Creative Education
2012. Vol.3, No.7, 1177-1183
Published Online November 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ce) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ce.2012.37175
Copyright © 2012 SciRe s . 1177
An Innovative Change in Technology Integration: Training
Pre-Service Kindergarten Teachers to Be Courseware Designers
Chien-Heng Lin
Department of Ea rl y Childhood Education, As ia University, Tai chung City, Chinese Tai pei
Email: chienlin@asia.edu.tw
Received September 2nd, 2012; revised October 1st, 2012; ac c ep t e d O c to b er 1 5th, 2012
This study focuses on exploring whether pre-service kindergarten teachers can be trained to be designers
of digital courseware through learning a series of technology training courses in a limited period of time
during their teacher training program. The results show that preschool pre-service teachers can become
courseware designers and have the capacity to integrate and produce multimedia courseware in their
classroom teaching. This study also demonstrates an adequate training course and pattern for training
teachers to be courseware producers, which can be referenced by other teacher training institutions.
Keywords: Courseware Designer; Kindergarten Teacher; Pre-Service Teacher; Professional Development;
Technology Training
Introduction
The integration of multimedia technology in education has
been applied pervasively in different level of teaching and
learning and has become an inevitable component in many re-
cent educational reforms. Due to the rapid development of com-
puter technology, a plethora of computer courseware designed
to assist learner’s learning and teacher’s teaching has been de-
veloped. Researchers have asserted that computer courseware
can provide students with a more flexible, diverse, friendly
learning environment and present a logical situational layout
and an easy learning interface design (Tsai, 2010). Digital mul-
timedia materials allow teachers to teach more vividly and at-
tractively, and can also demonstrate objects or scenes which
cannot easily be brought into the classroom (Volman, 2005).
Although multimedia technology has many advantages in
teaching and learning, still not many teachers have applied this
technology in their classrooms. According to Wozney, Venka-
tesh and Abrami’s (2006) investigation, most teachers use com-
puter technology to implement information searching, word
processing and documenting, which are individual usages.
Palak and Walls (2009) and Culp et al., (2005) also reported
that teachers mainly apply computer technology for dealing
with documental and communicational work, only less for in-
structional use, with no mention of creating digital teaching
aids. One of the main reasons cited for this is the teacher’s ex-
perience of using digital media. As Sime and Priestley’s (2005)
statement, teacher’s experience of using digital technology can
predict whether teachers will apply digital technology in their
future classroom teaching. Especially for new teachers; their
digital technology competency and experience tremendously
influenced the integration of digital technology in their future
classroom teaching (Slaouti & Barton, 2007).
Many researchers advocate that teacher’s integration of com-
puter technology in classroom teaching is influenced by how
much they have been trained (Baylor & Ritchie, 2002; Gala-
nouli, Murphy, & Gardner, 2004). Teacher’s competency and
experience of using digital technology are mostly learned and
enhanced during their teacher training courses. However, most
of the teacher training institutions could not supply sufficient
digital technology practice, and only teach them how to use the
published multimedia materials (CD-Rom and DVD) or to use
presentation functions such as Microsoft PowerPoint. Conse-
quently, it is very rare for teachers to obtain advanced training
courses which allow them to learn how to make multimedia
teaching aids or courseware by themselves.
Therefore, we realized that teachers may only have very lim-
ited capacity for using digital technology. Although teachers
may receive some computer enhanced classes and may obtain
some knowledge of digital technology, they still lack confi-
dence and ability in the practical application and are only con-
fident in using a few basic skills (Galanouli et al., 2004). As a
result, many teachers choose to adopt the published digital
teaching material to be their integration tool, such as CD-ROMs
or websites, due to their convenience. However, these digital
products may not exactly match teacher’s teaching needs or the
teacher can only use part of the packaged material. Teachers
may need to spend a lot time to reorganize the material. Also,
the cost of the published digital material may be high and not
affordable all the time. Besides, for teachers to search for ap-
propriate digital teaching products is very time consuming,
which may reduce teacher’s willingness to integrate digital te-
chnology into classroom teaching.
