Sustainable Technology use in Professional Learning Communities:
Three Perspectives of Enculturation

Tony Rickards
Science & Mathematics Education Centre
Curtin University
Australia
t.rickards@curtin.edu.au

Hanna Teras
Office of the DVC Education
Curtin University
Australia
hanna.teras@curtin.edu.au 

Abstract: This paper describes three general groupings for professional education staff that use technology for educational purposes. The three groupings can be identified based on personal interaction styles with their use of Educational Media technologies. These groups are significant as they have an impact on student engagement, achievement and enjoyment.  The three groups also impact on how effectively educational media are used in professional learning communities. The paper also suggests how we might develop sustainable and effective use of technology in professional learning communities. Moreover, the paper asks whether we as educators are making effective use of the educational multi-media that we already have. 

Introduction

The last three decades have seen a rapid integration of computer technology into educational learning environments and the beginnings of a classification of educators based on skill level (Becker, 2000).  This was  noted at all levels in Australia and around the world (Bliss, Chandra & Cox, 1986; Plomp & Pelgrum 1991) as long as 20 years ago. Infrastructure and equipment available in schools and universities has also improved rapidly, to the point where a recent European Commission report indicates that virtually all European teachers use ICT for preparing their lessons and broadband connections have become commonplace in European schools. (European Commission, 2013). Shouldn’t we all therefore by now have a good understanding of how to integrate educational media and ICT into our teaching and learning, and should not all teachers have similar advanced skills?
It is of course true that computers have become a part of everyday life in classrooms around the world and are pervasive into the majority of educational experiences. Technology has also played a part in developing the notion that the things possible in educational teaching and learning are now limited only by the imagination of the participants in any learning environment.  
The various forms that computers now take have evolved greatly during the last 30 years and many would argue that the pace of change and development in the availability and capability of technology has increased exponentially over the years.  It would seem that a key factor in the effective dispersion and uptake by the masses of new technologies has been the convergence of multiple technologies into single devices. For example, a web enabled telephone, camera, email, music, mapping and navigation device to name a few modalities, has been available for some years now (eg.  Apple iPhone). How many learning environments enlist this technology as an active participant in the classroom today? Further to this, with doubling rates for central processor unit speed measured in months, not years, the software and tasks that computer based technologies are capable of processing has also increased significantly. This has enabled full screen synchronous global voice, video and data capability from even portable mobile devices via wireless, 4G and direct connect high speed Internet access points.  This is all available to students in classrooms, and is a key driver for the increased uptake of cloud based high bit rate computing environments in educational settings.
There does however seem to be one major impediment to effective professional learning for some in these learning environment contexts. Computer hardware and software have developed exponentially, however one variable has remained constant.  This variable is in many cases the teacher. Past behaviour demonstrating non-uptake of technology (Ajzen,1991) is a factor that must be considered.   Computers are still only used effectively by a limited number of teachers and integration of computers in existing subjects is still limited, and  new teachers are in many cases insufficiently trained (Plomp and Pelgrum, 1991). While this is an old reference, it does indicate that the problem was identified a long time ago. The problem persists, with teacher attitude to technology still being a major factor for success in the application of educational technologies (Hechter, R. & Vermette, L.A., 2014). Interestingly, a European-wide extensive study found no correlation between the availability of technology and technology use. For example, in Finland where technology is readily available in classrooms, Finnish 8-graders stand out as those least likely to use technology in lessons. (European Commission, 2013). A large number of teachers are even today classifying themselves as typical teachers but technologically "behind the eight ball" and others see themselves as exemplary  (Becker, H.J., 2000). What this means for the policy makers and most importantly for students around the world is that educational initiatives designed to improve the integration of higher level applications of technology are impeded by a lack of understanding and technology skills of some educators. 
To discuss this further let us consider three enculturated groups of technology users in educational settings. Based on literature and anecdotal autoethnographic observations in higher education, there appear to be three general groupings for professional education staff who use technology. The three groupings can be identified based on personal interaction styles with and patterns of use of Educational technologies.

