Educators Go To SCOUT Camp for Technology-Enhanced Learning

By Marjorie Helsel DeWert and Sheila Levine Cory
Journal of Staff Development, Winter 1998 (Vol. 19, No. 1)

What can be done to help teachers and teacher educators "make the connection" between research-based changes in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and high-quality technology use? Or, as Sheingold (1992) phrased it: "How do we help teachers to teach in ways they were not taught, to create classrooms unlike the ones they studied in, and to develop confidence that they are doing the right thing for their students?"

SCOUT Camp was created to be at least a partial answer to these questions.

SCOUT Camp is a collaborative professional development program sponsored by the school of education at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, and their business partner, Nortel, a technology company which has a major presence in North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

SCOUT stands for "Students Constructing their Own Understandings with Technology." The name is derived from constructivist learning theories which state that learners must individually discover and transform complex information (i.e., construct knowledge) if they are to make it their own (Brooks & Brooks, 1993; Slavin, 1997).

SCOUT Camp’s development team consisted of three accomplished technology-using teachers, the school district’s director of technology, the school of education’s director of technology, and an instructional designer.

From the beginning, the partners agreed traditional approaches to technology-related staff development would not work. What was needed was something different, something so powerful and compelling that teachers would rethink their current practices and consider trying something new.

Many of the SCOUT camp ideas were drawn from the Teacher Development Center project which began in September 1992 (Ringstaff & Marsh, 1997; Ringstaff & Yocam, 1994; Yocam & Whitmore, 1994). Developed by Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT), three school districts, and the National Science Foundation, the ACOT Teacher Development Center project uses a constructivist approach to teacher development.

Participating teachers learn by observing and working extensively with accomplished ACOT teachers and students during school. After attending a practicum and/or summer institute at a Teacher Development Center, participating teachers are required to implement technology-related projects in their classrooms. They also receive follow-up support from project coordinators.

Based on our reflections, conversations, and research, the SCOUT camp partners developed five principles to guide the design and development work:

• Practice what we’re preaching. If teachers are going to use technology to support constructivist pedagogy, they must engage in a long-term process of learning that resembles the kind of constructivist processes sought in students’ classroom experiences (Knapp, 1997).

We must heed the values, beliefs, and theories teachers bring with them as they begin this professional development process. Which of their beliefs about learning and teaching are relevant to these new technologies? How do these beliefs govern their daily teaching practices? What criteria do teachers use in judging where, when, and under what conditions they will use a new technology? (Cuban, 1996).

• Focus on learning and learners, not technology. Too many professional development efforts focus on the technical aspects of using technology with little or no consideration of how the technology might further changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment known to maximize student learning. We must provide an experience that mirrors quality use of technology for classroom learning.

• Plan around a framework for learning improvement. As Fullan (1992) notes, ". . . schools are not in the business of managing single innovations; they are in the business of contending with multiple innovations simultaneously."

If professional development efforts focusing on implementing new innovations like technology are to succeed, they must be presented as part of a context-dependent, coherent framework for improvement (Guskey, 1994). In our context, the "coherent framework" is Marzano’s (1992) Dimensions of Learning Model and constructivist pedagogy (Brooks & Brooks, 1993).

• Plan for transfer of learning. Professional development can only be judged successful if students benefit from the changed instructional behavior of teachers (Sparks, 1994). Therefore, professional development must pay attention to factors known to increase transfer of learning (Slavin, 1997) as well as to contextual factors known to inhibit or facilitate changes in teachers’ classroom practices (Guskey, 1997; Knapp, 1997).

Conducted during the summer, each five-day session of SCOUT Camp serves about 50 teachers, teacher educators, principals, and specialists from UNC and the Chapel Hill district. Participants must attend in school-based teams of at least two so that they can support one another after they return to their schools. Five accomplished technology-using teachers from the school district and school of education are Camp "counselors."

SCOUT Camp immerses participants in the type of high-quality, technology-enriched, constructivist learning environment we hope they will recreate for students when they return to their classrooms. In this environment, the focus is on enabling active, student-centered learning not on technology.

Through direct instruction, modeling, and "reflection-in-action" (Schon, 1988), the Camp highlights three constructivist strategies: (a) inquiry-based learning; (b) differentiation of instruction through the use of heterogeneous, cooperative small groups; and (c) performance-based assessment. Participants then experience firsthand how technology used in conjunction with these strategies can support and enhance learning.

SCOUT Camp uses an experiential approach, combining "learning by doing" with reflective practice. Participants alternate between two roles while at Camp. The first role is that of students working on an inquiry project in a technology-enhanced, student-centered learning environment.

The second role is that of reflective practitioners seeking to uncover the underlying beliefs, rules, and motives governing their current teaching practice; to develop hypotheses about more effective ways to teach and use technology; and, finally, to test their own and others’ ideas when they return to their classrooms (Imel, 1992).

