© Copyright 2000 by Jerry Drake. The right to make additional exact copies, including this notice, for personal and classroom use, is hereby granted. All other forms of distribution and copying require permission of the author.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Technology-Enriched Innovation

Holt perceived a variety of advantages and disadvantages to the integration of WebCT in the course. Some of the disadvantages included the time and effort to design and implement the web-based materials on a weekly basis. Instructors considering such innovations should carefully consider the resources available, such as research assistants or release time for course construction, before deciding to do wholesale implementations of technology.

The bottom-line advantage for the instructor was the potential increased learning due to the innovations in the instructional cycle. Holt's experience in this pilot study seem to support the argument that web-based assessment is a pedagogically sound strategy to generate feedback on student's level of competence (Chetty, 2000). Compared to a baseline of similar courses in the past, the instructor's criterion for failing grades was much higher (59% vs. a typical 50%) without incurring a large proportion of failing grades. However, this result may have as much to do with a selective attrition of the worst-performing students as it does to the presence of web-based self-assessments and quizzes.

Student responses to the innovations covered the entire spectrum of positive, neutral, and negative responses. About one-third of the students responded positively to the self-assessments and another one-third to the on-line quizzes. Students seemed to react differently to these two major components of the changed instructional cycle. This indicates that the exact nature of the components of an innovation may react with individual differences among students in determining their reactions. Delineating the key individual differences that moderate a student's reaction to different components may be a focus of future research.

Innovation and Risk

Conclusion