CC BY
13
NEW ROLES OF A TEACHER AND A STUDENT DURING TRANSITION TO THE INFORMATION PARADIGM OF EDUCATION
N. О. Verbitskaya
In Russian education of the beginning of the 21 century, the vast majority of educational technologies that have the status of being new, modern and innovative are somehow related to the information technology. The latter is a multi-layer basis for implementation of the educational process that includes, in varying order, such layers as: computer hardware, software products, the Internet environment, Internet technology, telecommunications equipment and technology. New opportunities provided by information technology are used to implement traditional forms and methods of training using a new technical basis. A person can listen to lectures of teachers on-line or in recording, while physically being in a different part of the country or the world. However, in fact, this is the same traditional lecture, the quality of which depends on the level of professional training and pedagogical skills of the lecturer. Training handouts are replaced by electronic gadgets with the same texts, diagrams, and drawings. Interactive whiteboards conveniently imitate usual blackboards, and include illustrative materials, videos that were previously used as paper posters, chalkboards, and projection equipment. The list can be continued, but the point is in the question which arises upon more profound understanding of the methodological role of information technologies in the educational process. How will the new information field of training and developing technical capabilities alter the internal connections of the learning process and the nature of its results for the student and the teacher? Is a new information paradigm of education being formed, or has the traditional paradigm received new technical possibilities for its development? Answering this question is a task which cannot be solved now because the timing relationship between the duration of formation of the traditional paradigm and its ways of implementation were formed over a centuries-long period, whereas the information paradigm has been developed for less than a century. However, pedagogical practice remains the main criterion of identifying ways to search the answer.
Let us analyze the possibility of using Internet content in professional education to identify new positive and negative roles of participants of the educational process, and those new qualities that they acquire. In order to make our analysis, let us figuratively divide Internet content into four components that are relevant to identifying the new roles of participants of the educational process.
The first component is quasi-educational Internet content. This includes, above all, diverse databases of essays, term papers, solved examination tests, tasks, etc. Here there is an opportunity for direct communication, and sharing information and cheat sheets in blogs, forums, and social networks. We called this component “quasi educational content”. With increasing opportunities for information sharing, the use of these materials is clear cheating, and in a broader context - plagiarism. However, there is an even more serious problem which can be called the content-search consciousness of a student as a final result of
181
training. Manifestation of this consciousness is familiar to almost every teacher, when, after a student has found necessary information and has even presented it in the right form, a student not only fails to read and understand it, but is not even capable of explaining its meaning or purpose. His/her mental processes are working like Internet search engines: to find the required resource based on query keywords, to present it and to successfully switch to the next search task. The only positive result of such training is limited Internet search skills, because unlike the search engines, which by means of analyzing knowledge databases are constantly improving, a student is not motivated to continuously develop his/her search capabilities.
The Second component is actual educational Internet content that has been actively developed in recent decades, thereby extending the boundaries of the educational environment and its capabilities. This part of Internet content has a huge range of diverse resources: from electronic full text libraries to lectures, speeches, webinars, conferences, etc. Such seemingly positive and constructive diversity highlights the need to form new roles of students and teachers. Teachers’ work with continuously expanding educational Internet content creates a new expert-oriented role. It is not a secret that the Russian professional education bears the imprint of previous periods without use of computers and internal isolation of the higher educational institutions. Transition to open expert-oriented professional consciousness is not a quick process, and for many people is not an easy one. However, the opportunity of building a training session not only by including new presentation materials, but also by involving real sentences, fragments of lectures with expert assessments, online dialogues, etc., is a way to create new models and techniques of training.
The third orientation component of professional consciousness is equally important, offering a teacher to orient himself/herself towards open, continuous professional self-development. It also supports forming students’ skills of orientation and their need to be able to use the opportunities of educational Internet content as a basis for learning throughout their whole lives. We will take the liberty to make a statement that precisely primary expert-orientation skills are the starting point for development of motivation for lifelong education which is so popular in today's world.
The fourth component that is relevant for identifying the new roles of participants involved in the educational process is referred to as professional Internet content. It consists of Websites that are used in professional work and in research work. It includes the official Websites of the governments of Russia and its regions, a wide variety of industry organizations, firms, including those representing professional Internet products and cloud services.
We should explain at once that this technology is aimed at building industry-specific professional competence of students as a basis for future professional activities. The technology is based on a service, demo version, or real user agreement for a software product that is specific for a student’s future profession. The first (introductory) stage of work with the software or Internet site is not aimed just at studying the new material, but also has the purpose of converting academic motivation into professional motivation. The first stage of such collaborative training technology changes the academic roles of a student and a teacher, and transforms
182
them into the roles of collaborating professionals that jointly test the Internet resource. The second and the third stages are aimed at modeling the identification of opportunities of the resource for professional activities. We should mention that work with the real resource makes a student update the available knowledge and search the lacking knowledge that is not available in the quasi-educational component of the Internet. To make it simple, there is no room for cheating, but you can ask an expert, such as a professional. A student and a teacher both become participants in the dialogue, briefing with experts in a particular product. Here each of them enriches his/her professional experience. The fourth stage in a student’s work with the software makes the student himself/herself an expert, where he/she evaluates actual quality, efficiency and other qualities of the product. The leading expert role of the teacher is intensified here. His/her task is to offer orientation to a student for comparative analysis of a product and its capabilities. It should be noted that being in this role, a teacher will not be able to limit himself/herself by using traditional learning objectives; he/she should demonstrate real professional competence. The fifth stage has the special function of transferring the student to the position of a teaching trainer, when he/she, based on the received experience, creates educational materials relating to the studied product for other students using different visualization and demonstration techniques. The use of the professional component of the Internet allows a student to simulate the roles of a professional - an expert - a teacher in the educational process. This process is moving from a training task to a professional task.
The fifth component of Internet content is communication and education. It relies on the entire spectrum of electronic mail communication opportunities, Skype, etc. In addition to addressing a number of organizational problems of distance training, the use of the communication component even strengthens the expert role of a teacher in dealing with colleagues, students, partner organizations, and others. Opportunities for expansion of the field for professional interaction in this component are huge both at the domestic and the international levels.
In this report we have identified only a few components of Internet content, the use of which can qualitatively change the roles of teachers and students towards the direction of openness and globalization. Progressive development of these roles has the potential to form new types of educational motivation, professional consciousness, and types and technologies of educational activities within the emerging information paradigm of education.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
183
