Computers and Technology for Instruction:
Enhancing Effective Learning Time
Although most school systems use computers in some ways for instruction, what is often missing is a theory-based framework for making decisions about the computer's place in the curriculum. Based on current educational research, this book recommends using effective learning time as the major factor in deciding whether or how to use the computer for instruction. This chapter explains the concept of effective learning time and describes how the computer can increase the effective use of instructional time in any subject area. Later chapters will describe practical guidelines for introducing computers into school systems and into classrooms in a way that maximizes effective learning time and improves the quality of instruction.
Effective learning time (ELT) is the amount of time a student spends attending to relevant academic tasks while performing those tasks with a high rate of success (Caldwell, Huitt, and Graeber, 1982; Berliner, 1984). Whatever the subject area, effective learning time is likely to be more strongly related to academic success than any other variable over which the teacher can exercise control.
Many of the practical books for teachers focus on ELT, even though the authors rarely use the term. For example, in The First Days of School : How to Be an Effective Teacher Harry and Rosemary Wong suggest numerous strategies for beginning teachers, most of which work largely because they result in a more efficient application of one of the components of ELT.
Even without supporting research, it seems fairly obvious that the more time we spend on a task, the more we learn about it. Research has suggested that this relationship exists for academic activities. But simply assigning more study time to a topic will not automatically increase the student's learning. The relationship is a bit more complex than that. For example, not all the time officially scheduled for a classroom activity is likely to be allocated to it. If an hour is assigned to working on a set of problems but the teacher devotes five minutes at the beginning of the session to returning papers and five minutes at the end collecting milk money, then only fifty minutes have been allocated to working the problems. As Figure 1.1 shows, scheduled time merely sets an upper limit on allocated time.
Figure 1.1. Scheduled Time and Allocated Time.
Moreover, not all students will spend all the time allocated to a task actively engaged in appropriate activities. While a teacher is lecturing, for example, a student may daydream. While doing seatwork, a student may stop to examine an insect crawling across the floor. While one student is giving a detailed answer to a question, other students who are bored (because they already know the answer) or confused (because they cannot grasp the question or understand the answer) may be engaged in other activities. It is the time the learner is engaged in appropriate activities that is closely related to improved academic performance. As Figure 1.2 shows, scheduled time and allocated time merely set the upper limit for engaged time.
Figure 1.2. Engaged Time as a Subset of Allocated Time.
For engaged time to be really useful, the student must be participating in useful activities at a high rate of success. Neither succeeding at worthless activities nor failing at worthwhile tasks will lead to improved performance. Improvement requires success at worthwhile activities. Research has shown, for example, that students who are tested after completing worksheets with 90 percent accuracy learn a great deal more than students who spend the same amount of time on the same worksheets with 50 percent accuracy. Effective learning time, then, is defined as the amount of time the learner spends actively engaged in worthwhile tasks at a high level of success. In Figure 1.3, the shaded area represents effective learning time. As this figure shows, scheduled time, allocated time, and engaged time all merely set the upper limit for effective learning time. If the outer circle in Figure 1.3 represents an hour of scheduled time, the shaded area represents about ten or fifteen minutes of effective learning time.
Figure 1.3. Effective Learning Time as a subset of Engaged Time.
One popular way to increase effective learning time is to increase the length of the school year or school day. Another is to "get rid of frills" - see to it that more time is devoted to essential topics rather than to less important information. Both approaches are designed to increase the size of the outer circle (scheduled time) in Figure 1.3.
Another approach is to make the classroom operate more efficiently. Perhaps the teacher could return papers within one minute instead of five minutes; maybe an aide could collect the milk money while the teacher explains the homework assignment. This approach (which is diagrammed in Figure 1.4) would increase allocated time, and this increase in allocated time would eventually increase ELT. That is, the increased efficiency would bring the second circle in Figure 1.3 (allocated time) more in line with the outer circle, as shown in Figure 1.4..
Figure 1.4. An example of increasing ELT by increasing Allocated Time.
Yet another approach is to ensure that students stay on task. The teacher could use effective behavior modification to reward on-task behavior and punish deviant behavior. Or the teacher could be careful not to bore other students while devoting attention to the unique problems of isolated learners. These approaches would expand the inner circle in Figure 1.3.
