was improved learner motivation and engagement across a wide range of subjects. These improvements did not occur in specific subjects. They occurred most frequently where the ethos of the school or department and the enthusiasm of individual members of the teaching staff combined to embed ICT effectively in learning and teaching activities. Benefits related to:
Where schools used ICT effectively (through e-mail or text messaging) to contact parents in the case of their children’s unexplained absence, their attendance improved.
In special schools, learners’ motivation and engagement improved through the use of specialised equipment and ICT-based formative assessment. This led to improved learner self-esteem and better work rates. Learners became better engaged with the life and work of the school.
A few teaching staff noted adverse effects of the use of ICT in learning and teaching. These effects included:
In general, pupils spoke more enthusiastically about their use of ICT in school than did teaching staff. Pupils confirmed that their motivation and engagement was enhanced by:
More than a few learners complained that teaching staff made too much use of presentation software in lessons, and learners not uncommonly experienced lengthy sequences of lessons based on teaching to presentations made up of bulleted slides. Teaching staff did not liaise sufficiently with each other to discuss the cumulative implications of their approaches to using ICT in lessons and were too often unaware of these difficulties for learners.
In colleges, teaching staff had not evaluated effectively enough the impact of their use of ICT on learner motivation and engagement. However, they found that, where their teaching and lesson materials incorporated graphics, sound or animations, learner attention was more keen and retention of information was enhanced.
Learners in colleges appreciated the occasions when teaching staff used ICT effectively to deliver lessons. Many learners valued their access to college VLE systems and worked effectively and independently in these environments. However, most colleges assumed that their learners were sufficiently motivated and engaged with their studies to make effective use of ICT-based learning materials at home or in college learning centres. This assumption was more justifiable in the case of HE learners than in the case of FE learners. Colleges had not evaluated effectively enough the impact of their ICT-based learning centres in facilitating learning.
<<Signpost to improvement in learner motivation and engagement |
|
No centre visited for this report had carried out a systematic study of the impact of the use of ICT on progress in learning and attainment of formal qualifications. No centre reported improved attainment in award-bearing courses or programmes that could be directly ascribed to the use of ICT in learning and teaching.
Many staff found that the use of ICT had broadened and deepened learning in subject areas. There was clear evidence of improved progress in learning when learners with additional support needs used ICT to meet those needs.
In pre-school centres, children’s learning through play with an ICT element had often developed much further than anticipated by staff. In one centre, use of ICT had contributed well to aspects of citizenship, including sharing of resources and working with peers.
In primary schools, progress in particular aspects of learning was linked to effective use of ICT. Examples included:
There was a positive impact of ICT use on the language work of learners with a range of additional support needs. In particular, learners with reading difficulties showed improvements in their reading.
In secondary schools, the range of benefits to learners included:
Schools also recognised improved achievement beyond the academic curriculum. This progress stemmed from initiatives such as:
In a few schools, staff perceived a direct correlation between high attainment in external examinations and school departments that were effective users of ICT for learning and teaching. There was, however, no objective evidence of cause and effect. These departments varied from school to school.
Many teaching staff claimed that extensive use of the Internet by learners had led to an increase in the prevalence of plagiarism in written homework, and a failure to acknowledge sources obtained from the Internet and quoted verbatim in learner submissions. While teaching staff rightly marked down work where plagiarism was apparent, there were cases where selection and incorporation of verbatim material was entirely appropriate. In this regard, teaching staff often failed to identify clearly enough the purpose of a piece of homework or to explain the purpose to learners and advise on presentation. Where pupils were required only to find and present information, teaching staff often took exception to them copying and pasting material from websites and inserting it into their homework. Teaching staff often as a matter of course required learners to express in their own words the information they retrieved from the Internet, even though that retrieved information was well expressed. Teaching staff did not ask learners often enough to talk about their homework, to summarise orally the information they had obtained or to explain its significance. For their part, learners did not understand fully the importance of identifying in their work sources of information obtained from the Internet.
In colleges and in CLD settings, there were benefits in very similar areas to those in secondary schools. Learners developed skills in independent learning through open access centres and through use of the Internet but teaching staff in post-school sectors did not evaluate effectively enough how well this approach to study benefited all learners.