To solve the problems, we may rethink the role teachers
should play in technology integration. The teacher’s role should
be transformed from not only being the users but to be the de-
signers, producers and implementers. Due to the rapid devel-
opment of computer technology, it has become easier to access
and operate digital technology than before. To design and make
digital material it is not necessary to have an understanding of
computer programming. Teachers can easily become producers
of digital material and courseware through using the multime-
dia computer software, such as Adobe Flash. Once teachers
have the capacity to design and produce their own digital mate-
rial, it will be very helpful for them to integrate digital tech-
nology into classroom teaching effectively and fulfill their
C.-H. LIN
teaching needs.
Many researchers suggest that technology integration must
take into account teachers’ specific habits and needs in the ap-
plication of technology (Becker, 2000; Harris, 2005; Wilson,
1999). If teachers can design and manipulate courseware by
themselves, the digital products will be more suitable for tea-
cher’s actual needs and habits.
However, it will not be possible to develop a teacher’s com-
petency in designing and producing digital courseware in just
few hours training or few days of workshops. The training plan
has to be competently developed. It is necessary for teachers to
have long term training to develop the capacity of using digital
software and making digital courseware. Therefore, during
teacher-training in the college pre-service teachers have to learn
all the technologies and multimedia skills. This will enable
them to be able to easily integrate multimedia into classroom
teaching and allow them to effectively design appropriate digi-
tal courseware. The present teacher training institutions in Tai-
wan have insufficient arrangements for technology training for
pre-service teachers to allow them improve their capacity for
using digital technology. It has become essential for teacher
training institutions to arrange complete courses to train pre-
service teachers in the design of digital courseware. This study
focuses on exploring whether pre-service teachers can be train-
ed to be courseware designers through learning a series of mul-
timedia software and exploring the process of what they have
gone through during their training and exhibiting their work at
the end.
This study aims to explore how pre-service teachers can de-
velop their competency in multimedia technology and be train-
ed to be courseware designers in a series of training courses in
the teacher-training institutions. We explored teachers’ whole
learning process, including their perspectives at the beginning,
middle, and after their the training; the challenges they encoun-
tered, and discussed their learning results; thus trying to build a
framework for teacher’s technology training in teacher training
institutions.
Methodology
Research Background
The background of this study was based on one teacher train-
ing institution in Asia University, located in the middle of Tai-
wan. This institution trains university students to be early child-
hood educators as well providing some professional projects for
the purpose of enhancing pre-service teachers’ professional abi-
lity in various aspects related to early childhood education. One
of the training projects is digital courseware design which in-
tends to train pre-service teachers to be familiar with applying
multimedia technology in teaching and to develop as course-
ware designers.
Training Courses
In order to allow pre-service teachers to learn sufficient com-
puter competency, a committee for deciding the curriculum was
involved with two multimedia and three early childhood pro-
fessors in Asia University. Through their discussions and analy-
sis, a few indispensable aspects for manipulating multimedia
courseware were identified, which included computer graphics,
image processing, 2D animation and interactive interface de-
sign. Based on this curriculum, we expect to develop students’
ability to be able to manipulate multimedia software and create
digital courseware. Three training courses were decided upon
by the committee; these included digital graphics and image
processing, two dimensional animation, and digital courseware
design. According to the complexity and learning sequence, the
three courses are divided into two semesters and each lesson
plan was discussed by the committee. Each course has its own
learning objectives to reach and a final task to be completed by
the end of the course. These final tasks will be such as creating
a digital picture story book at the end of the course of digital
graphic and image processing course, and an animation story
picture book at the end of the course of 2D animation course.
At the end of the whole training program, students will be re-
quested to design and complete a CD-ROM courseware which
has to include items of instruction, drill, evaluation and games;
in a similar manner to a published teaching CD-ROM available
on the market.