A final approach is to assign tasks that breed success and to monitor progress and provide feedback as students complete appropriate assignments. This approach would increase the high success rate area in Figure 1.3, and the result would be the pattern shown in Figure 1.5. As Figures 1.4 and 1.5 indicate, any of these approaches could lead to an increase in effective learning time and to improved learning. The ideal strategy, of course, would be to apply simultaneously all the approaches described here. Figure 1.6 describes the impact of this combined strategy.
Figure 1.5. An example of increasing ELT by increasing High Success Rate.
Figure 1.6. An example of increasing ELT by increasing all four component factors of ELT.
Do students ever perform at the level shown in Figure 1.6? Have you yourself ever used time that effectively? The answer is almost certainly yes. Students use their time this effectively when they are studying something they are deeply interested in and when they are unimpeded by outside distractions - perhapes while "studying" a favorite sport or "learning about" a favorite movie or popular song. Likewise, you have converted sheduled time into ELT at this high rate when you have voluntarily studied something you have really cared about. The challenge for teachers is to help students covert scheduled time to ELT at this high rate when they have lower levels of incentives to participate in the instructional activity.
Whatever the area of instruction, students learn efficiently to the extent that they turn their class and study time into effective learning time. Neither class time nor study time automatically qualifies as effective learning time, but both may become effective learning time to the extent that the student actively attends to relevant tasks with a high rate of success.
A student who devotes 100 hours to effective learning time in a course will learn more than an equally capable learner who devotes only 50 hours. However, as Table 1.1 shows, a person allocating only 50 hours to study and spending 90 percent of it in active effective learning will learn more than an equally capable student who allocates 100 hours but spends only 30 percent of it in active effective learning.
100 hours 30% in ELT = 30 hours 50 hours 30% in ELT = 30 hours
How does the preceding discussion relate to computers? Good teachers are good teachers precisely because they work toward the situation described in Figure 1.6. It is not essential for students to have access to computers to make effective use of their learning time. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the computer can make an important contribution to effective learning time.
Simply stated, when computers do enhance learning it is because they increase effective learning time. When computers fail to improve learning, it is very often because they do not increase effective learning time. In looking for areas in which computers can enhance instruction, therefore, we should look for ways in which they can help achieve this process goal of enhancing effective learning time.
Computers can enhance effective learning time in two ways: by permitting learners to acquire information and practice skills related to topics covered in the curriculum (that is, by teaching content skills), and by helping students develop basic tools of learning that they can apply in a wide variety of settings (that is, by helping students develop higher-order or learning-to-learn skills).
In short, by helping overcome many of the problems discussed in the previous paragraphs, the computer can help us enrich the curriculum.
The computer is not a panacea that will solve all the problems of education. Putting a million dollars worth of computers in an ineffective school will merely produce a more expensive, ineffective school - unless substantial other improvements occur. Teachers still need training in pedagogical skills and in their areas of specialization, and teachers still need to conduct many non-computerized activities in their classrooms. The thesis of this book, however, is that very often the computer can help enhance effective learning time and facilitate the application of effective principles of instructional psychology. Other chapters in this book will specify exactly how the computer can enhance instruction. It is important for teachers to understand these underlying principles.
Important Note: If you have understood our discussion of effective learning time as indicating that it is better to have students actively involved for 100 percent of their time in the pursuit of trivia than to have them actively involved only 75 percent of the time in the pursuit of more important goals, then we have failed to communicate a very important concept to you. This failure in communication probably occurred because you held a previous "alternative conception" of effective learning time and let that override the concept as we described it in the preceding paragraphs. We emphatically recommend devoting effective learning time to significant educational objectives. If you suffered from this misconception, we urge you to reexamine the preceding paragraphs in this section before continuing with this chapter.
This book, therefore, does not recommend that the computer should become one more subject area for students to study, but rather that it should become a tool to help facilitate and enhance teaching and learning. Throughout the curriculum, the computer can provide a method of integrating subject matter and various thinking skills to provide a more meaningful experience for the student. In addition, the computer can play a vital role by both motivating learners and focusing their attention more effectively on the task at hand.
Footnote
1. The more standard term used by these authors is Academic Learning Time (ALT). We have chosen Effective Learning Time (ELT), because our students understand it better and the term flows more easily in our writing. {Click to return.}