<<Signpost to improvement in learner progress and outcomes |
|
Teaching staff in pre-school centres and in primary schools recognised that learners developed awareness of the world in which they live more effectively when this included engagement with the world through ICT. Learners used video cameras to record their world and comment on it. Their explicit choices of what to record were effective indications of emerging creativity. More than a few teaching staff recognised individual and group views of the world contained in learners’ videos and used them to explore issues in areas such as citizenship and the environment. Access to the Internet also developed learners’ appreciation of other cultures and encouraged them to reflect on their own world.
Many teaching staff and learners in secondary schools noted improvements in learners’ communication skills and a greater use of image and sound in communicating messages or information. However, many teaching staff did not value or recognise the role of ICT in enhancing a broader range of learning for life, society, culture and personal development than was typical in the formal taught curriculum.
Very few teaching staff in colleges recognised the contribution to wider learning for life that ICT could make in learners who developed ICT competence. They recognised that ICT improved motivation and engagement and that it provided a rich source of information on which learners could base discussion, analysis and conclusion. However, in general, they had not considered how learners might apply more widely those ICT skills that they promoted. On the other hand, staff and learners in CLD recognised that the development by learners of ICT competences opened up a broad and stimulating range of possibilities for the enhancement of life chances, mainly through use of the Internet.
<<Signpost to improvement the development of widerlearning and skills |
|
To what extent has the use of ICT enabled schools and other centres to make progress towards becoming excellent organisations? The answer is mixed but, for large areas of learning and teaching activity, there is not much evidence of transformed practice. Very little progress has been made in applying ICT towards the development of personalised learning. Learners’ sense of the contribution that ICT could make to enhancing and enriching their learning was not apparent in all learners. They were not using ICT effectively to develop independence in learning. That is not to say that ICT was not used extensively and intensively by learners and teachers. It was undoubtedly the case that the provision of appropriate infrastructure, hardware, software and materials resulted in most teachers and learners engaging with ICT to some extent. But several elements which have to be in place before transformation in learning and teaching through ICT can take place include:
No centre visited for this task, from pre-school centres to colleges, managed to put all of these elements in place consistently throughout the establishment. This was consistent with findings in wider HMIE inspection programmes. Many centres managed most of these but were usually let down by lack of appropriate access to ICT to allow permanent change in practice, leading to loss of motivation by teaching staff.
There was clear evidence that learner motivation and engagement was enhanced by effective application of ICT. There was anecdotal evidence that the use of ICT brought about progress in learning, particularly in topics that many learners found difficult to assimilate. Many teaching staff claimed that learning and teaching were transformed through the use of ICT in their classroom. However, in many cases, these claims did not bear close examination in terms of demonstrable educational gain. For example, the use of a data projector to present a linear sequence of pre-prepared pages of material in place of an overhead projector was not transformational. The use of a data projector, combined with imaginative choice of learning and teaching materials had potential to transform teaching activities and the learner experience. The further opportunities offered by appropriate use of an interactive whiteboard offered far more possibilities for new and effective learning and teaching activities beyond those available with an overhead projector.
In the schools sectors and, to a lesser extent in the college sector, much effort had gone into equipping classrooms with data projectors and interactive whiteboards. Many teachers believed that the use of such equipment had transformed their teaching. Certainly, imaginative exploitation by some teaching staff of the rich environment of an interactive whiteboard had made learning more enjoyable. Learners attested to that. In addition, more than a few teachers reported that they enjoyed their teaching more when they used such equipment.
There were examples of the use of ICT in many establishments that, if sustained and further developed, should lead to transformed learning and teaching practices. These included the use of:
The transformation of learning activities through use of ICT was evident in many centres but not consistently across all areas within them. This transformation included:
The conditions for effective use of ICT to transform learning and teaching, as identified above, were not in place in all centres. The future challenge for staff and learners in all establishments is to create those conditions and then to embed ICT in their learning and teaching in ways that will produce real educational gain.
<<Signpost to transformation |
|