Reports

Wednesday June 18 2008

A Guide for Integrating ICT into a Program

Roger De Ladurantaye Educational Advisor, Cégep de Rivière-du-Loup

The Issue
Practical Applications
Useful References
What's new?

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Practical Applications

This section presents a practical approach for ICT integration in colleges with a few examples and a model plan for integrating ICT that might prove inspiring.

Getting Started

Here is a simple involvement strategy in which ICT can be integrated in two distinct steps. First, the program must be reviewed in order to give ICT its proper place. Next, an inventory must be made of the human and material resources available at the college. Although this kind of work is ideally a team effort, an individual initiative may set an example for others to follow.

Integrating ICT into a Program of Study

You and your colleagues train young men and women who will become technicians or university scholars. The "Objectives and Standards (O/S)", framework plans, graduate profiles, and course outlines are tools that guide you in making your program a coherent and relevant training framework for attaining these goals.

The project of integrating ICT into teaching and learning involves a review of these tools. The O/S are usually the object of the first step in this initiative; which consists of determining, in a concrete way, the proper place of ICT in the program. Below are a few examples.

In Outdoor Recreation programs, the competency Management of Material Resources in Recreation requires students to carry out several tasks relating to inventory management, reservation grids, material expenses budgets, etc. The program team quickly realized that technicians would be far more effective if a spreadsheet were used to accomplish these tasks. Knowledge of the software might even be useful in internal financing or activity-planning courses. Students must also be able to lead meetings and produce different types of reports. A mastery of word-processing software would be valuable in this instance, as well.

In Social Sciences, the competency To recognize, from a historical perspective, the fundamental characteristics of Western Civilization was understood by one psychology teacher to be a means for students to study the different schools of thought throughout history, thereby learning the basis of human behaviour and mental processes. In line with innovative pedagogical strategies that require students to process the information in order to better understand it, she decided that the students themselves would define the basic vocabulary, find the principal characteristics of the various schools of thought, and research the cognitive and emotional biological processes to be mastered. Inspired by this challenge, her colleagues used a similar approach in their classes, requiring students to research relevant information, process it, and format it using communication and information-sharing at a distance.

Both examples show that in order to make better use of information and communication technology, instructors must move toward a pedagogy that gives students more space and in which educators assist as professional guides. Once this change has occurred, the pedagogical design of courses and perspectives on the O/S will be modified. Reviewing the ministerial objectives allows us to define which pedagogical situation students should be placed in, in order to acquire their competencies. By doing so, ICT becomes a tool that promotes learning at a deeper level.

In your review of your program, you will certainly see where ICT might be integrated, whether it is explicitly stated in the O/S or not. Afterward, it will only be a matter of modifying the framework plans and incorporating use of ICT into the exit profile.

Creating the Conditions Required

Once this step is completed, the need for software, equipment and rooms must be addressed. For example, more computers might be needed in classrooms since the pedagogical approach has changed, and students are devoting more time to building projects or practical simulation exercises.

At this stage, ICT integration probably involves not only your colleagues, pedagogical approaches and course planning but also requires computer services for the resources that must be made available for the project to move ahead. You will need to approach your administration more often than you might have in the past, in order to obtain the necessary resources.

This situation also involves pedagogical counsellors, whose mandate is to support you in the technopedagoical creation of this new training environment. This support could include consultations, program team activities and training, as well as research and development projects.

Network Examples

Nothing compares to a real-life picture of what is happening on the ground. Even if each college must adapt to its own context, here are some examples from the college milieu that might provide inspiration for your own initiative.

Cégep de Trois-Rivières

While putting the new Social Sciences program in place, the program team established the technological dimension underlying certain aims of their new program. Educators in each discipline of the program were given the responsibility of teaching intellectual habits and methods as well as information and communication technology, which was incorporated into course framework plans.

However, beyond the revision of the program, it became essential for pedagogical activities to take place in a laboratory dedicated to Social Sciences. Take a moment to read the account of their experience, which notably features a proposal made by a committee constrained by budgetary operations. The story by Daniel Pagé of the cégep is in French.

An ICT integration plan at cégep Lévis-Lauzon

We often mention that it is much easier to make a plan of action for ICT integration if the college is geared toward the change. In a Profweb column (in French) Jacques Belleau presents a few of his college's initiatives. A pedagogical day, hiring a pedagogical counsellor, evaluating students' ICT competencies, participation in the Cégep en réseau project: all are excellent occasions for furthering the move toward ICT integration.

Building on Your Experience

It is too often the case that individuals try to reinvent the wheel rather than build on the experience of others. This is not to say that it's possible or even relevant to fully reproduce what is being done elsewhere; however, these initiatives provide a solid base for further efforts, and more quickly. Naturally, each time someone shares information about his or her experiences, others benefit from it. In this spirit, we invite you to use the "commentaries" section of this dossier to share your experiences or any new resources linked to ICT integration.

An ICT Integration Model

A contribution by the collegial organisation PERFORMA enabled one team (Claude Bilodeau, Roger de Ladurantaye and Claude Martel) to create a model plan for ICT integration for the collegial network. This model, presented on the following page, involves everyone concerned with ICT integration in a college.

Although it is static, this illustration gives us a good idea of the elements to consider in ICT integration. Feel free to explore the Web version by whichever path you like. To help you better understand it, here are certain elements you can access by clicking on an item with a star next to it in the interactive Web version.

Before embarking on this journey, it must be pointed out that the path is paved with conceptual maps which were developed using CMAP software. Thanks to this tool, we have been able to collaborate at a distance to build our knowledge model and link concepts, documents, and outlines. Let's examine the different elements that should light the way as you consider integrating ICT into your program:

No one will argue the necessity of a college setting out clear objectives regarding ICT integration. This done, teams can then more easily determine the nature of ICT for their respective programs. Under the Operational Guide tab, you'll find the development process of an institutional plan which was designed along these lines. The process and its principal steps are presented in the modèle de plan d'intégration des TIC pour le réseau collégial (Model ICT Integration Plan for the Collegial Network).

However, even where there is no institutional planning regarding ICT, teaching staff in a program will benefit from working out an action plan for ICT integration. Here is a quick look at the documents most relevant to this aim.

Under the heading Mise en œuvre des buts généraux, des buts de la formation et des compétences qui ciblent explicitement les TIC dans les devis de formation (Implementation of General Objectives, Training Objectives, and Competencies that Explicitly Target ICT in their Training Objectives) are five conceptual maps that present a five-step planning process. The fifth map is the most relevant for educators. In fact, the concept of activités d'apprentissage intégrant les habiletés TIC à développer chez les étudiants (Learning Activities Integrating ICT Skills to be Developed by Students) (Step 5) found in this map merits special attention.

In this fifth step, you can also consult a variety of strategies, results of old information technology, accounts, and other resources under the heading Resources of Links with ICT Partners in the Collegial Network. These might provide inspiration for your learning activities.

In Updating Educators’ ICT Competencies you will find three documents, one of which is a short text titled L’enseignant comme facteur déterminant d’une intégration réussie des TIC (Educators as Determining Factors in Successful ICT Integration). Few can be indifferent to this argument for ICT integration. You may also refer to a chart presenting the elements to be mastered by educators in the collegial network.

Planning and pedagogical design go hand in hand. Planning a course that integrates ICT means, above all, taking into account the means by which information can be processed, student interaction, and making course documents available for consultation or for training exercises. In order to think methodically about planning a course that integrates ICT, steps are suggested under the heading A Pedagogical Design Integrating ICT into the Teaching and Learning Process. We especially suggest reading the document found in step 4, which asks you to consider the type of knowledge-base you will be using and the technological methods by which students might best improve this knowledge.

Now we have reached the end of your guided tour. We hope these tools will help you better integrate ICT into your program and into your teaching and learning strategies. Do not hesitate to approach your pedagogical counsellor to help you use this model to determine the process that best suits you.

In order to advance even further in your ICT integration planning, you can also consult the section on useful references. Reading these resources should enable you to make enough connections to pique your interest in information and communication technology.

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