I have observed that there are a huge different between the IT investment in hareware, software and training. This situation lead to inefficiency of using Information Technology. For example, IT department buy a lot of hareware and software that the teachers and students seldom used; the teachers have no idea what they can choos; even some simply technology that the teachers require most are never introducted.
I believe that there is a "golden ratio" of IT investment in system providing to training which is most effectiveness to education, and it's worth to find the ratio.
Firstly, I hypothesized that there is a ratio of IT investment in system providing to training that can maximize the effect. Here I define that "system providing" mean the hareware and software that provide to teachers and students, and "training" included the knowledge of Information Technology that they can choose, the knowledge to applicate them and the idea to combine them in education.
The method we will use is collect the information from different schools and find the relation between the ratio of investment and the effect. Questionnares can be sent to the IT coordinator to collect the information about the investment. The data collected is reliable if the questionnare is set in detailed to guide them what is included in which fields. However, the effectiveness of IT in education is difficult to measure. I think it can be approximately measure by setting questionnares to all the teachers and the students in the school to determine the effectiveness of IT in education. For examples, we can ask the teachers how much they know about the latest Information Technology and how often they use them; or we can ask the students do they agree it is useful for the Information Technology that the teacher used.
After the information is collected, we can calculate the Correlate Coefficient between them and make a conclusion of the most suitable ratio of IT investment in system providing to training.
Yes Oscar, I agree with you that it is a common scenario in HK schools to spare too little money on training when compared with that spent on purchasing hardware devices. However, it may be due to the policy of the EDB. Funds are provided to schools for procurement of new hardware devices, but funds for training are seldom provided. Maybe a large scale of research as you have suggested should be conducted for reference by the EDB.
ReplyDeleteAndy