Liberal Arts Education and Technology

Insung Jung (Professor of Education), Siaw Eng Tan and Jenni Fajardo (Doctoral students)

*This article was written in 2017. The academic titles stated above are those held at the time of writing.

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In the context of today’s education, technology is often defined as “any tool that can be used to help promote student learning, including Smartboards, digital cameras, cell phones, tablets, the Internet, social media, and, of course, the computer (See Study.com).” But in a broader sense, technology includes not only digital media but also non-digital media such as blackboards, film projectors, overhead projectors, audio and video players, and radio and TV broadcasts.

Curious about the history of technology in education? Click this website and/or the video lecture.

As we all know, technology has become a significant part of our teaching and learning throughout the years. Accumulated research evidences show that “it is not whether technology is used (or not) which makes the difference, but how well the technology is used to support teaching and learning (Higgins, Xiao, & Katsipataki, 2012, p.3).”

Technology Adoption in Liberal Arts Colleges: An Overview^[1]

Over the years, technologies, especially digital technologies such as computers, the Internet and mobile devices have come to be used in almost every aspect of our daily life and adopted in higher education around the globe. The universities have developed various means in applying these technologies to their courses and programs, including uses of online learning, mobile learning, wiki-based collaborative writing and editing, discussion forums and social media.

Increased demand

Although small liberal arts institutions are somewhat slower than larger research universities in seizing upon the opportunities offered by these technologies, a number of liberal arts institutions have started embracing the new technologies with the increased demand for utilizing already available digital technologies for promoting meaningful learning, deeper and wider interactions with students and the outside world, sharing teaching and learning materials online, and expanding courses, programs and expertise beyond campuses.

Popular technologies used

Most prevalent in liberal arts colleges is the use of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) such as Moodle and Blackboard. LMSs allow educators to upload and share online textual, audio, video and multimedia materials, conduct online quizzes and exams, collect, manage and assess online assignments, promote online discussion, and generally manage and review the students’ learning environments. At ICU, Moodle is used for these purposes. Some faculty members use Moodle to advise their senior students writing theses, interact with their advisees and comment on their ideas and presentations, and encourage the students to comment on each other’s work and provide peer support.

Real-time videoconferencing systems such as Skype are also increasingly being used in the liberal arts colleges for conducting meetings and interviews, inviting external lecturers teaching across borders and time zones, and providing individualized tutoring and social support. One such example can be found at Pomona College in the USA which uses Skype to bring overseas teachers and other experts from across the globe into the classroom and enable interactions between the students and these overseas guests. ICU also uses videoconferencing systems such as V-CUBE and Skype to conduct meetings, and invite lectures and contributions from external experts.

Online courses can be used to reach larger numbers of students, potential students, alumni, and even global audiences. A typical online course includes video lectures, reading materials, assignments, quizzes, collaborative projects, discussions, and other activities. Bryn Mawr College has developed blended learning courses combining online and face-to-face classroom instruction in collaboration with 40 other US liberal arts colleges.

Open educational resources (OER) that are often online, freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media can be used for the purposes of teaching, learning, assessment and research in higher education. ICU’ OpenCourseWare is one type of OER which aims to share ICU’s courses online. Many YouTube videos, TED talks, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Khan Academy’s materials^, and other OER can be freely used, revised, and/or repurposed for our teaching and learning.

Social media or social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Line, Twitter and Instagram can be used for collaboration and sharing between users, and enrich and extend teaching and learning. As many students are already using these tools in their personal and social lives, these social technologies can be more easily integrated in higher education. A growing number of liberal arts colleges including Pomona College, Amsterdam University College, Lingnam University in Hong Kong China and ICU are using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and/or other social media to disseminate college information and connect with prospective, current and past students and faculty members. But unfortunately, it is not clear to what extent these colleges are using social media for the purposes of teaching and learning.

Technology Use for Liberal Arts Education: Tips^[2]

Jonasson, Howland, Marra, and Crismond (2008) emphasize the roles that technologies can play in supporting meaningful learning. Meaningful learning will result when we use technologies to engage learners in the following:

● Knowledge instruction not reproduction

● Conversation not reception

● Articulation not repetition

● Collaboration not competition

● Reflection not prescription

Considering strengths and weaknesses of popular technologies shown in the following table, we will now think about more specific ways to introduce technology in the classroom to promote key pedagogical values of liberal arts education.

Table: Strengths and Weaknesses of Different Technologies

Note: Adapted from Jonasson, Howland, Marra, and Crismond (2008, p.88)

Key values of liberal arts education revisited

The aims of liberal arts education are to empower individuals with critical and creative thinking skills, provide them with a broad knowledge and transferable skills and develop a strong sense of moral and civic responsibilities which enables them to be free human beings. As technology in itself does not promote or threaten liberal learning (Roth, 2014), we will need to think about these liberal arts values, clarify the purposes of using technology, and apply pedagogically sound instructional design principles.

