A Study on the Learning Difficulties of Integrating Ination Technology into Project-Based Learning Instruction.doc

a study on the learning difficulties of integrating information technology into project-based learning instructionmei-chi chena, wen-ching leeb*, li-chen chenbaprofessor, department of business education, national changhua university of education, bao-shan campus, no.1, jin-de road, changhua city, taiwan.bph. d. student, department of business education, national changhua university of education, bao-shan campus, no.1, jin-de road, changhua city, taiwan.*corresponding author: abstractthe purpose of the study was to identify the learning difficulties of students when the economics project-based instruction is implemented in business vocational high schools. on the other hand, how teachers should help students solve the difficulties during project process by properly providing scaffoldings? 18 students of second year from one business vocational high school, including 4 male and 14 females participated with the research. theyve attended the economic project program for two semesters. a qualitative research method-participatory action research was used to collect and analyze the research data.past research shows that majority students hold positive attitude on the activities of project-based program, since courses become more dynamic with the integrated information. in this paper, the result reflected the past research that the project-based program does elevate students competences on exploring and collaborating. however the findings of this research reveal that students had different learning difficulties during the initial, process, and final stage of the economic project program. teachers should provide various scaffolding to help students solve those difficulties. yet, there are difficulties to overcome in taiwan to implement the learning activities of integrating information technology into project-based learning instruction, such as the timeframe of implementation and teachers ability of the program implementation.keywords: information technology, project-based learning1. introductionthe primary approach of classroom instruction in school education has long been teacher-centric for the objective of dealing with the pressure of various entrance exams; teachers, as a result, have been accustomed to “feeding” students with knowledge in classrooms by frantically supplying them with supplemental handouts, exam questions and problem-solving techniques. such an approach to classroom instruction in which students mono-directionally listen to teachers lectures passively gives out massive amounts of knowledge and seldom paves the way for reciprocal student-teacher interaction, or students active participation in various learning activities in order to reach the desired instructional objectives. granted that the instructional method emphasizing lectures allows students to obtain academic knowledge, it lacks the techniques and ability to give them what they need to utilize the knowledge learned to solve real-life issues (west & watson, 1996).the current focus of educational reform stresses on the cultivation and training of students problem-solving ability, and school education should implement classroom lectures in the context of societal conditions with students experience at the core, so that the knowledge and day-to-day experience that they learn can be integrated to further empower them as they solve the issues in life. the aforementioned notion is an exact match with the central thought of project-based learning approach, in which the learning activity revolves around one theme for active exploration; students must engage themselves in activities such as research design, finding solutions to problems, decision-making, surveying or analyzing, so that they may have the opportunity to organize the materials at hand and learn independently within a longer span of time for the objective of presenting realistic work (jones, rasmussen, & moffitt, 1997; thomas, mergendoller, & michaelson, 1999). from the angle of school education, schools are able to cultivate students ability to research on, organize, present, reflect on learning materials, as well as work as a team and utilize available information to solve real-life issues provided that schools can adequately make use of the rich learning resources in the environment to guide students in the integration of the knowledge in various academic disciplines and validate the knowledge learned by students (thomas, 2000).it is the discovery of the researcher, in the process of teaching economics, that the use of the conventional approach to instruction illustrating the abstract terms in the discipline hardly arouses students interest. the researcher also believes that students must be exposed to real social phenomena in the process of classroom instruction, so that they may realize the significance of economics and further incorporate the knowledge thereof into daily living that enables them to make correct economic judgments and choices. economics is of the scope of social science and an important academic subject, but research shows that the concepts in economics are not easy to be grasped, and the instructional design of traditional materials on economics are generally inclined to the “feeding” approach such that students have low learning motives, often need to memorize the content, severely depend on the content of the text and lack the space needed for independent thinking and further exploration.with the above research motive, the researcher attempts to incorporate the project-based approach into the teaching and learning of economics in vocational high schools. with such a learning process, the instructor seeks to provide a good learning environment in which students are able to discover issues, explore economic knowledge they are yet to know, as well as guide students to furnish project reports on various subjects of economics through