Participate and share: Interactive session 
Purpose and Objectives - Participant Outcomes
This presentation will cover the programmatic work undertaken to conceptualize a systematic and cohesive integrated technology experience for undergraduate pre-service teacher candidates across two Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs) in Texas - Austin College and Texas Woman’s University, two universities in the North Texas region. One of the regulations that guides teacher education in Texas is the Texas Education Code (TEC), §21.044, as amended by SB 1839, 85th Texas Legislature, Regular Session, 2017. This code requires the curriculum for all initial teacher certification classes to include instruction in digital learning. EPPs in Texas must assess each candidate with a digital literacy evaluation followed by a prescribed digital learning curriculum that includes resources to address any deficiencies identified by the digital literacy evaluation. Instruction must be aligned with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards for Educators and provide effective, evidence-based strategies to determine a person's degree of digital literacy. Furthermore, candidates must receive as part of the training, instruction in digital learning, virtual learning, and virtual instruction that covers evidenced-based practices to both teach and assess students receiving virtual instruction (TEC §21.044, Amended by SB 226, 87th Texas Legislature, Regular Session, 2021).
As part of the execution of these statues, two faculty members at two different EPPs in North Texas engaged in a year-long programmatic project to collaborate and build a comprehensive digital learning program that would facilitate pre-service teachers (PSTs) to develop their digital learning competence, to assess their own levels of digital competence, to create goals to address deficiencies, and to measure overall program effectiveness in increasing levels of digital learning at both institutions. This work occurred over the course of the 2021-2022 academic year, culminating in the presentation of our PST student work.
Both EPP programs are designed to offer digital literacy integration across multiple courses, rather than in a single shot according to best practices advised ISTE and research sponsored from the U.S. Department of Education. Therefore, each course and each course instructor holds ownership in ensuring that students are digitally competent and can use these skills to integrate in instructional settings with students. Specifically, our participant outcomes and presentation objectives are to:
1. Analyze quantitative and qualitative data used to assess digital literacy progression for PST candidates during their time in the EPP. Quantitative data was gathered in the form of a pre-and post-survey given to all teacher candidates upon entrance into the program and again at graduation. The survey was directly aligned to the ISTE standards for educators and measures digital competency growth over time. Qualitative data includes a PST candidate self-assessment of their perceived digital competencies aligned again to the standards. PSTs create an instructional technology project designed around addressing a low or challenging ISTE standard to strengthen that competency.
2. Implement and experiment with a variety of portfolio design methods to showcase PST competencies of content learning, teaching pedagogy, and digital integration including alignment with ISTE standards during their time in EPP. We hope that this work will not only provide assistance to other EPP educators looking for methods to integrate digital portfolios, but will also provide avenues for the K-12 realm in helping teachers and students use similar methods to showcase important learning across the curriculum.
3. Facilitate a venue for PST candidates who are just entering the teaching field to share and discuss their learning and reflections of their work during their teacher preparation with the larger K-12 audience that includes current teachers, educational leaders, and content coordinators. This will include PSTs sharing perceptions of their growth and specifically, how the coursework and key assignments impacted their future teaching practice directly and indirectly.
Educational/Infrastructure Challenge/Situation:
In 2016, The United States Department of Education (U.S. DOE) sponsored a policy brief that identified challenges and offered guidance to teacher preparation programs in an effort to more effectively integrate technology acquisition and competence within the curriculum of new teacher candidates (DOE, 2016). Under its Guiding Principle #3, programmatic considerations, the DOE reported single educational technology courses were not sufficient to properly prepare preservice teachers for the future technology-rich classrooms that await them (Kopcha, 2012). Furthermore, the report noted that continuous exposure to instructional technology, rather than single, stand-alone courses, led to improved attitudes and beliefs toward technology and sustained appropriate pedagogical practice among preservice teachers (Polly, Mims, Shepherd, & Inan, 2010). Therefore, it is vital that any and all attempts to create digitally literate teachers should originate from within a cohesive program design rather than reside within single “drive-by” course attempts to integrate technology. Specifically, the U.S. DOE report stated that attempts to integrate digital technology in teacher education should, “...ensure preservice teachers’ experiences with educational technology are program-deep and program-wide rather than one-off courses separate from their methods courses” (DOE, 2016, p. 14). Furthermore, the COVID-19 crisis exposed the critical need for teacher education programs to implement training practices that prepare future teachers to teach with technology integration by incorporating virtual learning and pedagogies responsive to the distance learning student. It is important that EPPs collaborate and share data on best practices in how to prepare future teachers as digital learners and leaders. Another crucial link in this process is to share the work that we are engaging in with our K-12 educational leaders and content coordinator stakeholders so that these individuals can be cognizant of the strategies and competencies that new hires bring with them when they enter the teaching force; often these new teachers bring deeper levels of digital competence that can fuel campus and district innovation among veteran teachers.
