Implementing the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education: Technology as Lever

The Principles, created by Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson with help from higher education scholars, the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), and the Education Commission of the States (ECS), and Johnson Foundation, distilled findings from decades of research on the undergraduate experience. Excerpts from this article by Art Chickering and Stephen Ehrmann apply the framework to teaching with technology (full text is available online).

Since the Seven Principles of Good Practice were created in 1987, new communication and information technologies have become major resources for teaching and learning in higher education. If the power of the new technologies is to be fully realized, they should be employed in ways consistent with the Seven Principles….

1. Good Practice Encourages Contact Between Students and Faculty
Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of class is a most important factor in student motivation and involvement….

Communication technologies that increase access to faculty members, help them share useful resources, and provide for joint problem solving and shared learning can usefully augment face-to-face contact ….The biggest success story in this realm has been that of time-delayed (asynchronous) communication. Traditionally, time-delayed communication took place in education through the exchange of homework, either in class or by mail…. Such time-delayed exchange was often a rather impoverished form of conversation, typically limited to three conversational turns: (1) the instructor poses a question (a task); (2) the student responds (with homework); (3) the instructor responds later (comments/grade).

The conversation often ends there…. Now, however, electronic mail, computer conferencing, and the World Wide Web increase opportunities for students and faculty to converse and exchange work much more speedily than before….

Professor Norman Coombs reports that, after twelve years of teaching black history at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the first time he used email was the first time a student asked what he, a white man, was doing teaching black history. The literature is full of stories of students from different cultures opening up in and out of class when email became available. Communication also is eased when student or instructor (or both) is not a native speaker of English; each party can take a bit more time to interpret what has been said and compose a response. With the new media, [contributions] from diverse students become more equitable and widespread.

2. Good Practice Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation among Students
Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated….

The increased opportunities for interaction with faculty noted above apply equally to communication with fellow students. Study groups, collaborative learning, group problem solving, and discussion of assignments can all be dramatically strengthened through communication tools….

The extent to which computer-based tools encourage spontaneous student collaboration was one of the earliest surprises about computers. For example: One of us, attempting to learn to navigate the Web, took a course taught entirely by a combination of televised class sessions [and] a course Web page. The hundred students in the course included persons in Germany and the Washington, D.C., area….

These team members never met face to face. But they completed and exchanged Myers-Briggs Type Inventories, surveys of … experience and computer expertise, and brief personal introductions. This material helped teammates size one another up initially; team interactions then built working relationships and encouraged acquaintanceship. This kind of “collaborative learning” would be all but impossible without the presence of the media we were learning about and with.

3. Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques
Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives….

The range of technologies that encourage active learning is staggering. Many fall into one of three categories: tools and resources for learning by doing, time-delayed exchange, and real-time conversation. . . .

We’ve already discussed communication tools, so here we will focus on learning by doing. Apprentice-like learning has been supported by many traditional technologies: research libraries, laboratories, art and architectural studios, athletic fields. Newer technologies now can enrich and expand these opportunities. For example: …simulating techniques that do not themselves require computers, [for example] helping chemistry students develop and practice research skills in “dry” simulated laboratories before they use the riskier, more expensive real equipment. . . .

4. Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback
Knowing what you know and don’t know focuses your learning. In getting started, students need help in assessing their existing knowledge and competence. Then, in classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive feedback on their performance….

The ways in which new technologies can provide feedback are many — sometimes obvious, sometimes more subtle. We already have talked about the use of email for supporting person-to-person feedback. . . . [Technology also has] a growing role in recording and analyzing personal and professional performances. Teachers can use technology to provide critical observations for an apprentice; for example, video to help a novice teacher, actor, or athlete critique his or her own performance. Faculty (or other students) can react to a writer’s draft using the “hidden text” option available in word processors: Turned on, the “hidden” comments spring up; turned off, the comments recede and the writer’s prized work is again free of “red ink.”

As we move toward portfolio evaluation strategies, computers can provide rich storage and easy access to student products. . . . Computers can keep track of early efforts, so instructors and students can see the extent to which later efforts demonstrate gains in knowledge, competence, or other valued outcomes. . . .

5. Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task
Time plus energy equals learning. Learning to use one’s time well is critical for students and professionals alike….

New technologies can dramatically improve time on task for students…. Some years ago a faculty member told one of us that he used technology to “steal students’ beer time,” attracting them to work on course projects…. Technology also can increase time on task by making studying more efficient. Teaching strategies that help students learn at home or work can save hours otherwise spent commuting to and from campus, finding parking places, and so on. Time efficiency also increases when interactions …fit busy work and home schedules. Students and faculty alike make better use of time when they can get access to important resources for learning without trudging to the library, flipping through card files, scanning microfilm and microfiche, and scrounging the reference room….

6. Good Practice Communicates High Expectations
Expect more and you will get it. High expectations are important for everyone — for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated….

New technologies can communicate high expectations explicitly and efficiently. Significant real-life problems, conflicting perspectives, or paradoxical data sets can set powerful learning challenges that drive students not only to acquire information but sharpen their cognitive skills of analysis, synthesis, application, and evaluation.

Many faculty report that students feel stimulated by knowing their finished work will be “published” on the World Wide Web. With technology, criteria for evaluating products and performances can be clearly articulated by the teacher, or generated collaboratively with students. General criteria can be illustrated with samples of excellent, average, mediocre, and faulty performance. These samples can be shared and modified easily. They can provide a basis for peer evaluation, so learning teams can help everyone succeed.

7. Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning
Many roads lead to learning. Different students bring different talents and styles to college…. Students need opportunities to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them. Then they can be pushed to learn in new ways that do not come so easily.

Technological resources can ask for different methods of learning through powerful visuals and well-organized print; through direct, vicarious, and virtual experiences; and through tasks requiring analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, with applications to real-life situations. They can encourage self-reflection and self-evaluation. They can drive collaboration and group problem solving. Technologies can help students learn in ways they find most effective and broaden their repertoires for learning. They can supply structure for students who need it and leave assignments more open-ended for students who don’t. Fast, bright students can move quickly through materials they master easily and go on to more difficult tasks; slower students can take more time and get more feedback and direct help from teachers and fellow students. . . .

Technology Is Not Enough
The Seven Principles cannot be implemented by technophiles alone, or even by faculty alone. Students need to become familiar with the Principles and be more assertive with respect to their own learning….

Faculty members who already work with students in ways consistent with the Principles need to be tough-minded about the software- and technology-assisted interactions they create and buy into. They need to eschew materials that are simply didactic, and search instead for those that are interactive, problem oriented, relevant to real-world issues, and that evoke student motivation. . . .

Several hundred thousand copies of the Principles have been distributed on two- and four-year campuses in the United States and Canada. (Copies are available at cost from the Seven Principles Resource Center, Winona State University, (507) 457-5020, and additional information online).

Chickering, A. W., and S. C. Ehrmann. 1996. Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. AAHE Bulletin (October).