Some relative multimedia design theories and principles will
be enhanced in the lessons, such as multimedia cognitive theory
(Mayer, 2005; Mayer, Heiser, & Lonn, 2001). Models and prin-
ciples for integrating computer technology in teaching will be
introduced as well, such as ADDIE (Analysis, Design, De-
velop, Implementation, Evaluation) (Dick & Carey, 1996), the
ASSURE (Analyze learners, State the objective, Select method,
Require learning participation, Evaluate and revise) (Heinich,
Molenda, Russell, & Smaldino, 2001), the WebQuests (Intro-
duction, Task, Information Sources, Process, Evaluation, Con-
clusion) model (Dodge, 1997), and the PLTRSAR (Problem
statement, Learning objectives, Technology required, Rationale,
Strategies, Assessment, Reflection) model (Wang & Woo,
2007).
Participants
The choice of the participants represents purposive sampling
and included thirty-six pre-service teachers from the school of
early childhood education who, in their third year of university,
had chosen the digital courseware design course. At the begin-
ning of the course participants were informed of their participa-
tion in this study and their agreement was sought and received.
This training project was designed to improve pre-service tea-
chers’ ability in using multimedia software and courseware
design and extended over two semesters, with three profess-
sional digital training courses.
Data Gathering an d Analysis
The data reported in this study were collected with qualita-
tive methods. The researcher uses various methods of qualita-
tive data collection, such as participated observation, group in-
terview, individual depth interview and analysis of students’
portfolios and works, as the tools to record and investigate both
the student’s perspectives and the entire learning process. The
data content included students’ initial perspectives on joining
the training course, the learning process, the difficulty of learn-
ing, their learning achievements, students’ learning portfolio,
and their final perspective of the entire training project. The
whole period of the training course, one year, was recorded and
the students’ inner perspectives from the beginning to the end
of the training was examined. The students’ progress was re-
corded during different stages of learning. The research method
of grounded theory was adopted as the data analysis method.
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C.-H. LIN
Through a series of analysis steps grounded theory allows the
data to be analyzed systematically from the raw data corpus,
codes to be generated and some initial low level concepts to be
built. Thus gradually we may develop some more abstract
themes and then substantive theories are constructed in the final
stage (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). Two core analysis concepts,
constant comparison and theoretical sampling, were adopted for
the data analysis.
Result
The results show the entire process of pre-service teachers’
training of multimedia technology. Based on a long term col-
lection of the qualitative data, we analyzed and classified the
process into six significant stages, which are: the initial per-
spective of learning multimedia technology, the learning of
fundamental technology (manipulate digital images), the learn-
ing of advanced multimedia technology (design animation and
interactive interface function), integration with preschool cur-
riculum, actual production of multimedia courseware, and fi-
nally the reflection of the whole training course.
Student-Teacher Initial Perspective of Learning
Multimedia Technology
Before the start of the training course we investigated stu-
dent-teacher perspectives on learning multimedia technology.
Many students commented that the reason they selected this
module is that they believe it will improve their professional
development and bring a positive effect to their future occupa-
tion. One of the teachers stated:
Due to the high development of technology, using digital
courseware to assist classroom teaching is an essential trend. If
I can learn the skills for creating digital courseware, it will be
very helpful in improving the various professional capacities
which I may need in my future work.
Most of the teachers cl aimed that they are quite interested in
learning new technologies and are willing to take the chal-
lenges.
I think that I am quite confident to deal with computer soft-
ware because we have to use computers to do a lot of work
every day. To learn computer multimedia software, such as
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop or Flash, should be very interest-
ing. I look forward very much to learning it.
Students seem to be clear about what they are going to learn,
but still feel some ambiguity over the detail. In addition, some
students expressed their anxiousness about learning new tech-
nology and suggested that the teacher presents the material in a
simple way and slows down the teaching schedule. The lecture
responded:
I understand clearly they are kindergarten pre-service tea-
chers. It is normal for them to feel a lack of confidence and be
anxious about learning multimedia technology. However, the
present multimedia software has become very easy to use. There
is no need to write a computer program. The material can be
created with just a click of the mouse button on the screen.