Group One

The first grouping is defined in this study as the early adopters or “lighthouse users”. These are typically people for whom the technology is something to explore and behold. These users may engage with new technology very early to try and identify the characteristics of the new technology and figure out how to best interact with it.  Early adopters seek to embed new technologies into their learning environments rapidly.  They are very active in seeking the latest and greatest in technologies.  Early adopters are typically keen to showcase these technologies for other users in the educational environment and share their experiences of how they could be incorporated into teaching and learning.  The authors ofd this paper may refer to these people as the “change surfers”, as they are constantly able to be excited by and ride the wave of new initiatives, but then just as those around them are getting a handle on understanding those initiatives, the next wave of excitement approaches them. This results in the early adopters always being excited about the next new initiative, and all other users getting to a point where they almost understand the new technology but then have to rapidly adapt to something new. A simple example of this during the last 20 years has been the introduction of progressively more automated and advanced operating systems for desktop computers. With each new release of an operating system comes very often a new way of interacting with that operating system. This means that every user has a little case of retroactive interference, which for the purposes of this paper will be defined as previous knowledge and expectations of where to find menu items being confounded by new locations for new menu items in newly acquired operating software. This causes some basic frustration, and reinforces for some users the idea that life is better if you don’t upgrade. Not for the early adopters though, who are often self-motivated to engage with technology and will participate in professional and personal development activities in their own time and as a leisure activity.
An example of a technology to describe how early adopters may work is the Apple iPhone. When this was first introduced, the early adopters were not phased by the fact that the iPhone did not have a keyboard evident, but instead explored the one button it seemed to have. The next step was to try and find out how they could best interact with this new technology, and make sense of what to could provide in terms of functionality, so they pressed “the button”. As the convergent nature of this technology became apparent, early adopters move to show colleagues what it's all about and how they may integrate it into daily practice.
It is important to note that along with new technologies, and new ways of interacting with devices, comes a new culture of educational media interaction. This is essentially almost secret information that is device or operating system software specific.  This knowledge almost always requires the user to have interacted with that technology to have an understanding of how it works. This may be a reason why users who begin with one type of technology stick with it for so long. The enculturation of their psyche with the menus and modes of operation within that technology becomes something that allows them to be comfortable with that technology. An example of that would be a menu system in a Nokia telephone, which when users become familiar with it means that when it comes time to upgrade their phone they may be more likely to choose a Nokia as they already understand the modes of interaction with that particular technology.

Group Two

A second group are the technology Luddites (Bodner, 1997), or technophobes. These users are at the other extreme of technology use and try and avoid technology wherever possible. They make an effort only to engage with those technologies that are absolutely necessary for them to complete their core business. Bodner (1997) argues that Luddites are not in fact people who are naïve or backward and opposed to “progress” or against new technology. He argues that they are instead against the imposition of societal changes that were being imposed on them by the implementers of this technology.  The outcome for the purposes of the paper are the same in that the Luddites and technophobes choose not to actively engage with new technologies in the same way as other users. Luddites and technophobes are very happy interacting with technology at its most basic level. Once they have learnt how it is that they can drive technology to achieve their core business for tasks that are required for their employment, they are very happy to continue along this path of interaction even though there may be other ways that are more efficient or effective in achieving the same task. 
These users may be attitudinally rigid once they have discovered a pattern of interaction with software and are relatively resistant to change following this. This establishment of an operating culture is mirrored in classroom learning environment research where patterns of behaviour are often established within the first 4 to 5 weeks of teaching and then are resistant to change following this. (Brekelmans, M., Brok, P. den, Tartwijk, J. van, & Wubbels, T., 2005).
The perception of Luddites is that any time invested over and above the time that they have already invested with technology must be met with significant improvements driven by perhaps a prescriptive management regime. In simple terms this means that users will not change their behaviour unless software has become out of date or because management prescribes new systems. 
Without being too harsh on this group of users, very often another driving force for them is that they are so overworked in academe that there is little spare time available to explore and practice with new ways of utilising technology. In a high-pressure workplace the focus is on publishing, researching and teaching and there is often little time for self-reflection and personal professional development.