Promoting critical thinking

The beginning of the 21^st century paved the way to buzzwords such as higher order thinking skills, which include critical thinking and global skills. Critical thinking is a higher-order cognitive skill that is indispensable to students, readying them to respond to a variety of complex problems that are sure to arise in their personal and professional lives (Mansbach, 2015).

As we can imagine, critical thinking is difficult to teach effectively and within a short period of time. Hence, it is highly imperative for teachers to actively and consciously use various available tools to promote critical thinking skills.

Five strategies to use online technology to promote critical thinking were suggested:

• • Reflection activities

  • Peer review activities

  • Discussion forums

  • Small group activities

  • Digital storytelling activities

More details can be found here.

Promoting creativity and innovation

Technology can be a useful platform for exploration and creation in the learning process. Students can be empowered to do more complex and creative work using digital tools or applications. Purposeful integration of computer technology in a longitudinal study shows positive effects on personal creativity characteristics of students (Jamieson-Proctor & Burnett, 2002). Teachers are able to design lessons that allow students to enhance creative expression of ideas and develop novel designs using various technologies.

Some of the effective teaching strategies below are known to enhance students’ expression of creativity and innovative skills:

• • media assignments using iMovie, PodCast or Google Maps for Education: Creating a media assignment involves authentic learning experience in content creation and flow organization to ensure the end product that communicates the purpose. The Center of Teaching and Learning of Yale-NUS College specifically mentioned the media assignment as a way that allows faculty to develop higher order thinking in learning. Another example, Google Maps for Education encourages teacher and students to explore, create and collaborate with mapping tools. This learning process could boost students’ imagination and creativity besides engage them to perform higher order cognitive skills.

  • visualization using Mind Maps or PowerPoint: For example, in a history class, an interactive map creation of demographic data and historical events using a visualization tool promotes creative ways to present information for a better understanding of those historical events.

  • blogging using Edublogs or The Edublogger: Blogging is another example of promoting creativity and digital literacy in learning. In literature, language or history classes, teachers can adopt blogging as a way to promote self-directed learning, develop students’ creativity, innovative and communication skills. Blogging also result in increased engagement in writing, confidence in writing, greater awareness of audience, greater sense of their ‘voice’ as a writer, greater awareness of their own writing and that of others, and an enhanced sense of belonging to a writing community (CfBT Education Trust; London Connected Learning Centre, 2014).

Encouraging collaboration and engagement

M-learning (Mobile learning), social media, chat rooms and online forums, all of which are readily accessible in most colleges can be used to expand students’ understanding and help them construct new knowledge and attitudes through collaboration, engagement and reflection.

At ICU, teachers can use the following technologies to promote students’ collaboration and engagement in their learning process.

• • Moodle has functions to support asynchronous small and large group discussions, and teacher-student or student-student interactions. In addition, it enables teachers to post announcements, share notes or PPT slides and receive submission of students’ assignments. For tips for effective Moodle use: click here.

  • Google Classroom enables teachers to create ‘virtual classes’, distribute assignments, post announcement or send feedback on the platform. To read specific examples from ICU ELA, click example 1 and example 2.

  • Google Drive is a platform where teachers and students can create, work and share on a project collaboratively at anytime and from anywhere.

  • Skype, as the pioneer of online communication platform in the industry, enables global interaction between teachers or instructors from other geographical location.

However, it is important to note that technology does not aim to replace face-to-face interaction. At ICU we look at technology as a tool to support our teaching and learning, enrich students’ learning experiences and promote important values of liberal arts education.

Broadening students’ perspectives

Liberal arts colleges should expose their students to diverse ideas and experiences in order to improve their ability to consider the pros and cons of controversial issues from various perspectives. Technology can add multicultural and international dimensions to the learning experiences and thus broaden the students’ perspectives when it is not easy to physically bring people with different perspectives into the classroom.

For example, one or more online lessons focusing on such sensitive issues as territorial disputes, comfort women, and peace and conflict developed collaboratively by several liberal arts colleges from different countries together could help students appreciate the diversity of viewpoints and reasons for different interpretations of such issues. Then students could be engaged in a follow-up online and/or face-to-face discussion forum for further reflection and clarification.

Another easy example would be to introduce global issues and various perspectives of those issues via free video clips. For example, TED Talks videos or online video clips offered by newspapers and TV stations can be used to engage students in critical analysis on a wide range of global issues.

Encouraging discussion outside class

Technology being ubiquitous and easily available allows people especially students to use and access it, whenever and wherever. Hence it allows and encourages communication between teachers and students and of course, students among themselves whenever and wherever needed.