Therefore, I encouraged them in the beginning of the course by
saying that once you can use Microsoft Word for word proc-
essing, you will have no problem in manipulating this multime-
dia software.
In brief, before joining this training module, pre-service tea-
chers may have some initial concerns about learning new tech-
nology. However, most of the students’ perspectives in partici-
pating in this training course are positive and full of expectation.
The teachers also encourage them to take this challenge and
persuade them that they have the potential to complete this
training successfully.
Learning Basic Skills of Computer Graphics and
Image Processing
In this stage, we focus on training students to be familiar
with using fundamental multimedia software, such as computer
graphics and image processing. We used the computer software
Adobe Illustrator CS3 and Photoshop CS3, which were pro-
vided by the university computer center, to train students to do
computer vector graphics, phantom editing, and some simple
3D graphics.
Initially the teachers were introduced to the various kinds of
graphic tools and skills; and by the middle of the semester they
were requested to create a digital image based on a particular
topic; in the final part of the course students learned how to
design an electronic picture book and had to complete a whole
digital story book for their final evaluation, which is shown as
Figure 1.
At this stage, many students showed a high interest in their
training and demonstrated that they could accomplish every
task requested by teacher. They show great sense of achieve-
ment when they presented their work to others. As one of the
pre-service teachers reported:
I think this course is quite challenging. I spent many nights
and a lot of energy on practicing and doing the homework.
However, it is very interesting for me to do so and I overcame
most of the difficulties when I engaged in doing the homework.
It was a little bit time consuming, but I am quite satisfied with
my learning and my piece of work.
Another student also comments:
I am quite confident with my ability to deal with computer
graphics and image editing. Once I have to apply it in my fu-
ture work, I will feel comfortable and not worried about it.
The teacher also comments about students learning at this
stage:
We have good interaction during the classroom teaching and
I can tell they do have pay a lot of attention during this course.
Although they are not familiar with technology, they can achieve
my targets and produce many excellent works in their final
homework.
In this fundamental stage of learning, students show great
Figure 1.
A digital story book m ade by one of the participants.
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C.-H. LIN
confidence and interest in being involved in the course and
most of them can reach the teacher’s standard educational tar-
gets.
Learning Advanced Skills, Animation and Interactive
Design
After becoming familiar the fundamental skills of producing
and editing digital images, the students are equipped for learn-
ing and developing their animation skills. At this stage students
start to learn how to make 2D animation and design a story
animation, which is shown as Figure 2. The computer software
Adobe Flash was used to make animation. At the end of the
course students were asked to transform a picture book to an
animation. In this work, firstly, they had to apply the image
process to cut down the characters and backgrounds from the
picture story book; secondly, they then needed to make the
characters move using their animation skills with animation
software; thirdly, they had to add the subtitles, asides and the
background music with the same software. During these proc-
esses of learning and practicing, they developed a lot of skills
and acquired a lot of knowledge about creating animation as
well as other digital materials. As one of the students shared her
perspective in this stage:
To do picture book animation is a very challenging task for
me, it is an integrative work, it has to combine computer
graphics and image processing and transform digital material
into vivid animation with animation software. In the beginning,
my animation did not look very harmonious. However, through
the teachers advice I have made some modifications and my
work improved a lot, and the final piece of work is really awe-
some. Although to complete this task is really time consuming
and needed a lot of effort, I did overcome all the obstacles and
completed my first work of story book animation. I am so happy
with that.
Learning How to Integrate in Classroom Teaching
The design of the digital courseware has to fulfill the needs
of the actual classroom teaching and should be easy for teachers
to operate. In order to train students to design an appropriate
digital courseware suitable for teachers’ needs, students were
asked to go into a kindergarten classroom to do observation for
one week. During this week they had to observe and record the
Figure 2.
A story animation made with Adobe Flash by one of the participants.
teacher’s teaching and clarify what are the best methods to
integrate courseware and what circumstances are suitable for
using digital material and what type of courseware are needed.