At the beginning of Camp, participants are presented with an inquiry project (i.e., performance task) and scoring rubrics designed in accordance with the approach described in Marzano, Pickering, and McTighe (1993). The rubrics assess students’ achievement of the specific standards included in the performance task.

Two types of standards are assessed: (a) content standards taken directly from the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, and (b) lifelong learning standards, including complex thinking, information processing, cooperation/collaboration, and effective communication.

The inquiry project examines the impact of proposed development on southern Chapel Hill’s ecosystem. Working cooperatively in heterogeneous small groups, each group selects an organism native to the Piedmont forest (e.g., fresh water mussel, box turtle, pileated woodpecker) and researches its food, water, shelter, and space needs. Each group predicts whether or not their organism would continue to thrive once planned development is completed, and recommends steps that could be taken to ensure the survival of their organism.

The groups follow the I-Search (or We-Search in the case of groups) process developed by Macrorie (1988) and used in Make It Happen!, which is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to integrating inquiry-based methods into the curriculum (Education Development Center, 1995). In the last phase of this process, students draft, revise, edit, and publish a We-Search Report.

At SCOUT Camp, each group creates a multimedia or hypermedia presentation and oral report. On the last day of Camp, each group presents its report and their peers give them feedback using the rubrics provided on the first day.

As they complete their inquiry projects, participants gain firsthand experience in working in heterogeneous small groups and using technology as a problem-solving tool as well as a medium for thinking, collaborating, and communicating. Group work at Camp is based on principles developed by Cohen (1994a, 1994b). On the first day of Camp, groups introduce themselves, establish group norms and rules, determine what roles members will play, and share and reflect on their own group work experiences.

On the third day of Camp, groups complete and discuss a midway group work assessment to determine how well their groups are working together. Finally, on the last day of Camp, each group member uses the rubrics provided to score his or her individual performance on the cooperation/collaboration standards built into the performance task. They then compare and discuss their scores.

Participants master the technology "know how" needed to complete their inquiry projects by attending one of two hands-on, skill-building workshops and four of six learning centers. The two workshops cover KidPix and HyperStudio (two software packages for multimedia and hypermedia document construction). The learning centers teach them how to use a digital camera and scanner, to add sound to multimedia documents, to create animation, and to find information on the Internet/World Wide Web.

Accomplished technology-using teachers from Chapel Hill-Carrboro and UNC guide the participants through the SCOUT Camp experience. These counselors play three important roles at Camp. First, they model what accomplished teachers say and do to facilitate knowledge construction and group work in a student-centered, technology-enhanced learning environment.

Second, they spark, facilitate, and sustain reflection among participants on a daily basis using strategies described by Imel (1992) and Schon (1988). Third, they provide small-group instruction on technology skills in workshops and centers.

To facilitate the transfer of SCOUT Camp experiences to classroom practices, SCOUT Camp does not end on the Camp’s last day. Translating what is learned during a professional development experience into actual day-to-day lesson plans, student learning activities, and performance results is hard work. Providing follow-up "support with pressure" (Guskey, 1994) is key to sustaining the realization of changes in practice over the long term.

SCOUT Camp facilitates transfer of learning in four ways:

1. Reusable Materials. SCOUT Camp’s instructional materials are teacher and student friendly. In addition to the actual inquiry project itself and its associated scoring rubrics, other materials suitable for reuse by teachers and their students include tools for facilitating and assessing groupwork, templates for the We-Search process, templates for the information maps and storyboards used in the design of the multimedia/hypermedia reports, and step-by-step directions for using various technologies introduced at SCOUT Camp. In addition to receiving print copies of all materials, participants also may request electronic versions so they can customize the materials.

2. Action plans. SCOUT Camp graduates plan a "learning and technology" project that applies what they learned at Camp in their own classrooms. As an incentive, they select an item of hardware or software (valued at about $250) that will help them implement their project. (Participants from the same school may "pool" their incentive dollars for more expensive items such as a digital camera). Following camp, the graduates receive the $250 item they’ve chosen.

3. Site-Based Assistance. SCOUT Camp graduates receive ongoing support from their school-based instructional technology specialists (ITS) who work closely with them to brainstorm ideas, provide design advice, and assist them during project design and implementation. ITSs are "job coaches" for their SCOUT Camp graduates. They help graduates adapt new practices to their unique contextual conditions, analyze the effects of their efforts, and celebrate successes.

"Is it making a difference?" is one of the most frequently asked questions about professional development. Staff developers ask. School boards, school administrators, and funding agencies ask the same question. With this question comes increasing demands for demonstrable results (Cook & Fine, 1997).