Technology Intervention/Instructional Strategies
As part of this work, we engaged in the following specific interventions and instructional strategies to implement, enhance, and assess PST digital literacy:
1. We quantitatively assessed PST digital literacy growth during their time in the EPP by implementing a pre- and post-survey aligned to the ISTE Standards for Educators. PSTs take the pre-survey upon acceptance into the EPP and the post-survey again just prior to graduation, usually around the time of their clinical student teaching completion. This survey measures their growth during their time in the program. The pre- and post-survey was developed using Google forms, with a link provided to students during the EPP application process and again, just before graduation. The post-survey was first administered in the Spring 2019 academic semester along with course redesigns that were specifically developed to introduce and interleave each of the ISTE standards for educators across their time in the EPP. Pre- and post- survey data from graduating PSTs from the academic years of 2020-2022 will be shared during the presentation. Participants will take a sample survey during the presentation.
2. Creating a technology project by which pre-service teacher candidates qualitatively assess their own familiarity and competence with the ISTE standards, select one standard to address, presumably a deficient standard, and then create a technology project to develop that chosen standard. This project was implemented in a single chosen course at each university and developed according to the university specific learning objectives and standards. The two university instructors used a variety of technology tools to implement this project including: Padlet, Flipgrid, Google applications, Screen recording tools, etc. Specific guidelines for the project will be shared with presentation participants. An example is posted here: https://padlet.com/tamrardollar/zpus94den9ekxv63
3. Implementing a digital portfolio project that pre-service teacher candidates use to house, present, and reflect all of their learning in the program including content knowledge, pedagogical proficiency, and technology integration and digital forms of learning. Portfolio projects include formats using websites, Google Sites, Google Classroom, Padlet, and Bulb. Candidate examples will be shown and used in the presentation. The presenters anticipate inviting several PST candidates to attend and present their work at ISTE (pending approval). Examples are posted here: https://padlet.com/tj12131999/lk937tfjviz5i8v7 & https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1p9SWiGUOSaa72E-_Oh0yVLRqtMmtyMbf_NBClvsfujg/edit#slide=id.p
Evidence of success:
We believe that the best indicator of success is in the completion of PSTs work who graduate from our program. Therefore, a key component of this presentation will be to share out student exemplars of the work that was completed, including reflections from the PSTs themselves on their experiences and future learning. We have invited PSTs from both universities to attend this presentation if accepted at ISTE and are waiting on several confirmations. Due to the fact that the proposals are due in September, but the conference is not until June, our PSTs need time to secure funding to travel to the conference. We are seeking out student sponsored funding at both universities to support students in this endeavor. Therefore, we do not have specific students on the proposal at this time, but will be adding ones as presenters later as allowed by the ISTE conference. We will also be discussing the pre- and post- survey data as an important indicator of success during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years. Examples of student work that might be shared are posted in links in this proposal.
Part 1:
Introduce the purpose of the presentation and the background of the presenters. Have participants take a sample pre-/post- ISTE survey to assess their own knowledge and perceived competency of the ISTE Standards for Educators. This provides a background to the survey data and framework for understanding the data. Briefly share pre- and post-survey data assessed for 2 academic years. Participants will need a device for this section to take the survey and to view the survey results we will share with participants. Anticipated time for this section: 5-10 minutes. Strategy to engage the audience: Take the survey via Google forms & compare your results with that of pre-service teachers.
