Design of Content Development Course for Preliminary Teacher Training

SangJin An
Department of Computer Education
Korea National University of Korea
Republic of Korea
ahnsang@nate.com

JeongWon Choi
Department of Computer Education
Korea National University of Korea
Republic of Korea
cjw0829@daum.net

YoungJun Lee
Department of Computer Education
Korea National University of Korea
Republic of Korea
yjlee@knue.ac.kr

Abstract: This study aims to design a liberal art course related to digital content development for preliminary teacher education. To prepare SMART education environment, teachers should have more abilities utilizing multimedia contents. Collecting, modifying, and creating educational materials can be the most important part of preparing class activities. To foster these abilities, 15 weeks course based on real classroom situation is designed. Through this course, preliminary teachers can achieve media literacy and educational content development skills.

Introduction

In South Korea's education, the latest media have been introduced to every teaching-learning environment consistently and various teaching-learning methods using these media are being studied. Especially, we are interested in utilizing a variety of information and communication devices which are widely spreaded in the modern society. "SMART Education' is the name of a plan preparing the change of those teaching-learning methods and will be applied to primary, secondary and high school education.
	In order to apply this teaching methodology to school environment, media literacy and content authoring ability of teachers should be equipped. Though most people have the ability to utilize the latest digital equipment due to wide spreading of up-to-date media, teachers should be equipped with high level of digital literacy for using digital contents educationally and contents authoring ability for creating teaching-learning materials suitable for the aim of lectures. These abilities are not only needed for the people in the field of education, also necessary for the people preparing future society. But the number of lectures for cultivating those abilities is insufficient, especially in the preliminary teacher education. 
This study aims to design a college level lecture for improving media literacy and educational content development skill for the preliminary teachers. This lecture contains understanding up-to-date media, types of digital data, and creating educational materials for digital device. Through this education material production process, preliminary teacher will have the capacity to prepare for the actual class. 

Background

	A paradigm shift brought by changes in society and the advancement of technology has had a powerful influence in education, especially ways of educational content distributing. Learners need more accurate and detailed learning materials and it has changed the traditional education system. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Korea proposed ‘SMART education development strategy’ to respond the changes in the educational environment and to strengthen learner capabilities in the 21st century. The definition of SMART education is the customized learning system to cultivate learners’ abilities for the 21st century by applying the information and communication technologies and network resources, and changing education contents, methods, evaluation, and environment. This new educational flow is trying to change current educational approaches such as teaching-learning methods, educational environment, learning style and evaluation. The characteristic of SMART education is shown in the table below.

Initial	Details	
Self-directed	Learner-centered education, teacher plays the role of mentor;
Provision of the learning management system where the learner can plan, manage, and operate one's own learning	
Motivated	Emphasis on experience-oriented, problem solving-oriented educational methods to make the learner learn with interest	
Adaptive	Realization of custom-made learning suited to different levels and aptitudes of learners	
Resource-
free	Letting learners use various contents freely through the open market, the distribution system of contents;
Enlargement of sharing of learning domestic and foreign resources, and of cooperative learning through social networking	
Technology
embedded	Provision of the environment where the learner can learn at anyplace anytime through information technology like smart phone, tablet PC, cloud computing, and 4G network	
Table 1: Characteristics of Smart Education (Park et al., 2013)

	When the SMART learning environment with these characteristics will be established, teachers focus on learners and educational resources. Because learning process of learners will be an important part of education, the main role of teacher will be identifying the level of students and providing appropriate learning materials. Most of the teachers have the ability to identify learner’s level, but they are not accustomed to use of digital materials and produce them. In the SMART education environment, teacher’s level of digital literacy and content management can take up the important role. Therefore, to improve teachers' media literacy is an important part of the education.

Course Design

Goal of the Course
	Because more complex and diverse types of teaching-learning materials are needed in the class, teachers’ abilities related to use of media determine the level of the lecture. So it needs to be developed in the process of preliminary teacher training. All the teachers should have those capacities regardless of the teaching subject and learner’s level, so multimedia-related courses should be conducted in the teacher training institute. The goal of this lecture is to understand the computer system and ICT devices, to take advantage of that equipment, to foster the abilities to modify and create multimedia contents using in the real class. 

Learner Characteristics
	Korea National University of Education (KNUE) is specialized in preliminary teacher education and teacher re-training, so all the students in KNUE are preliminary teacher. And majors of students are kindergarten, primary, and secondary education. This course is included in liberal arts courses, freshmen and sophomores are taking this course. All the students have more than one smart device (such as smartphone, smartpad, or laptop) and they are familiar with the use of smart devices. However, most of the students don’t have the chance to take continuous computer or ICT education, so this tells us they have little experience in making digital data. 

Authoring Tool
	‘DocZoom Creator’ is used as educational material authoring tool. It converts various types of documentation into new format that can be used in any digital devices. In addition, multimedia data such as images, sounds, and movies can be easily inserted in the document, and produced material can be easily deployed to other people. Because members of KNUE can use DocZoom Creator for free and it has the basic form of educational contents authoring tool, it is adopted for this course.

Figure 1: DocZoom Creator

Lecture Design
	This course will be conducted three hours a week, 15 weeks. It also has two regular assessments and some occasional task assessments. Basic format of class is problem based learning and project based learning. Learners are thinking of real classroom situation and what do they need to prepare for that situation. The process collecting, correcting, and producing resources related to the major-subject will render learners understand how to categorize and apply multifarious information. Detailed procedure of course is followed;

Week	Content	
1	Understanding and Application of Computer and ICT Device	
2	Representation Method of Data	
3 - 4	Creating Document with Word Processor	
5	Understanding of Image and Image Creation	
6	Understanding of Sound and Sound Creation	
7	Midterm Exam	
8 - 9	Understanding of Video and Video Creation	
10 - 11	Learning Material Creation with Doczoom Program	
12 - 14	Creation of Learning Material for Maioring Subject and Presentation	
15	Final Exam	
Table 2: Procedure of Course

Smart education integrates a diversity of multimedia resources so that the understanding how to deal with such resources is prerequisite. Thus, the very basic materials including text, image, sound, and video sources are considered. How to construct the multimedia resources are also introduced. Based on such fundamental resource understanding, two kinds of advanced practice are performed; smart paper creation with DocZoom Creator and teaching-learning material creation for majoring subject. These will benefit preliminary teachers to experience how to develop teaching materials in the future. 
Understanding multimedia resource is imperative in this era of smart education and affects on the teacher’s practical design of teaching-learning process. Teachers are required being able to skillfully deal with multimedia resources. If necessary, they should equip the capacity to correct, modify, and produce effective learning contents. Teaching curriculum this study suggests is expected to help preliminary teachers improve their teaching effectiveness and to apply on the current teacher training.

Discussions

Application of multimedia for knowledge acquisition becomes vital to learners as the media get complicated and smart-device-based. Such phenomena might cause school and teacher to diminish their functions in the future. At this point of paradigm shift on teaching and learning, teachers are required to innovate their role from mere information descender to active information editor and producer. The capacity of contents development for smart education is the most essential in this era. In this regard, the capacity of contents development for smart education is the most essential in this era.
Moreover, current teachers are also required to re-train their ability to develop teaching materials in accord with the socio-technological change. Concept of teaching method tends to remain existed classic style while society changes rapidly. Developed program in this study would be employed for teacher retraining and is expected to contribute to the improvement of teaching quality.

References

Educational Content Development Support System of KNUE (2013). http://author.knue.ac.kr

Kim, Y. (2011). Current status of SMART education and its development direction. Korean Educational Development Institute, Seoul, Korea.

Markham, T. (2011). Project Based Learning. Teacher Librarian, 39(2), 38-42.

Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2011). Smart Education Development Strategy: Action Plan. Seoul, Korea.

Park, Y., An, S., Lee, Y. (2013). Direction of Contents Development for SMART Education, Proceeding of IADIS International Conference e-learning 2013. Prague, Czech Republic.

Sawyer, R. K. (2006). The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press.