Furthermore, the teacher also collected many types of course-
ware CD-ROMs which are published in the current market and
analyzed their content and function. Through a discussion of
the students’ empirical field work and teacher’s analysis of the
current courseware, many tool kits for courseware integration
have been clarified, such as storytelling, instructional presenta-
tions, student learning evaluations, drills, games and portfolio
making. Consequently the teachers can demonstrate various
practical examples of how to create the courseware. One of the
students stated that this arrangement is very helpful for them in
the design and organization of appropriate courseware.
We have learned a lot of multimedia editing skills, however it
is still not clear to me how decide where to involve courseware,
when to use it, and how to make it. Although we know how to
use multimedia to create story picture books, classroom deco-
rations, or work sheets, the other parts of the applications are
very ambiguous for me. To go into the classroom and analyze
the final product gives me a comprehensive direction and de-
tails of how to plan and make useful courseware.
With reference to this part the teacher commented that:
This process helps students to accumulate experience of in-
tegration, which can lead students to arranging and designing
more appropriate digital tools to assist classroom teaching.
Completing an Entire Courseware
In this stage students learn how to make real courseware,
which will include all the functions of a published CD-ROM.
Firstly, the teacher introduces the interactive functions between
the user and the computer interface and teaches students to
write a simple computer program to control the digital elements
in the scene; for which the ActionScript computer language in
Adobe Flash CS3 was used. Through the control of Action-
Script computer programming, students can easily produce an
interactive interface by as clicking buttons, as shown in Figure
3. This function can allow users to teach interactively with stu-
dents. Secondly, the teacher also demonstrates to students how
to use Adobe Flash CS3 ActionScript to design the evaluation
functions, such as true-false test and multiple-choice test, plus
some games with drill functions correlated with the teaching
topic, such as the jigsaw puzzle (shown in Figure 4), connect
the dots, or the replacement game, etc. At this stage, some stu-
dents declared their difficulty in learning due to their unfamili-
arity and fear of computer programming. One student stated
that:
When the teacher mentioned we had to learn computer pro-
gramming, I felt very worried because we have not had this
experience before. Although the teacher promised us that it
would not be as difficult as we think, we were still very worried
about whether we could handle it well.
Based on this point the teacher raised some strategies to im-
prove the students’ experience:
I understand clearly that they are concerned about writing
computer programs. However, the control of the interactive
functions needs no complicated computer programming and
normally requires only one or two lines of code to be written,
until we are designing games, which might become more com-
plex. In that case, I select some games which are played fre-
quently by children and provide the program and the codes for
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C.-H. LIN
Figure 3.
An interactive interface controlled by clic king buttons.
Figure 4.
A Jigsaw puzzle game related to the teaching topic “Reptilia”.
the games. I do this to elucidate the principles of game design
and demonstrate the meaning of each code. Based on the
structure of these examples, what they have to do is to change
the variables, the content and the background images. They can
easily design a game which can fulfill their actual needs.
After practicing the control of a fundamental code, the tea-
cher assigns a teaching theme to every student and asks them to
develop an entire curriculum and produce digital courseware
correlated to the theme. This teaching courseware has to in-
volve the functions of instruction, drill, evaluation and game
playing. All these functions and content are presented on the
front page, as shown in Figure 5. The user only needs to click
the selected button on the front page to go to the selected func-
tion. The completed courseware can be exported into an EXE
file and burned to a CD. An instructional courseware has been
completed, which is the same as a published CD-ROM course-
ware in the market.
Reflection of the Whole Training Course
At the end of the training course the whole training course
was assessed, including the arrangement of the curriculum,
teaching pedagogies, students’ learning process and the presen-
tation of the results. Most of the course participants agreed that
they had greatly improved their professional development in
multimedia technology. One of the students noted that:
I think I have improved a lot in the capacity of doing multi
Figure 5.
A Front Page of a completed courseware in relation
to world traveling.
media editing during this years training. It is hard to believe
that I can do digital photographic image editing, story anima-
tion, interactive functioning of an interface and simple game
making. Before that I thought they were very difficult and very
hard to learn. But now, through this series of courses, I am
quite confident in dealing with them and can produce some
digital products for classroom teaching.