Group Three

A third grouping of people are what could be referred to as “the mainstream users”. This group contains the majority of users of technology in educational settings who have perhaps mastered the basics of technology and the software that is required to perform their functions.  They may even venture into areas of some specialist use for particular applications relevant to the tasks that they undertake.
Educators in this group hold the view that their principal, school parents and students are keen for them to use technology (Sugar, Crawley, & Fine, 2005). These perceived subjective norms are perceived as enablers that motivate teachers to have a positive intention to incorporate various educational technologies into their teaching.
Mainstream users integrate technology into what they have to do in a fairly superficial way but in a way that enables them to continue their core business without the technology having a major impact. An example of this level of interaction with technology would be the use of word processors. These users are able to open files and enter text and then edit the text.  They can format the text and then save it for future reference and perform other rudimentary functions within a word processing environment. The level of interaction with their word processing software is fairly superficial, and yet very functional. It may be that this group of mainstream users utilizes perhaps 10 to 20% of the available features of the software, but they identify that this is enough for them, unless something really useful is discovered.
These users typically engage with technology in learn by doing methodology. This means that in the busy hurly-burly of an educational setting and with little time to sit down and read manuals, listen to online tutorials or attend all day workshops, users tend to teach themselves. Hence, their knowledge develops based on what it is that they know rather than what is available within the software package. Once they have discovered familiar functions of an upgraded version of a word processor, for example, they are happy to engage with those functions and don’t necessarily explore new functions within the software unless they are shown or discover these in the course of using the software.

On to Sustainability

With a significant amount of unused functionality within software that may be chronologically old, but functionally appropriate, perhaps a way to improve sustainability on a number of fronts is to investigate how we can more fully use what we already have. This would build on known skill sets and save money and resources.  A useful example again is the case of word-processing. If we were to have purchased a laptop 20 years ago, for example an Apple Macintosh Powerbook 500, and installed Microsoft Word on it how would it fare today for the average mainstream user?  
The user would have learnt how to open the software start a new blank file enter some text, edit that text and then format it and save it and perhaps print it. For many uses in educational settings the majority of users still do not require a lot in addition to the above. So apart from the need to have a faster processor for the increasing overhead of a developing operating system with more automated features, it could be argued that the basic specification need for computers hasn’t changed in 20 years, if word processing is your main activity.  
Even if we assume that the basic used functions on a word processor 20 years ago formed 10% to 20% of the functionality of a word processor, and even if that were still the case, what this means for the average user is that there is at least 80% of the functionality available inside the software that they already own that is not being utilised or is underutilised.  It also means that for many of these users they may have spent many thousands of dollars upgrading their computers needlessly. Of course in reality word processing is not the only activity that people engage in and with the advent of more interactivity with the Internet and other functions of course do require upgrades of both hardware and software. But for the purposes of the argument it’s an interesting point to consider.
A central message here that relates to sustainability is based on the question, are we making the best use of what we already have at our disposal, before we upgrade?  With many institutions leasing technology now for example, if you could get a service life out of computers four years instead of three, this could have a major positive impact on the world’s resources and for at least two groups of technology users, a chance to get a better understanding of what is sitting in front of them today.

