Perceived effectiveness of IT integration into instruction

4.2 Results of Qualitative Data

4.2.2 Perceived effectiveness of IT integration into instruction

This section presents results of the interviews concerning participants’ perceived effectiveness of IT integration into English instruction. They are again categorized into three parts, inclusive of effectiveness on teachers’ teaching, effectiveness on students’

learning, and effectiveness on the curriculum design.

Effectiveness on teachers’ teaching

When it came to their perceived effectiveness of IT integration into English

instruction, thirteen of the interviewed teachers gave positive responses to the questions.

Among those who believed IT integration into English instruction didn’t increase teachers’ workload, some preferred to use e-book for its diversified information, interesting pictures, animations and even films with lively music and dance as well as friendliness for users. Others would rather make their own PPT files since they could both tailor make the materials into exactly what they wanted to present in class and save class hours without having to constantly switch between projector mode and

blackboard mode. For those who agreed that IT integration into English instruction could improve interaction between teachers and students and promote teaching efficiency, most of them mentioned their preference in using IWB when they wanted the students to make drill practices or review lessons by playing games. This was because of IWB’s interactive function such as touch screen, which could tremendously increased opportunities for teacher to interact with students. Moreover, teachers could make flexible use of the attached smart board or electronic marker to put emphasis on or to highlight certain information on the screen during the lecture without distracting students’ attention while switching to the blackboard mode. As for the teachers who stressed the importance of teaching diversity, they thought not only the rich content included in the e-book but also the great variety of English education resources

available on the internet could both contribute to the variation in their instruction. Even for teachers who only made occasional use of IT in class like T13 had to rely on the computer to do the job of picture drawing or map making for her when she wanted to make preparation for students to practice asking and giving directions.

In general, the effectiveness of IT integration into English instruction on teachers’

teaching was highly recognized by the participants in survey questionnaire and interview.

Effectiveness on students’ learning

During the interview, each of all the fifteen teachers were recorded to have identified the positive influences of integrating IT resources into English instruction more than twice, showing the interviewed teachers’ strong tendency to use IT in class with the belief that it benefited students in a variety of aspects. Unlike the results shown in the statistics in Table 4.11, in which IT integration as way to increase students’

learning interest and motivation got the highest score (4.35), the beneficial impacts mentioned most frequently by the interviewees was how it could meet students’

different learning needs. IT resources such as e-book, IWB, internet resources, and even tablet computers were referred to as helping English instruction meet students’ needs in the following manners. First, e-book had been well developed into nearly an

indispensible teaching resource for teachers since it catered to students need to learn with both visual and audio stimulations at the same time. Moreover, the multiple

convenient functions attached to e-book programs also explained how it helped teachers meet the students’ need. For example, its zooming function allowed students to be able to see images or words on the screen very clearly, including those sitting at the back, especially when the teacher wanted them to focus on a certain piece of information.

Apart from that, its option either to make the subtitle invisible or to make it appear on the screen simultaneously with the utterances of sounds turned out to be an ideal way to train students’ listening. Next, with various interactive games or lot-drawing programs attached to IWB, students of a kinesthetic learning style were given more chances to participate in interactive activities in English classes, which used to be conducted in a teacher-oriented environment. Finally, for students who expected to listen to native speakers in order to improve their pronunciation and accent, to understand more about foreign culture, or to do extra practices to review taught lessons, the great variety of English education resources available on the internet could certainly satisfy their learning needs. Last but not least, for those who needed remedial teaching, the tablet computer, with customized learning programs or materials installed in it, could meet their special need for individualized education.

As for other benefits IT integration into instruction brought about, increasing students’ learning interest and motivation, promoting students’ attentiveness, increase learning effectiveness and promoting interaction among students were all included in the list. To begin with, compared to a traditional teacher-centered and a lecture-oriented classroom, teacher’s use of e-book resources, which were rich in images with bright

colors and interesting pictures and often accompanied by lively conversation, special sound effect, and pleasant music, could often increase students’ learning interest and motivation. Secondly, rather than watching students burying themselves in their respect textbooks on the desk, some teachers said that they preferred to require students to focus on the information projected on the large screen so as to make sure that students were not being distracted or doing things irrelevant to the proceeding activities. Thirdly, in an attempt to reinforce student s’ learning effectiveness and cultivate students’

learning autonomy, there were also several teachers who highlighted their preference to adopt or adapt online resources as part of students’ learning materials or assignments.

