Running head: FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE:
INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARDS IN UK
Feel-Good Technology and Finding A Posterior Evidence: Interactive Whiteboards in UK
Sheng-Lun (Shonn) Cheng
The Ohio State University
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
The purpose of this paper is to examine evidence or the lack of it for the use of
interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in schools in UK. The time frame of interest to this paper
is from 2002 to 2004 when a pilot project of IWBs implementation was launched in six
school districts at elementary level in UK. The scale of the project allows researchers to
conduct multiple studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation. It is expected
that this research inquiry to look at the use of particular technology—IWBs—in schools
may encourage the same critical perspective to explore other educational technologies at
school settings in UK or other countries.
This paper will start with the introduction of blackboards and interactive
whiteboards and the reasons for the transition from traditional boards to IWBs. The use of
IWBs in business settings and then school settings will also be discussed. In the latter
section, the evidence for IWBs use will be examined in details.
Alfie Kohn (2011) published his book Feel-Bad Education to criticize the
obsession of the current school movement with more rigorous standards. Kohn’s
disappointment with the educational system was answered by a technology initiative in UK
around a decade ago to create feel-good education. The central element of this feel-good
education initiative was to install IWBs in primary school classrooms. It was believed that
IWBs, as an emerging technology then, would wield the magic wand to transform teacher
instruction and student learning. This technological hope was further underwritten by Charles
Clarke, then Secretary of State for Education and Skills:
Every school of the future will have an interactive whiteboard in every classroom.
Teachers will have an interactive replacement for black boards which allow them to
1
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
work with pupils to surf the net, download information and develop presentations.”
(Shaw, 2004)
The prediction by Charles Clarke with such level of confidence is welcome and even
encouraged in business world. However, such claims should be met with empirical evidence
when it comes to teaching and learning. Before moving onto the empirical aspect of IWBs, I
would like to lay down some historical background of IWBs.
The use of boards in school setting can be dated back to around the year of 1850
(Hamilton, 1990). Boards have been used with an intention to serve at least four functions: (a)
focus elicitation during presentation or group discussion; (b) item correction; (c) communal
surface for writing and drawing; (d) communal space of spatial memory (Aytes, 1995;
Greiffenhagen, 2002; Stafford-Fraser & Robinson, 1996; Stefik et al., 1987).
Before the advent of IWBs, traditional boards are the dominant technology for
instructors to present information. Traditional boards can be defined as any “erasable
writing surface whether it is white, black, or some other color, and whether the marks are
made with chalk, crayon, or ink” (Greiffenhagen, 2002). Despite the functions traditional
boards have been offering to classrooms for the past 150 years, there are some limitations
associated with them. Stefik et al. (1987) reported that the limited space of traditional boards
requires presenters to write and erase every now and then. The erased items are not able to be
saved in secure space and retrieved back later with efficiency. Therefore, presenters have to
spend much time arranging information on the board. Worse, illegible handwriting takes
students extra time to guess and comprehend the information. These drawbacks render
2
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
traditional boards to be an inefficient way to deliver information, which reduces students’
academic learning time.
The inefficiency of traditional boards prompts the search for more efficient
presentation technology. Electronic boards, coming into existence for business use
around the early 1900s, are believed to be a promising alternative to the traditional
counterparts.
Electronic boards, later renamed interactive whiteboards, were first developed in
Xerox Parc in Palo Alto around the early 1900s (Elrod et al., 1992). Apart from the
advantage of increasing efficiency, electronic boards allow distance communication and
collaboration, which enables the passive listeners of traditional boards to be an idea
contributor now (Greiffenhagen, 2002). This reciprocal feature of electronic boards
distinguishes themselves from the unidirectional traditional boards and thus obtains the
title “interactive” whiteboards.
Various technologies and projects such as ClearBoard (Ishii, Kobayashi, &
Grudin, 1993), Pick-and-Drop (Rekimoto, 1998), and the CONCERT Lab (Streitz et al.,
1998) have demonstrated the interactivity, remoteness, and versatility afforded by IWBs.
ClearBoard permits two remote users to draw on a shared screen through which
collaborators can see each other. The Pick-and Drop software enables users to pick
objects from Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and drop onto the IWBs. This function
of connectivity and compatibility between different devices invites multiple sources of
inputs invested into a shared task. The CONCERT Lab in Germany creates a space where
each listener is allowed to contribute to the public IWB by typing or drawing on the
private screen in front of every seat. This way, listeners are involved in the creative process.
3
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
The success of IWBs in business settings provides potential for the wide implementation in
school settings.
In 2000, IWBs could be seen in university classrooms and lecture halls. For
instance, instructors at Duisburg University utilized IWBs in an undergraduate computer
science course to reduce the need for students to engage in constant note-taking (Hoppe
et al., 1999). Also, Nakagawa, Oguni, Yoshino, Horiba, and Sawada (1996) reported the use
of IdeaBoard for handwriting recognition and a built-in calculator for math computation.