About 200 teachers and teacher educators have participated in SCOUT Camp during its three years of operation. Excluding development and incentive costs, the per participant cost of the five-day SCOUT Camp experience is about $250. Although much less than charges by many professional development providers, this is still a significant investment. What is the evidence that SCOUT Camp is effective and therefore worth continued investment?

During SCOUT Camp’s first three years, its focus has been on gathering evaluation feedback that could be used to improve and refine the professional development model (Beyer, 1995). In this section, we will describe the data-gathering instruments and procedures we used during the formative evaluation process and the results generated. Our discussion is organized according to the four levels used to evaluate most modern professional development efforts (Guskey, 1997).

Level 1: Determining participants’ reactions to the experience. Participants’ reactions to a professional development experience are typically measured via a self-report questionnaire with items about relevance, the presentation skills of instructors, quality of materials, and participants’ satisfaction with the format and setting.

These "happiness indicators" are usually administered on the last day of the professional development experience or soon thereafter. Unfortunately, this practice is a akin to closing the barn door after the horses have already escaped.

At SCOUT Camp, participant reaction data is collected during the last 20-30 minutes of each day. At that time, participants’ reflect and debrief on that day’s experience as a whole group. Participants also respond anonymously in writing on small index cards to the prompt "Tell us anything you think we should know" about the day’s session. Staff meet later to read the cards, discuss questions and problems that arose during the day, and adjust the next day’s program.

Each day begins with staff sharing feedback from the previous day and identifying actions taken in response. For example, when participants reported that the bathroom was out of toilet paper, each staff member brought in a roll of toilet paper (The janitorial staff was also notified!). In response to "I’m not getting what I want to out of this," the concerned person met privately with a staff person of his choosing to develop a solution.

Participants are also asked to send the staff a letter within 30 days after Camp ends. We ask them to tell us what they liked about Camp, what they didn’t like, and how it could be improved. A common theme in the letters is that participants appreciate and value the staff’s willingness to adjust programming based on participant feedback. As one teacher wrote:

Another common theme is that participants enjoy meeting and working with new people, both from across the district and within the university. As one teacher educator wrote:

Level 2: Measuring the knowledge and skill which participants acquire as a result of professional development. Before attending SCOUT Camp, participants complete the Technology Self-Efficacy Scale (DeWert, 1996), a self-report instrument based on national and state guidelines for what all teachers should know about and be able to do with technology. While attending Camp workshops and centers and creating their multimedia/hypermedia reports, participants produce products.

These include collections of scanned images and digital pictures or URLs of World Wide Web sites generated during a search, which they place in a portfolio as tangible evidence of their skills. Additional evidence is provided by analyzing the multimedia/hypermedia reports created by each inquiry group using the standards of quality set forth in the scoring rubrics.

A second source of Level 2 data is the post-Camp letter described earlier. In addition to asking participants to share their reactions to the experience, we also ask them to tell us about lessons they learned at SCOUT Camp as well as any changes they’ve made in how they think, what they believe, and what they plan to do in the classroom as a result of their SCOUT camp experience. One teacher educator wrote:

A second teacher wrote:

Level 3: Measuring participants’ actual use of knowledge and skills they have gained. A review of the projects implemented by 1995 and 1996 SCOUT Camp graduates coupled with observations from school-based instructional technology specialists reveals that teachers and teacher educators who participate in SCOUT Camp are indeed able to apply what they learned at SCOUT Camp to actual classroom practice. Many of the teachers chose to implement variations of the inquiry project completed at SCOUT Camp. Others designed and implement new projects as illustrated by the four examples below.

• Teacher A planned and implemented an interdisciplinary six-week inquiry unit on Canada. Guided by the teacher, students brainstormed questions related to Canada’s geography, climate, economy, culture, and other features. Students then divided into small groups, selected the question of most interest to them, developed a search plan, and then conducted research to answer their question.

Each small group created a hypermedia stack to present the results of their investigations. As a culminating activity, the individual stacks were integrated into a "multimedia encyclopedia" about Canada that was placed in the school’s media center for reference by other students.

• Professor A invited the other members of her teacher education team to plan and implement an inquiry project with their preservice teachers. Following the We-Search process, students worked in teams of two to pose a relevant and personally motivated question. To encourage students to use non-traditional information sources, students were told that they could not go to the library to do their research.

Students were also required to communicate their findings by developing a communication product of their choosing. For example, one of the inquiry groups wanted to know whether probability and statistics could be applied to enhance contestants’ success on the quiz show, Jeopardy. They used Inspiration, a visual idea development and communication tool, to map prior knowledge, generate ideas, and develop their theory.

They then videotaped segments of the show and tested their theory by collecting and analyzing data in a spreadsheet. Finally, they presented their findings and conclusions to peers in a poster session.