According to the interviewees, most of them used IT resources mainly to increase students learning interest and strengthen their learning effectiveness. When some of them tried to get students to do drill practices with PPT slides they made, students responded much more enthusiastically when the pictures were closely related to their real life experiences such as pictures of places near their school or faces of celebrities they were familiar with, such as famous singers or movie stars. With the interactive function attached to IWB, some teachers designed sentence pattern exercises, fitting them into interactive games and thus assessed students’ learning effectiveness while they were pleasantly involving in playing interactive games by means of the touch screen function or through the joystick with cheering excitement. What’s more, since the display of IT resources being projected such as e-book or self-made PPT slides could be remote controlled with a laser pen or wireless mouse, the teacher, not having to stick to chalks and blackboard, were allowed to be multitasking in class. Namely, they could lecture about the information being displayed on the screen, do extra body language to add emphasis, and still manage to walk around in the classroom to monitor each student’s learning all at the same time.

Effectiveness on curriculum design

When asked to elaborate on their perceived effectiveness of IT integration into instruction during the interview, almost all teachers expressed their common belief that it would not only help promoting teaching diversity but also fit well into the curriculum.

What’s more, T10, who admitted to have been used to using IT nearly in each class, also referred to game playing with IWB as “an alternative or diverse way of learning assessment,” which could also be interpreted as part of teaching diversity. Coincidently, all of them made it clear that their decisions of IT use were mostly based on its fitness into the curriculum. First, using e-book to introduce the vocabulary, theme story or conversation, and sentence patterns had been thought of as an ideal way to present the materials because, as mentioned before, it covered virtually everything in the textbook, not to mention the abundant colored pictures, animations, songs, rhymes, and dances and even hyperlink icons to connect to useful websites or other recommended online resources. Some teachers even spoke of the dance film in the e-book as “the savior of teachers who were not good at dancing.” Second, PPT slides for selected units were also considered effective teaching medium that could be tailor-made to fit well into the curriculum. According to T01, she had been so used to making her own PPT files in her teaching career, for she could always made a few minor adjustments to update her electronic files whenever she had come up with new ideas or, only occasionally, when she thought the content offered in e-book was not enough for her students. Interestingly, two teachers, T09 and T14, made comments on the benefits of using opaque projector when they really wanted to display real objects, show pages in a picture book or share work done by students, which were considered great activities fitting into the

curriculum.

On the other hand, many of them made positive remarks on the effectiveness of IT integration into instruction on promoting diversity of teaching. Among the benefits they mentioned, online resources was the one nominated most frequently as an effective

media to diversify teacher’s teaching. Some of them used resources available on the internet in order to expand students’ vocabulary. Others expected students to improve English speaking and listening skills by watching films, listening and singing the songs, or imitating the intonation or accent of the native speakers. And still others counted on films of song, music or performance found on YouTube to offer extra information about the curriculum or to learn more about English culture, such as food, clothing and

festivals. Other media such as PPT files, e-book, and IWB were also described as useful resources to add variety and diversity to teachers’ teaching. Some of them praised e-book for its abundant and diversified teaching materials, others liked to make PPT files for certain units so as to include whatever they thought appropriate and effective in teaching, and still others used IWB as an entertaining and interactive alternative other than teacher-centered lecturing.

From the interview records, none of the interviewed teachers excluded the use of IT resources from their instruction. In other words, each of them made use of at least one IT resource at different stages in their schedule in a variety of methods for their own purpose. In some of their classes, computer, projector, and screen or IWB even took the place of the blackboard and became the major displayer of the materials they wanted to resent. What’s more interesting, the blackboard, traditionally treated as the only focus of students’ attention had now become an alternative when the teachers wanted their students to pay special attention to the information or to copy it in their textbook.

4.2.3 Major factors

In this section, elaborated reports on contributing factors pointed out by participants in the interview will be presented, which could be classified into encouraging and discouraging factors under the four categories, including environmental, personal, social, and curricular aspects.

4.2.3.1 Environmental factors Encouraging factors

Teachers surveyed with accessibility to other IT technology than a special English classroom, including IWB, computer or technology classroom, digital information lectern, audio-visual classroom, multimedia learning software, projector and on-line computer, and on-line resources did not show significant differences in the frequency of their expressed use of IT in English instruction. In other words, whether teachers had accessibility to a special English classroom played a crucial role in how often they choose to use IT in their English classes. The findings of the interview, which is consistent with the quantitative results, also made it clear that teachers enjoying easy and ready access to an English classroom were more willing to use IT more often in their English classes than those who without an English classroom available to them.