Ferraro, Rogers, and Geisler (1995) designed a collaborative learning environment based on
the idea similar to the CONCERT Lab in Germany in which each student can contribute to the
public IWB through the individual computer screen.
The historical background of IWBs shows that the basis for the implementation of
IWBs in schools comes from the success in business settings. Before 2002, there was no,
if any, empirical evidence supporting the IWB use in schools. It was not clear that IWBs
would benefit teacher instruction and student outcomes. Before closing this paper with
final remarks, I would like to examine the evidence from various studies conducted
during the Embedding ICT in the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies’ Pilot Project in UK
from 2002 to 2004. This project planned to install IWBs in 12-15 primary schools at
grade 5 and 6 in six school districts in UK. The collective evidence will help us
understand what IWBs has achieved and has not achieved in classrooms.
The evidence for IWBs can be divided into two categories: teaching and learning.
Research shows that IWBs are conducive to six aspects of teaching: (a) flexibility and
4
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
versatility; (b) multimodality; (c) efficiency; (d) lesson preparation and curriculum
development; (e) modeling ICT skills; (f) teachers’ role.
The flexibility of IWBs allows teachers to navigate any part of the electronic
materials with ease (Levy, 2002). Also, Miller and Glover (2002) described teachers’ use of
the screen-splitting function to enhance student comprehension in primary schools. Different
from the mono-modality of traditional boards, IWBs allow instructors to incorporate visual,
auditory, and kinesthetic sources to enrich the content and learning process (Levy, 2002;
Johnson, 2002). Interactive games are also supported by IWBs to make learning math more
engaging and interesting (Edwards, Hartnell, & Martin, 2002; Carson, 2003).
One of the critical functions of IWBs is the ability to record the digital materials for
the later use. The saving and retrieving operations help instructors reflect on used curriculum
and plan on new curriculum with efficiency. Also, IWBs allows information sharing among
instructors, which can forge the community of practice. (Boyle, 2002; Glover & Miller, 2001;
Levy, 2002). The instructional efficiency afforded by IWBs is said to reduce educational
expense (Miller & Glover, 2002).
Apart from instructional efficiency, some researchers described that IWBs could lead
to the increase in students’ ICT skills through observational and hands-on learning
(Goodison, 2002b; Lee & Boyle, 2003). Bell (2002) and Cogill (2002) argued that IWBs
could transform the role of instructor from a lecturer to a mediator. Teachers would spend
more time on facilitating learning process and discussion and asking and answering questions
(Austin, 2003; Cogill, 2002).
5
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
As for the effect of IWBs on learning, improved motivation and engagement is
widely reported (Beeland, 2002; Levy, 2002; Weimer, 2001). Multimodality of IWBs and
the concrete knowledge seem to enhance students’ ability to retrieve previous memory
and are abele to cater to different learning styles (Bell, 2002; Glover & Miller, 2001;
Thomas, 2003).
However, counter-arguments to evidence here are also found in literature. Bell (2002)
and Levy (2002) reported that not every teacher engaged students in transformative and
interactive instruction while using IWBs. Besides, it was observed that the pace of the
instruction was slowed down, leading to student idleness and boredom (Smith, 2001). Too
much information with diverse stimuli might distract and confuse students (Levy, 2002). Last,
it was not certain that IWBs could be applied to every content area (Mayer, 2003).
The evidence for IWBs presented here is encouraging in some sense. Motivating
students to learn and involving them in the learning process are indeed important. However,
the conclusion drawn from these supportive studies does not tell us if IWBs have positive
impacts on learning outcomes. Therefore, there is a need for more experimental studies to
determine the effect.
School is a place of learning. For expensive technologies such as IWBs, it is
reasonable and logical to ask for empirical evidence prior to the district-wide implementation
of the device. However, this paper demonstrates that the implementation of IWBs in UK is
illogical: installation first, evidence later. I argue that the Embedding ICT in the Literacy
and Numeracy Strategies’ Pilot Project is more business-driven than evidence-driven. What
6
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
works in business always looks attractive to education domain. History shows that the
tendency to transfer the success in business to education always receives little resistance
at least at the initial stage. This type of decontextualized thinking warrants attention and
critical examinations.
Reference
Aytes, K. (1995). Comparing collaborative drawing tools and whiteboards: An analysis
of the group process. Computer Supported Collaborative Work, 4(1), 51-71.
Austin, N. (2003). Mighty white. The Guardian, 7.
Beeland, W. Jr. (2002, July). Student engagement, visual learning and technology: Can
interactive whiteboards help? Paper presented at Annual Conference of the
Association of Information Technology for Teaching Education, Trinity College,
Dublin.
Bell, M.A. (2002). Why use an interactive whiteboard? A baker’s dozen reasons!