• Teacher B planned an "All About Me" project. After teaching her students how to use KidPix, each student in the class created a KidPix slide including a picture and biographical information (e.g., name, age, favorite food, favorite activity). The teacher integrated the slides into a KidPix slideshow and presented it to parents at the first Parent Teacher Association meeting of the year.

• Professor B required her students to create a multimedia or hypermedia presentation to communicate the main points in an interdisciplinary unit they planned. Students presented their unit plans to their peers and received feedback on the content. Professor B also created a hypermedia presentation to provide her students with drill-and-practice for the mid-term exam.

The projects of Teacher A and Professor A represent an embodiment of the vision set forth at SCOUT Camp. Both projects are learning- and learner-centric. Both used the three strategies espoused at Camp (inquiry-based learning, groupwork, and performance assessment). And, both used technology appropriately in conjunction with these strategies.

In contrast, the projects of Teacher B and Professor B represent what Knapp (1997) refers to as "grafting of reform ideas onto familiar practices." Both projects were technology-centric, and neither involved substantive changes in curriculum, instruction, or assessment.

These preliminary findings raise the intriguing question, "Why is it that some teachers understand and then act on what they have experienced and learned at SCOUT Camp, whereas others do not?" Professors A and B and Teachers A and B worked at the same schools, had access to the same technology resources, and also had the support of the same instructional technology specialists. Yet, the A’s "got it" while the B’s didn’t.

We suspect that part of the answer lies in the truism: "The magnitude of change persons are asked to make is inversely related to their likelihood of making it" (Guskey, 1997). Professor A and Teacher A were already proponents of constructivist pedagogy before they attended SCOUT Camp.

Consequently, integrating a new "innovation" (i.e., technology) into their conceptual model and classroom practices was relatively easy. In contrast, Professor B and Teacher B were both traditional, didactic teachers. Asking them to make radical alternations in their pedagogy and adopt new "tools of the trade" at the same time may have been perceived as being too disruptive or requiring too much extra work.

Level 4: Measuring the impact of participant’ changes in knowledge and skills on student learning. Teachers are more likely to carry on with new practices if they see positive results in their students. New practices are likely to be abandoned (or not attempted at all) in the absence of any evidence of their positive effects on student learning.

Uncovering the effects of SCOUT Camp on student learning will be a major focus of the summative evaluation we will conduct during the 1997-98 school year. In addition to analyzing the student work products created in conjunction with the action projects implemented by SCOUT Camp graduates, we will use qualitative research methodologies described by Ringstaff and Marsh (1997) to look for changes in students’ motivation/engagement, ability to work with others, resource-management skills, communication skills, and information literacy.

In recent months, several articles, editorials, and books have raised questions about the wisdom of spending even more school dollars on computers, networking, and telecommunications. As illustrated in the following quotation, their authors all challenge the oft-repeated contention that computers produce better educated children:

Oppenheimer and his fellow techno-skeptics are both right and wrong. They are right in the sense that any technology (digital or not) used poorly or inappropriately by teachers and students will fail to produce demonstrable improvements in learning. They are wrong in that every day in classrooms across the country, talented teachers are creating learning environments in which students are encouraged to develop hypotheses, test their own and others’ ideas, make connections among content areas, explore issues and problems of personal relevance, and work cooperatively with peers and adults in the pursuit of understanding. And, these teachers are using a variety of technologies to appropriately and imaginatively support and enhance their students’ learning (e.g., Sandholtz, Ringstaff, & Dwyer, 1996).

The key, of course, is the teacher. Investing in more boxes, wires, Internet connections, and technical training will not assure that technology will be used–and used well–by the majority of teachers in a school or district. Investing in teachers and their long-term continuing professional development will. As Cuban (1997) wisely observes,

SCOUT Camp has proven itself an effective model for helping teachers to make decisions about how, when, and why to use computers and related technologies to improve student learning. But it is very much a work-in-progress.

As we move into our fourth year of operation, it is clear that we must now pay as much attention to what happens after SCOUT Camp as we did to what happens during Camp. In particular, we recognize the need to engage teachers and teacher educators in productive approaches to professional development that involve them in "communities of practice" as recommended by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF, 1996):

Happily, both our district and school of education now have the infrastructure needed to implement a "dense network of peer relationships" within and across schools and our teacher education program. Based on the success of the first author’s Lighthouse Project (a mediated, on-line support community for beginning teachers), we will connect SCOUT Camp graduates with one another via electronic "communities of practice." These asynchronous online communities will allow teachers from across the school district and school of education to work together over time on issues of mutual interest and concern.

Sheingold, K. (1992). Technology integration and teachers' professional development. In Learning Technologies Essential for Education Change (pp. 41-51). Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers.