Technology Integration Blueprints: Assignment Details

Throughout this Educational Technology Integration course, the focus is on you, the individual teacher or facilitator, and the recommended considerations for integrating technology to support your target audience's learning in your selected learning context. The Technology Integration Blueprints (hereafter called “blueprints”) provide an opportunity to demonstrate and apply your understanding of foundational principles of integrating technology to support learning. In this course, you will complete a set of three blueprints. Each blueprint encourages realism, concise and accurate communication, and the synthesis of instructional design, learning, and technology integration theories and principles.

An inherent challenge in the blueprint development and delivery process is the level of refinement necessary to demonstrate your understanding while remaining brief. Not everything in the blueprint needs to be presented in paragraph form. Graphics, illustrations, diagrams, tables, charts, and other visuals are all encouraged. In the end, the blueprint should feel like a blueprint—not a report, not a project handbook, not a fully written implementation guide, and not a curriculum. The length of the blueprint is explicitly unspecified, but if you must have a number then think of between five and twenty pages (single-spaced, standard font, standard margins) if you were to use only text. The judicious use of visuals and other methods of presentation would affect the overall length of your document (either increasing or decreasing). While each of your blueprints should be primarily text-based and packaged into a single file (like a Google Doc, Word document, or PDF file), they can contain other forms of media (YouTube video, audio/video narration, photography, etc.). It is entirely possible to do too much work and too little work with this assignment, so anything that remains unclear after reviewing these assignment details should prompt a question to the instructor.

To assist students with conceptualizing the learning design decision-making processes that are targeted by this assignment, all blueprints will be based upon the following scenario.

 

Blueprint Scenario

Think of yourself as currently working in one of the following roles^[1]:

1. Educator (AKA teacher, professor, instructor, trainer, etc.)
2. Facilitator (AKA docent, guide, leader, etc.)
3. Learning designer (AKA instructional designer, content developer, curriculum writer, etc.)

You work for an educational organization—an organization that aims to provide educational experiences to its target audience. You are responsible for educating/facilitating/designing content for a specific topic of the many topics covered by your organization^[2].

At your most recent team meeting your supervisor told the group that [the topic you oversee] was not doing as well as s/he would want. Recent scores/evaluations are showing that the target audience is learning only half of the material, and there are a number of comments that [the topic you oversee] is irrelevant to their lives.

You recently completed a graduate-level educational technology course and you have developed an appreciation for the potential that contemporary technologies could have on teaching and learning. After talking with your team you volunteer to explore current technologies and find a technology that is well-matched for the topic, the organization, and the target audience. After the meeting you have a one-on-one conversation with your supervisor, and s/he mentions the following:

1. You will need to write a document—a blueprint of your learning design—that will help convince the “higher ups^[3]” that implementing the technology is worth the resources required (time, energy, money). S/he offered an outline (below) of the “things that the higher ups like to see.”
2. If the “higher ups” do give you a budget, it will be modest.
3. The “higher ups” are also worried about the reputation of the organization. They want to be confident that all learning experiences will make audience members find value in (read as: be impressed with) the organization.

Blueprint Outline

Note: You may organize your blueprint as you prefer, with original headings that you compose. The outline items below are not intended to be topic headings for the blueprint.

Your blueprint should be written with sentences and paragraphs that accomplish the following:

1. Introduction – Purpose of this document
2. Teaching/learning environment description
   1. Description of the setting
   2. Target audience (target learners)
   3. Existing technology in the setting relevant to your integration
3. Teaching/learning problem
   1. Description of the intended lesson/learning
   2. Description of the teaching/learning problem or deficiency^[5]
      1. Verification of problem/deficiency^[6]
4. Selection of technology to integrate
   1. Brief description of technology
   2. Affordances (characteristics) of this technology that directly meet the need arising from the teaching/learning problem
   3. Appropriateness for:
      1. setting,
      2. audience,
      3. content to be learned, and
      4. solving the identified teaching/learning problem
5. Rollout of technology integration via RIPPLES^[7]:
   1. Resources
   2. Infrastructure
   3. People
   4. Policies
   5. Learning
   6. Evaluation
   7. Support
      1. Training
      2. Technical Support^[8]
      3. Pedagogical Support^[9]
      4. Administrative Leadership
6. Conclusion – Persuasive statement to close your proposal

 

 

Document Specifications

1. Length of the blueprint is not exactly specified

   1. Longer than five pages of single-spaced text, probably less than 20 pages of text

   2. 12-point font, 1-inch margins

2. Images, visuals, multimedia are all welcome
3. References to credible outside resources are encouraged, especially where justification or rationale is expected
   1. APA 6^th edition or Chicago-style citations and reference lists
   2. Anecdotal evidence may be offered (as long as it is realistic)
4. Page numbers in header or footer of document

Selecting the Technology

The technology that you choose to integrate into your interpretation of the above scenario must currently exist. In other words, the technology cannot be imaginary. If it is an emerging technology, it must have an adequate amount of documentation publicly accessible so that you and the instructor can understand its capabilities and affordances. The technology is not required to be a thing or process that was originally intended for educational use. Because the blueprint aims for realism, the chosen technology must be reasonably affordable for the setting (with some flexibility for how it would be affordable—for example, through a budget carry-over or gift or grant of the typical size available to teachers in that particular environment). The technology should also be reasonably implementable for the setting. Consider the elements of the RIPPLES model as a guide for helping you make real-world decisions.

Each blueprint should focus on the integration of one distinct technology, but that distinct technology can have multiple components that work together in a sensible way. For example, a math instructor may seek to integrate iPad-based graphing calculator software with a digital projection system that allows for students to wirelessly link their iPads to a projector and enables the entire class to view the calculator app’s screen. Although the calculator and wireless projection system are two distinct technologies, they may be implemented as a cohesive package in a blueprint.

Across the assigned blueprints required for the course, each blueprint should present a different technology. If you choose, all of the blueprints can be based on the same setting.