Technologies for Learning (TfL)
Guidance on Writing your Assignment
To undertake this assignment you are first required to select an educational context where technology plays a part in the teaching and learning process. You should have direct experience of this context as an educator, teacher or learner. If you are a teacher then it could be an aspect of your own teaching environment. Next you will need to decide the perspective from which you wish to analyse the role played by your technology for learning in your chosen educational context. For example you may be interested in pedagogical issues or social practices surrounding the technology for learning or perhaps the organisational setting that impacts on the use made of the technology for learning.
Use selected literature on the use/deployment of technologies for learning to analyse the role played by a specific technology for learning in your own professional context or one known to you.
To address this primary task you will have to select a small number of ideas from the very extensive literature on the use of technologies for learning. There is far too much literature for you to use it all! You should look for a theory or model containing related concepts or a set of empirical generalisations about learning with and through technologies that will provide the basis for a suitable theoretical framework for guiding your analysis. You may wish to supplement this theory or model with other concepts that you perceive to be particularly relevant. You should justify why you have chosen this theoretical framework as being suitable for your purpose. You should then employ it to guide your evaluation of the extent to which your technology for learning has supported or otherwise specific learning processes and/or outcomes related to your chosen context.
The secondary task is:
Critically assess how far the literature identifies the factors that influence the role played by your technology for learning. To what extent does it apply to the context you have analysed?
To address this task you should review the extent to which the ideas from the literature making up your theoretical framework cover all the factors you identify as influencing the role played by your chosen technology for learning in your own professional context. It is probable that these ideas are based on theoretical ideas and empirical generalisations from research based on contexts which are significantly different from your own. To the extent that this context is different to those from which the ideas derived, some may apply only partially to your situation, and others may be irrelevant. So you should critically assess whether the framework includes all the factors that were relevant to your context, and any that were not. Explain why any were relevant. For example, it may be that your own context was similar to the contexts where the ideas in your theoretical framework originated and so similar factors apply. Also explain why any were irrelevant. Perhaps your own context differs in significant ways, which you should describe briefly, from the contexts where the ideas in the framework originated. Therefore these factors were not relevant in your context.
You should consider whether you have identified additional factors that are relevant to the role played by your chosen technology but which did not feature in the theoretical framework and the literature from which it was drawn. Explain why any additional factors may have been omitted from the theoretical framework and associated literature. Maybe there were significant differences between the contexts where the ideas originated and the context of your technology for learning. Particular factors may have applied only in your context.
Suggested structure for your critical analysis
Here is a suggested structure for your assignment that will help you to address both tasks. It is a typical structure for employing ideas drawn from the literature to analyse an empirical topic such as an aspect of your professional experience. You will find it used in many articles and chapters reporting and analysing research findings. (It may be adaptable for other assignments too.) The structure consists of the title, four sections and the reference list. Each section should be labelled with a suitable heading to help the reader see how you are developing your critical analysis. (Suggested length in words appears in parentheses in each section heading below. Please note that these are very approximate ranges meant to give you a sense of relative proportion more than absolute limits.)
Title
Your choice of title should include the key words that will indicate to the reader what you are doing – a critical analysis – and the nature of the technology for learning and educational context that forms the focus of your critical analysis.
Introduction (300 – 800)
• A statement of your purpose in writing the assignment, indicating its central focus. You have two purposes:
o to employ (your selected ideas from the literature on technologies for learning and/or your discipline/organisational context as) a theoretical framework for analysing the role of the technology for learning in your chosen educational context;
o to critically assess how far this theoretical framework identifies the factors that influence the role played by the technology for learning in your context.
• Your justification for choosing the focus of your assignment (e.g., highlighting the educational importance of making effective use of your chosen technology for learning).
• Your acknowledgement of the scope and limitations of your approach to addressing the assignment tasks (e.g., explaining why you have selected a restricted range of ideas to guide your analysis).
• A brief description of the nature of the technology for learning and the educational context you will be analysing.
• An indication of how you will be addressing the assignment tasks in each of the subsequent sections (literature review, description and analysis, conclusion) so that the reader can see how you will develop your argument. In the literature review section you will set out and define the main ideas making up the theoretical framework for guiding your analysis of the role of your technology for learning. In the analysis section, you will use this theoretical framework to work out the factors explaining why the role of your technology for learning turned out as it did, and noting how far your framework covered the factors that were important in your situation. In the conclusion you will summarise what you have learned about which factors influenced the role played by your technology for learning and reflect on how the extent to which the ideas in your theoretical framework apply to the context you have analysed.
Literature Review (750 – 1500)
• A justification of your choice of the ideas that you will employ as your theoretical framework (e.g., referring to other literature to show that there is a wide range of ideas, explaining why you came to your choice because it appeared to cover important aspects of your technology for learning and educational context).
• A brief definition of the main theoretical ideas and an account of any empirical generalisations that will make up the theoretical framework guiding your analysis, unless you feel clear that these generalisations are self-explanatory. Here you set out your conceptual ‘tools’ for your analysis, before attempting to apply them to your empirical case.
Description and Analysis (1000 – 2000)
• A critical analysis of the use of your technology for learning where you attempt to apply the ideas in your theoretical framework to your educational context. This account should be structured to enable you to explore whether and, if so, how each of the main ideas in your theoretical framework applies to your situation. You may wish to divide the section into a small number of subsections, each indicated by a subsection heading. Description of the details of your technology for learning should be directly related to the ideas in your theoretical framework guiding your analysis. (Avoid the temptation simply to describe your technology for learning with little reference to the theoretical framework. Bear in mind the question: what is the minimum descriptive information that the reader needs to know to understand how far particular ideas in my theoretical framework apply to my technology for learning?)
• Consideration whether any additional factors influenced the role of your technology for learning which were not covered by the ideas in your theoretical framework. If you can identify additional factors, explain why you think the theoretical framework failed to cover them. If you cannot identify any additional factors, explain why you think the theoretical framework covered all significant factors affecting the role of your technology for learning.
• A critical assessment of the extent to which the main ideas in your theoretical framework apply to your situation, supporting your view by giving reasons why you consider that particular ideas do or do not apply fully to this situation.
Conclusion (250 – 700)
• A summary of what you have learned in light of your analysis in addressing the first task, in which you employed selected ideas from the literature on technologies for learning to help you analyse and explain the role of your technology for learning in your educational context.
• A summary of your response to the second task, in light of your analysis. State how far the ideas in your theoretical framework as a whole apply to your technology for learning, and why. Note whether any additional factors applied to your technology for learning, and why.
• A brief reflection on what you have learned more generally about the extent to which it is feasible and desirable to apply ideas derived from theorising and research in one set of contexts to another context which may differ significantly in details.
References
• A list in author-alphabetical order of all literature to which you referred in the text of your assignment, complying with the requirements set out in the assignment writing section of the MA course handbook. The University library has additional information on referencing on its website: <http://www.bath.ac.uk/library/infoskills/referencing-plagiarism/>.
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