The following may be used to promote discussion and collaboration outside the classroom if needed (not always though!):

• • Facebook by having a discussion thread and/or participating in customized polls;

  • Twitter by having a unique hash tag and discussing it actively among users via that hashtag

  • Messaging apps like Facebook messenger, Google Hangouts, LINE, Viber, Whatsapp, to have real time discussion among group members

  • Videoconferencing platforms like Skype and Google Hangouts

Although there have been mixed views on the use of Twitter in the classroom setting, an early adoption of its use was seen to be effective as shown here. In a film class for example, it is possible to explore analysis, opinions, and symbolisms observed in class-required films using 140 characters as seen here. The same article did confirm that while Twitter is effective, some students also did not particularly enjoy using it. Hence, her suggestions on Twitter use are the following:

• • Use it only as part of the participation grade.

  • Try to limit its use as weekly and not daily nor every class.

  • Don’t give a quota of number of tweets.

Enriching content

Technology has made it possible to unlock educational boundaries via freely available educational resources on the Internet. These resources can be used to add more detailed content and concrete cases and examples to the class. Some free resources that are useful for university instructors include:

• • NHK creative library provides 4000 video materials and news used in NHK programs and onsite video creation or editing tools to create own videos for sharing to public.

  • OER commons is a repository or collection of resources for teaching, learning and research; which operates under Creative Commons or similar license which supports open or nearly open use of content.

  • MERLOT is a program developed by the California State University to the international education community to engage in sharing knowledge of online teaching, learning materials and faculty development services.

  • iTunes U is an application that can be integrated with iPad, Mac or Apple TV to create a virtual classroom management platform that supports sharing of learning materials, posting announcements, uploading assignments, grading assignments and monitor class performance. Students can play video or audio lectures, read books and view presentations in a single place.

  • Khan Academy offers free online instructional videos, practice exercises and a personalized learning dashboard for teaching and learning purposes.

  • Academic Earth offers online college courses from world’s top universities such as California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institutes of Technology, Harvard University, Princeton, UC Berkeley and Yale.

  • Knewton is a platform that offers adaptive learning experiences which personalizes content and differentiates instructions to individual learners; and teachers can use learning analytics tools to monitor the progress of an individual learner or the whole class.

  • Video for Learning by BBC offers thousands of BBC programs (in whichever video format) that cover a wide range of subjects from history and business to engineering and is useful for educational purposes.

Using PowerPoint effectively in lectures

PowerPoint, the most popular presentation software, has become an integral part of our lectures, particularly in large classes. It can be a very effective tool to promote meaningful learning if developed and used carefully. Let’s look at some benefits and challenges of using PPT in lectures, and three approaches of creating PPT. Please click this “Effective Use of PowerPoint” site.

In a study conducted in a small college in the USA (see this site for details), the authors found that:

Students do not like their professors’ PPT slides when they use:

• • Too many words on a slide

  • Clip art images

  • Animations or movements

  • Too many colored templates

Students like their professors’ PPT slides when they use:

• • Graphs that help them understand content better

  • Bullet points that help them organize ideas

  • Slides to structure the lecture

  • Verbal explanations of pictures/graphs instead of all written texts

Thus, in conclusion, the authors offer the following tips.

• • Present the materials in short phrases rather than full paragraphs.

  • Verbally explain the content on the slide rather than letting students read it on their own.

  • Use graphics/ tables relevant to the content or no pictures at all.

  • Provide PPT slides before the class (Moodle can be used to upload these materials)

Useful sites for effective PowerPoint design

• • What is good Presentation design?

  • Creating an Effective PowerPoint Presentation

  • Bringing PowerPoint Presentations to Life

References

Higgins, S., Xiao, Z., & Katsipataki, M. (2012). The impact of digital technology on learning: A summary for the Education Endowment Foundation. Retrieved from https://v1.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/The_Impact_of_Digital_Technologies_on_Learning_FULL_REPORT_(2012).pdf

Jamieson-Proctor, R., & Burnett, P. C. (2002). Elementary students, creativity, and technology: Investigation of an intervention designed to enhance personal creativity. Computers in the Schools, 19(1/2), 33–48.

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R., & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful learning with technology (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Mansbach, J. (2015, September 14). Using technology to develop students’ critical thinking skills. Retrieved from https://dl.sps.northwestern.edu/blog/2015/09/using-technology-to-develop-students-critical-thinking-skills/

Roth, M. S. (2014). Beyond the university: Why liberal education matters. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

[1] Parts of this section were developed based on Jung, I.S., & Bajracharya, J. (2016). Applications of digital technologies in liberal arts institutions in East Asia. In Jung, I.S., Nishimura, M., & Sasao, T. (Eds.), Liberal arts education and colleges in East Asia (pp. 151-164). Springer. http://www.springer.com/jp/book/9789811005114

[2] Parts of this section were developed based on Jung, I.S., & Bajracharya, J. (2016). Applications of digital technologies in liberal arts institutions in East Asia. In Jung, I.S., Nishimura, M., & Sasao, T. (Eds.), Liberal arts education and colleges in East Asia (pp. 151-164). Springer. http://www.springer.com/jp/book/9789811005114