According to T13, she was not able to use IT in each English class because she would have to adapt to different environment in students’ respective homeroom classroom and cope with a variety of technical problems and might thus fail to catch up with her teaching schedule. What’s more, T01 pointed out that one major problem for English classes conducted in an individual homeroom classroom was that the elementary homeroom teachers in Taiwan were often required to stay with the class unless they need to teach other classes. Even when students were having classes under other teachers’ instruction, the access to the computer in the homeroom classroom still

belonged to the homeroom teacher while he or she was there and, in turn, made English teachers denied of accessibility to computer in their English classes. Finally, T08 expressed her expectation by saying that she “would really prefer to carry on her English class in a special English classroom if possible so that she could have better control of the facilities and thus prevent technical problems from happening

unexpectedly or too frequently.” Of all the fifteen interviewed teachers, ten of them had

access to their own English classroom, with seven of them using IT technology in each of their English classes. When asked about the reasons that discouraged the other three teachers, despite their access to an English classroom, who tended to use IT technology less often, at least once a week, T04 placed more emphasis on teacher’s modeling in reading and reciting as well as students’ collaborative learning and preferred to use IT resources only as a media for students to share their performance or presentation with other students. For T05, she had difficulty using IT in each class since she had to borrow a portable projector, which may not be available all the time, so as to be able to use the computer in her English classroom. And for T12, she used IT resources at least once a week, instead of in each class, because she was convinced that her students, the majority of whom were low achievers in remote areas, needed more time for practicing and doing individual exercises, rather than listening to teacher’s lecture with the fancy IT technology.

In Mumtaz’s literature review article, he nominated the following environmental factors such as access to resources, quality of software and hardware, and ease of use as effective factors in encouraging teachers to use IT in class. However, he didn’t further specify the IT technology and neither did he explain the reasons behind teachers’

decision. Based on the findings of the present study, providing teachers with access to English classrooms was a significantly effective factor which encouraged teachers to integrate IT into English instruction. Speaking of the design of a special classroom for English courses, T01 stressed the importance of computer and projector over that of IWB. That was because she considered the former the basic necessities for IT

integration into instruction while IWB only slightly differed in its touch screen function and interactive nature, which could also be achieved with proper design of the PPT files and minor adjustment to the operation. She had started to make her own PPT files twelve years ago when IWB did not even exist. As for connectivity to the internet, some

interviewees preferred downloading needed information before class to getting on-line in class. That way, they could avoid improper pop ups or waste of time searching for appropriate materials on the internet while others choose to integrate on-line resources into self-made PPT files in advance so that there was no need to switch between different modes constantly. Another frequently used IT resource is e-book, a popular multimedia learning software provided by textbook publishers, which was believed to have included such a great variety of materials for use that could tremendously relieve much of the teachers’ heavy burden of making preparation before class. Finally, both T08 and T14 mentioned the advantages of having an opaque projector in the classroom for the teacher can show the picture book or students’ homework instantly, which not only saved time but was also user-friendly.

Discouraging factors

The general findings generated from the interview also excluded the environmental factor, access to IT facilities, from the contributing factors that discouraged teachers from using IT in English instruction. None of the interviewed teachers were faced with such problems as not being provided with a computer and projector. The only environmental factor that might prevent them from making more frequent use of IT is the fact that they were not provided with an English classroom exclusively for English courses. However, teaching in classrooms where the lights needed to be completely turned off or the curtain needed to be drawn, T12 would choose not to use the projector when she thought the focus of the instruction should be on her students. Similarly, T10 would sometimes refrain from using the projector if she had to stand right next to the screen for certain reason because it made her feel

uncomfortable when the light of projector shed on her face.

4.2.3.2 Personal factors Encouraging factors

As mentioned and discussed in earlier section, results in both quantitative and qualitative research shows that all the demographic factors did not have significant difference in the frequency of teachers’ IT integration into instruction. Since objective factors about teachers’ personal background were excluded from the contributing factors, it is sensible to infer that teachers’ subjective opinions, or personal beliefs, about IT integration into instruction might turn out to be the driven force behind their decision on IT use. The conclusions made in both 4.1.3 and 4.2.2 suggest that, whether in the questionnaire survey or in the interview, the majority of respondents and

interviewed teachers expressed positive attitude toward the effectiveness of IT

integration into English instruction on teachers’ teaching as well as students’ learning.

This might be attributed to the government’s effort in launching the campaign to implement IT integration into subject instruction starting from 2003. It had not only gradually planted into elementary teachers the seeds of IT integration into instruction but also successfully led them to a more mature mindset for integrating IT into their instruction.

Discouraging factors

When asked about the reasons that prevented them from using IT resources in class, many of the interviewed teachers identified some of their concerns when they decided not to use IT in class. However, the influencing factors didn’t necessarily have to do with teachers’ demographic background. For example, according to the interview reports, teachers in a certain age group did not use IT with the same frequency. Among the three youngest interviewed teachers, only one of them used IT in each English class because she “had been so accustomed to using information technology equipment,

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