New Methods of Interaction

With more educational media modalities, a greater need arises to keep up with what is possible and to become aware of how to best make use of what is available to enhance the learning environment and support student learning. Whereas the early adopters tend to be fascinated with the technology first and then find ways of incorporating them into their practice, the two remaining groups cannot be convinced to adopt new technologies merely for the sake of novelty. Instead, they require a pragmatic approach and grounded evidence on how technology may be used to tackle a problem or to facilitate an aspect of their work. Common examples of such issues and aspects of the work of an academic are discussed in this section. Doctoral student supervision, engaging students with learning content, updating and improving learning resources, as well as promoting active learning in large classes are questions that academics all across the globe face in their everyday work.    
The introduction of web-based technologies has had a profound impact on higher education masters level student and doctoral supervision.  It is now possible to synchronously edit a document with two simultaneously active insertion points one being operated by a student and the other by a supervisor. This is geographically non-specific, in that the student can be in New Zealand and a supervisor in Australia. A major advantage of this technology is to allow a supervisor to construct a research plan with a new student in significantly less time that it would take to perform the same task using an asynchronous technology such as email. The primary advantage of this type of learning environment is enhanced when the supervisor and the student simultaneously engage in a Skype conversation whilst using cloud-based technologies to prepare a document. For example, an academic can log into Skype and open a new session to connect with the student, then open a browser and open a Google Document that has been shared with that student. The academic can now see their student, can hear their student, can send files backwards and forwards with examples through Skype to the student.  Additionally, instant messaging the student to send hyperlinks and other short text resources and explaining what they’re doing in real time is possible.  When interacting with the proposal that is developing in the Google Doc in this way, learning becomes very dynamic and feedback is instant.
The discussion with a student is highly interactive and the result of a one hour conversation is partially prepared document. When comparing this mode of operation with an email based system, the advantages in time for the supervisor and the student are significant in terms of the output achieved and the level of understanding attained
An example of a new technology that has changed the way humans interact with technology is the touchscreen tablet device. There are a number of such devices available and some have been through many iterations or versions of device since their introduction several years ago. Tablet technologies provide a new way to interact with software and provide a new kind of convergent technology that integrates the tablet PC and laptop with touch access and the ability to free annotate over existing web and other resources.
The educational media choices in blended learning and flipped classrooms are extensive. One of the key ways to adapting the resources that academics and institutions around the world already have is to annotate and provide extra information.  Meta data if you like, through those annotations onto teaching materials for students. Not only does this allow new resources to be constructed on top of existing resources saving staff time, but it also adds a certain dynamism to lectures as these annotations can be done live and then stored and disseminated digitally.
Along with the development and introduction of tablet PC technologies with touchscreen has been a parallel development of other convergent technologies. Not only do these tablet PC technologies provide a new human computer interaction interface but they also provide new opportunities based on the convergent technologies that are also embedded in the devices. Think for example of the iPad with Face-Time, think of the iPhone with augmented reality (or indeed Google Glass) to allow an interactive experience in the world that students living. There are many other uses based on technologies embedded in the new hardware such as telephony via 3G and 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth networking access.  Also, video and still images, audio, touchscreen input, external wireless keyboards and external peripherals for GPS temperature and accelerometer input amongst other things.
The challenge for users of educational media is to become sufficiently educated in the available technologies and their relative contributions to the overall educational experience to know what is possible.  The effective selection of appropriate technologies assisted with sustainability of technology use also.  New ideas that can be built on existing learning management materials for example, are an efficient way to update, upgrade and improve learning materials.
In a blended learning environment you may combine audio and video, text , images, animations or slomations, annotated diagrams and web resources, but these should be carefully selected based on your knowledge of the experiences that they can provide in improving teaching and learning and also provided in such a way that they address the different learning styles preferred by your students. 
There are also opportunities for engaging students in large classes and during lectures by using technology to get real-time feedback from students about the nature of their perceptions of the learning environment through assessment quizzes and capturing elements of student experiences in that environment. For example, KeyPad clickers allow students to respond to real-time quizzes. At the University of Auckland in New Zealand there is a trial system now developed by some students that allows a BYOD, (bring your own device), availability of feedback systems. Students attending lectures with a smartphone can download an app that provides interactivity through their Wi-Fi network at the University.  This allows students to log into their coursework unit in the Moodle learning management system and respond to lecture tests, during the lecture. (Moodle was developed by a doctoral student at Curtin University, Martin Dougiamas). The feedback is provided to students in real time and as part of the learning environment in which they are sitting. 