Retrieved from http://teachers.net/gazette/JAN02.
Boyle, J. (2002). Virtual magic. Times Educational Supplement, 26.
Carson, L. (2003). Board work, not boring. Times Educational Supplement, 9.
Cogill, J. (2003, June). How is the interactive whiteboard being used in the primary
school and how does this affect teachers and teaching. Paper presented at the annual
meeting of BECTA Research Conference, London, UK.
Edwards, J. A., Hartnell, M., & Martin, R. (2002). Interactive whiteboards: Some lessons
from the classroom. Micromath, 18(2), 30-33.
Elrod, S., R. Bruce, R. Gold, D. Goldberg, F. Halasz, W. Janssen, D. Lee, K. McCall, E.
7
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
Pedersen, K. Pier, J. Tang, and B. Welch (1992, May). Liveboard: A large
interactive display supporting group meetings, presentations, and remote
collaboration. Paper presented at the annual meeting of Computer Human
Interface, Monterey, CA.
Ferraro, A., Rogers, E., & Geisler, C. (1995, October). Team learning through computer
supported collaborative design. Paper presented at the annual meeting of
Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Bloomington, IN.
Goodison, T. (2002b). Learning with ICT at primary level. Journal of Computer
Assisted Learning, 18, 282–29.
Glover, D., & Miller D. (2001). Running with technology: The pedagogic impact of the
large scale introduction of interactive whiteboards in one secondary school.
Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 10, 257–276.
Greiffenhagen, C. (2000). Out of the office into the school: Electronic whiteboards for
education. Programming Research Group Technical Report TR-16-00. Oxford
University Computing Laboratory.
Hoppe, H. U., Luther, W., Mühlenbrock, M., Otten, W. & Tewissen, F. (1999).
Interactive presentation support for an electronic lecture hall: A practice report. In G.
Cumming (Ed.), Advanced Research in Computers and Communications in Education,
pp. 923-930. IOS Press.
Ishii, H., Kobayashi, M., & Grudin, J. (1993). Integration of interpersonal space and
shared workspace: ClearBoard design and experiments. ACM Transactions on
Information Systems (TOIS), 11(4), 349-375
Johnson, C. (2002). The writing’s on the board. Educational Computing & Technology,
8
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
9, 58-59.
Kohn, A. (2011). Feel-bad education and other contrarian essays on children and
schooling. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Lee, M., & Boyle, M. (2003). The educational effects and implications of the interactive
whiteboard strategy of Richardson Primary School. Canberra: Richardson
Primary School. Retrieved from
http://richardsonps.act.edu.au/RichardsonReview_Grey.pdf
Levy P. (2002). Interactive whiteboards in learning and teaching in two Sheffield
schools: a developmental study. Retrieved from
http://www.shef.ac.uk/eirg/projects/wboards.
Mayer, R.E. (2003). The promise of multimedia learning: using the same instructional
design methods across different media. Learning and Instruction 13, 125–139.
Miller, D., & Glover, D. (2002). The interactive whiteboard as a force for pedagogic
change: The experience of five elementary schools in an English Education
Authority. Information Technology in Childhood Education Annual, 2002(1), 519.
Nakagawa, M., Oguni, T., Yoshino, T., Horiba, K., & Sawada, S. (1996, September).
Interactive dynamic whiteboard for educational applications. Paper presented at
the annual meeting of International Conference on Virtual Systems and
Multimedia, Gifu, Japan.
Rekimoto, J. (1998, April). A multiple device approach for supporting whiteboard-based
interactions. Paper presented at the annual meeting of Computer Human
Interface, Los Angeles, CA.
9
FEEL-GOOD TECHNOLOGY AND FINDING A POSTERIORI EVIDENCE: INTERACTIVE
WHITEBOARDS IN UK
Shaw, M. (2004). White board pledge scotched. Retrieved from
https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=398428.
Smith, H. (2001). Smartboard evaluation: Fnal report. Retrieved from
http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/whiteboards/ report.
Stafford-Fraser Q, Robinson P (1996, April) BrightBoard: A video-augmented
environment. Paper presented at the annual meeting of Computer Human
Interface, Vancouver, Canada.
Stefik, M., G. Foster, D. G. Bobrow, K. Kahn, S. Lanning, and L. Suchman (1987).
Beyond the chalkboard: Computer support for collaboration and problem solving
in meetings. Communications of the ACM, 30(1), 32–47.
Streitz, N. A., Geißler, J., & Holmer, T. (1998, February). Roomware for cooperative
buildings: Integrated design of architectural spaces and information spaces.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of CoBuild, Darmstadt, Germany.
Thomas, A. (2003). Little touches that spell success. Times Educational Supplement, 23
Weimer, M. (2001). The influence of technology such as SMART board interactive
whiteboard on student motivation in the classroom. Retrieved from
http://www.smarterkids.org/research/paper7.asp
10