Part 2:
Introduce the technology project components and how PSTs assessed and addressed their standard. Introduce the candidate portfolios and share out various methods that candidates chose to organize and house their pedagogically integrated digital work across their time in the program. Have audience participants brainstorm a list of potential portfolio tools that could be used to accomplish this task. Presenters will use an interactive tool such as Google Jamboard, Padlet, or Nearpod to collaborate and share ideas digitally in real time. Participants need a device for this section to complete the activity. Will take approximately 10-15 minutes. The audience will be engaged in the brainstorming activity for how to create candidate portfolios. The presenters would also like for K-12 leaders and stakeholders in teacher development to share their preferences for tools that new teachers should be competent to use for student portfolio assessment in K-12 environments.
Part 3:
Allow PST students who are able to attend the conference with us to share their examples of their portfolio and/or technology project work and talk about how it has impacted them during their clinical student teaching experience, COVID teaching and/or their initial years of teaching. Finish the presentation with specific questions and suggestions for all presenters. The approximate time would take approximately 10-20 minutes. The audience will be engaged in this section through direct question and answer discussion during the session, but also in a discussion based board such as Parlay or another discussion based tool that allows for digital real time interaction.
The purpose of this project is to provide an overview with specific examples of the programmatic approach used to design, collaborate, and evaluate a comprehensive digital literacy experience for preservice teachers using the U.S. DOE’s recommendations. Additionally, this work is organized around PST technology related projects, namely a comprehensive assessment portfolio, aligned through the ISTE Standards for Educators; specifically, as learners, leaders, citizens, collaborators, facilitators, designers, and analysts in addition to the integration of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework within all assignments. Some additional references related to this work include:
Blackstock, D., Edel-Malizia, S., Bittner, K., & Smithwick, E. (2017). Investigating interactive video assessment tools for online and blended learning. In International Conference on e-Learning (pp. 31-39). Academic Conferences International Limited.
Brown-Jeffy, S., & Cooper, J. E. (2011). Toward a conceptual framework of culturally relevant pedagogy: An overview of the conceptual and theoretical literature. Teacher Education Quarterly, 38(1), 65-84.
Cherner, T., & Curry, K. (2017). Enhancement or transformation? A case study of preservice teachers’ use of instructional technology. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 17(2), 268-290.
Dong, Y., Kavun, N., Senteney, M. & Ott, J. (2018). Interactive presentation tools using mobile devices. In E. Langran & J. Borup (Eds.), Proceedings for the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 743-748). Washington, D.C., United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved August 29, 2018 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/182605/.
Greene, T. & Greene, J. (2018). Flipgrid: Adding voice and video to online discussions. TechTrends 62:128. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-017-0241-x.
Kuyatt, A., Holland, G., & Jones, D. (2015). An analysis of teacher effectiveness related to technology implementation in Texas secondary schools. Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 8(1), 63.
Peterson-Ahmad, M. & Hurlbut, A. (in press). Embedding simulated learning opportunities for teacher candidate pedagogical development throughout a pandemic. Texas FORUM for Teacher Education.
Peterson-Ahmad, M.B., Pemberton, J., & Hovey, K.A. (2018). Virtual learning environments for teacher preparation. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 54, 165-169.
Polly, D., Mims, C., Shepherd, C. E., & Inan, F. (2010). Evidence of impact: Transforming teacher education with preparing tomorrow’s teachers to teach with technology (PT3) grants. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(4), 863-870.
U.S. Department of Education (2016). Advancing Educational Technology in Teacher Preparation: Policy Brief. U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from https://tech.ed.gov/teacherprep/.
Vickers, J. C. & Shae, P. (2017). Future directions for social presence. In Whiteside, A. L., Dikkers, A. G., & Swan, K (Eds.). Social presence in online learning (pp. 191-206). Sterling, VA: Stylus.
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