discovering hidden economic questions, principles and phenomena using the economic information and data collected. in the exploratory process, the qualitative research methodology is adopted in extended in-depth surveys, in order to analyze and sum up the issues facing the instructor and students as well as devise solutions, bringing knowledge and information obtained into a real teaching context and proposing suggestions in regards to the project-based learning of economics, so that the teachers who desire to seek the integration between the academic knowledge taught at commerce oriented vocational high schools and students life experience may have a holistic and feasible case study and solution that can be implemented, to further nurture a better earning environment for students that allows them to truly enjoy the fun of constructing knowledge independently.2. literature reviewproject-based learningproject-based learning is suitable to fulfill the need of the trend of innovative learning, and is in accordance with the ideal of curriculum reform nowadays with the development of diversified instructional reform. hsu (2001), a local scholar, proposed that project-based learning is a construction-oriented learning methodology that provides students with a highly sophisticated and realistic project approach allowing them to establish a theme, design questions, engage in action planning, execute problem solving, make appropriate decisions and actions, complete the exploratory process and present their final work. the primary purpose is to present a solution to the phenomenon in which the learner is incapable of applying knowledge, the solution allowing the use of the assignments on viable academic or technical topics given by the instructor to learners that integrate the concepts presented in the chapters of the textbooks of the academic discipline, enabling the design of situations that increase the learning motive, develop meta-cognition strategies and foster a cooperative learning environment, such that learners may learn not only the knowledge and ability of problem-solving, but also to utilize the knowledge obtained (blumenfeld, soloway, marx, krajcik, guzdial, & palincsar, 1991).the conventional mode of teaching is mostly confined by prescribed course materials and “teacher-centric” learning style; yet, one of the most pressing issues direly in need to be resolved in the educational arena is the paradigm shift to “student-centric” thinking that creates both a realistic context and community of learning to further and strengthen students understanding of relevant concepts (yarnall & kafai, 1996). therefore, more scholars in recent years have been advocating project-based learning and instruction, in that teachers should provide an open and support learning environment, and engage in the curriculum design on realistic topics that are interesting or significant to students, as well as project-oriented exploration on the questions raised through group learning, in order to present the final product through the use of technology as the tool of cognition (krajcik, blumenfeld, marx, & soloway, 1994; musthafa, 1997; krajcik, czerniak, & berger, 1999; tzou ,2001; thomas, et al., 1999).there are numerous applications of project-based learning in a variety of academic disciplines, hilton (1988) implemented it in language learning; peterson and myer (1995) applied it in counseling; yamzon (1999) introduced it into elementary education; as well, this approach is also incorporated into disciplines such as mathematics, geography, course integration, education, psychology, atmospheric science, natural science, et al. in addition, perkins (1992) has demonstrated that project-based learning activities are able to produce positive educational effect, especially in the areas of enhancing students learning motive, as well as advanced-level capabilities such as problem-solving, thinking, information collection and application (breivik, patricia, & senn, 1994); torp and sage (1998) discovered that the cooperative approach in the context of project-based learning process allows learners to develop and open mind, realize that knowledge is constructed communally, learn the ability to collaborate, negotiate with, as well as forgive and be grateful for others, all of which are crucial in the context of social interaction. in recent years, relevant research and examination on project-based learning is done regarding its implementation amongst different age and instructional performance among various academic disciplines; some scholars even have obtained fairly good learning performance through the combination with elements of information technology, meanwhile having difficulties in the execution of curricula for reasons such as students deficient ability to screen through information, the lack of teacher-student interaction, inadequate control over the progress of projects, heavy course load, students deficiency in academic knowledge, et al; teachers, as such, would need to spend more time in assisting students to solve such difficulties (chen, 1998; hu, 2003).to sum up, all relevant studies show that project-based learning is of significant help to students capabilities in exploratory and cooperative learning; on the other hand, students mostly give affirmation to project-based activities, meanwhile improving the professional knowledge and teaching techniques of teachers (chou, 2002; huang, 2002).the teaching of economicseconomics is a discipline within the arena of social sciences studying the economic activities of human beings; “social science” is an umbrella covering disciplines studying human behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and the economic activity means the behavior of choice. as a whole, resources are “scarce” in real life and human “desires” are with no limits, so the issue of choice, that which is within the scope of economics, never departs from mankind, from birth schooling, job