From a psychological perspective the feedback is immediate.  From learning environments perspective, the students are empowered to participate as active participants having some responsibility but also some freedom to contribute to the learning environment. Much of the literature in this area of learning environments would attest to the fact that students perform better and feel better when they participate in an environment that provides them with some control and value for their input (Fisher & Rickards, 1998).
This position paper provides an anecdotal autoethnographic perspective of the status quo in some learning environments in Australia and around the world. It is a precursor for a study to identify how academics in higher education perceive themselves in terms of these three described groups.
Over the last 30 years a plethora of workshops and professional development sessions have been conducted, and yet we still have teachers who fall happily into the technophobe category. Rapidly developing hardware and software has marketed itself as making life easier for users of technology, and yet there are some quarters in education that have still not engaged as proficient users of technology and educational media. One needs to remember that improvements in quality of the educational experience for students has been a goal, in an environment where educational media are becoming increasingly automated and complex with multiple choices for the same task. For example when was the last time you counted how many browsers were available for your personal computer (Google, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer and so the list goes on).
The research literature would have us believe that there are factors that are associated with effective use of technology in higher education (Mumtaz, 2000; Forgasz, 2006) so why are educators not highly proficient after 30 years of learning? This lack of attainment of minimum standards for technology competence has implications for the students attending higher education.  Students also vary in their skills and expertise, and it would be interesting to see how the impact of teacher skill has influenced student conceptual understanding of technology use in education. Students have an expectation that their academics are in fact highly technologically literate, after all this is why it is they seeking a higher education.
As education technology has become commonplace and the rate of new technologies emerging accelerates, we see two questions that are central in developing sustainable technology use in professional learning communities. Firstly: How to encourage educators to stay up to date with technology to make what they teach  interesting, engaging, timely and sustainable? Secondly: How to promote pedagogically sound use of education technology, instead of letting the newest trends lead the way in a technology-driven manner? 
The wide-scale European Commission report investigating the use of technology across European schools indicates a positive correlation between teachers’ confidence in using ICT for learning and attendance in professional development activities (European Commission, 2013). However, it is important to bear in mind that technology-focussed professional learning activities are unlikely to attract the group of teachers that show no interest in technology per se. Earlier research has found that professional development programs designed for teachers often fail to achieve the desired goals because they tend not to meet the actual professional learning needs of their target group (Liu, 2012), fail to take into account what is known about how teachers learn (Borko, 2004), or lack understanding of the motivations of teachers to participate in professional development programs (Guskey, 2002). The European Commission report suggests that one of the main obstacles for using technology are not necessarily technology-related, but instead have to do with pedagogy and the lack of models of pedagogically sound use of technology to benefit student learning. (European Commission, 2013). As we see a need for professional development opportunities that strengthen collegiality and professional community building around the use of technology. We suggest educators to take the time to “deep learn” each aspect of the technologies that are required to establish quality blended learning environments that utilise educational media. This will take time, but once well learnt and learnt as part of a professional learning community, this means access to support, motivation and others to learn from.  Remember that “two brains are better than twice as good!”  The interaction between two learners often produces more than each single learner could have produced alone. So find a “lighthouse buddy!”
The need to develop effective well informed technologically literate and effective teachers in all fields of study and higher education has never been more important than it is today.

Conclusions

In concluding this paper, it is hoped that if the example of higher degree research student supervision or other practice-driven examples are used as a motivation to engage with new technologies, educators will strive to keep up with the technologies that are available to try to enculturate their teaching and learning with new and engaging experiences for their students. We also believe it would be helpful to identify the needs and motivations of the different groups of teachers introduced in this paper when designing and implementing professional development opportunities to support using technology in education. Instead of focussing in the newest technology trends and gadgets, a deeper understanding of the affordances of what is already available for the everyday use would probably be eye-opening for many. Without the knowledge of what is possible, the simple remains impossible!
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