search, marriage to overarching social issues such as economic growth, inflation, et al.education in economics in other nations of the world begins with elementary-school children where students are equipped with knowledge on the subject according to their different levels, and hence the degree of emphasis on the discipline in the rest of the world. from the perspective of macroeconomics, economic standing and policies are crucial to the future development of a country, in that sustainable national development is only possible when citizens of the country have fundamental understanding on the long-term development of the national policies, coupled with the joint effort between the governmental and corporate sectors. therefore, the cultivation of correct economic concepts not only allows the people to understand the correlations between themselves and issues pertaining to their livelihood, but also, they may possess the ability to critique and think independently that further foster effective construction of the nation as well as social stability. nonetheless, the current mode of instruction on the discipline in taiwan generally follows the lecturing methodology that is one of the four established by national council of economic education (ncee) of the u.s. on economic education, in which the instructor lectures on the fundamental concepts, principles and techniques of computation, and provide illustrations for students found in the examples given in the textbook for the purpose of obtaining basic concepts, followed by the giving of homework assignments. in such an instructional approach, students always absorb economic knowledge and mechanically rehearse the thinking process, but it does not help achieve the objective of instilling skills in economic education so that as students make economic and personal decisions, they may be able to use adequate thinking process and apply economic concepts and principles, the inductive framework of economics and thinking techniques into the issues they face, in order to logically and reasonably resolve economic issues and make wise decisions.therefore, this study attempts to incorporate concepts of economics into project-based activities, whereby the teacher provides a learning environment in which students may actively discover issues and explore uncharted areas of knowledge, as well as use higher-level thinking and critique to raise pertinent phenomena through the data collected, and finally, further furnish project reports. the role of the teacher as students engage themselves in project-based activities will be that of an facilitator who help learners conduct tasks such as data collection and analysis, who also provides the necessary fundamentals to make up learners deficient experience that could prevent them from proceeding with the activities, and lastly, who, through the aforementioned, changes the conventional mode of instruction and learning.3. methodologythis study adopts the participatory action research of the qualitative research methodology to conduct research planning, in order to explore the difficulties encountered by students of commerce-oriented vocational high schools as they engage in project-based learning activities, as well as how teachers should provide learners with an adequate framework that supports and help students, at appropriate timing, overcome the hurdles, finishing projects on economics; a total of 18 second-year vocational high school students participated in the study, with 4 males and 14 females. there were a total of 3 teaching instructors including the researcher, an intern teacher from the department of business administration, and a university professor. not interfering with existing teaching, the extracurricular activity time, namely from 13:00 to 16:00pm once a week, was used to conduct a 1-year study. the research data collected during the research period included: video clips of classroom instruction, journal entries of teachers, interviews with students, files on students learning progress, journals on observations of teaching, et al. the “constant comparison method” was used in data analysis involving continual data collection; the collected data was then coded inductively and filed pursuant to relevant categories and themes in order to construct consistent types and form conclusions through further analysis, induction (glaser & strauss, 1967). for the purpose of protecting the privacy of study objects as well as ethical considerations, aliases would be used in the place of the names of instructors and students who participated in the study or the names would be omitted.4. findingsthe researcher played the role of advisor-and-teacher throughout the entire process that let students engage themselves in independent learning in an environment designed by the teacher through the use of the application of economic concepts and project-based learning as the pillars of all instructional activities, as well as “learning together” at the core, so that students could construct economic knowledge in a steady fashion. this study referred to the implementation of project-based activities proposed by thomas (2000): three stages are required in order to furnish a project report on economics, namely beginning, process and end results. in the first stage, available themes for selection are available for final confirmation of the most suitable one; the second stage involves the finalization of research purpose, as well as data search, categorization and judgments; in the final-result stage, collected data is compiled and analyzed for the production of results and the final project report. the following is a list of suggestions and solutions proposed based on the discoveries of the research during the implementation of project-based activities:the students ability to associate relevant economic concepts and degree of sensitivity is lower than anticipated.the first task of foremost importance for the teacher is to develop a challenging