Another Student Also Claimed That
I believe that these training courses were well arranged by
the teachers. All the courses are well connected, and arranged
in proper order from the basic to the advanced. The teachers
not only taught us how to use the digital software but also
taught us how to apply digital multimedia to the actual class-
room teaching. Although our profession is early childhood
education, we can complete a CD-ROM courseware at the end
of our training. I agree that this project is quite successful.
However, a few of the students complained that to complete
the homework was very time consuming. One of the students
comments:
We have spent most of our time on this training course, but
we still have other courses that need to be completed. Although
we can handle what the teachers have requested, actually we
have felt under stress during this training year.
The teacher responded on this point that:
In learning how to create courseware the students not only
have to focus on knowing the techniques, but they also need to
be able to operate practically by themselves. That is why the
teacher has to arrange some specific task to lead the students
through the practical aspects. Through the process of practice
and manipulation they learn how to apply all the skills and
become more familiar with using the software. So, in the initial
stage they have to spend a lot of energy and time on the practi-
cal aspects. Once they have mastered this stage, they will have
the freedom to do other kinds of work.
Many participants commented that this training course culti-
vated their capacity for successfully dealing with digital course-
ware design. They believe that it will help their professional
development in the future and provide them with a variety of
vocational alternatives.
Discussion
Through a series of training courses lasting two semesters
and a long term qualitative data collection and analysis, the
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C.-H. LIN
results show that pre-service teachers can be trained to be de-
signers and producers of digital courseware in the absence of
previous training in computer programming. Through this se-
ries of training programs they are now confident of being able
to complete digital teaching material and courseware which is
similar to the published CD-ROM in the present market.
However, some students did show their anxiousness and lack
of confidence during the initial stage of the training course
because they were unfamiliar with these computer technologies.
Through the teachers’ clarification and illustration of the logic
and objectives of the whole curriculum to the student-learners,
they gained sufficient understanding of the teaching content and
pedagogy to reach an understanding of the learning process
with the teacher. Most of the participants overcame their initial
anxiety and engaged in the learning process and successfully
completed the tasks by the end of the course. This finding coin-
cides with Beckers and Schmidt (2003) and Beckers and Rik-
ers’s (2006) research that computer anxiety was found to corre-
late with students’ perceptions of their own computer skills and
experience.
Except for students’ mental obstacles, the most critical fac-
tors which may influence the success of the training is the de-
sign and implementation of t he curriculum. In this st udy, through
a series of discussions with a number of experts in the field of
early childhood education and multimedia, we decided on a se-
ries of training courses which can fit with pre-service teachers’
level of computer technology and can fulfill the actual need of
preschool classroom teaching. Therefore, the design of the trai-
ning courses had to follow a sequence of learning logic and
consider student’s competency in using computers. The cur-
riculum started from a fundamental course, such as computer
graphics and image processing and progressed to the advanced
courses such as the design of animation, interactive interface
and simple games, and ended with the completion of a CD-
ROM of courseware. This also indicated that proper learning
strategies can help students to overcome their anxiety in learn-
ing new technology and achieve their learning goals (Namlu,
2003).
The evaluation of students’ learning was based on the com-
pletion of students’ work and a project provided by the teachers.
Through the completion of homework tasks students can ex-
perience an entire process of making digital courseware. In
addition, through the teachers’ suggestions and feedback given
in their work evaluation, students can accumulate more practi-
cal experience of making digital material and create more ma-
ture work for their future needs in classroom teaching.
This study was designed to cultivate pre-service teachers’
professional ability in applying multimedia, and thus greatly
differs from the traditional training course. Typically, in Tai-
wan, this type of training course is used for in-service teachers
and normally is designed to be of just a few hours’ duration or a
one day workshop. The content of these courses is limited to
the transmission of the principles and theories of how to inte-
grate technology and sometimes there is a demonstration of
how it works. It is very rare for the actual practice of making
digital courseware to be approached. There is a need to fill the
gap between theory and practice and help teachers to improve
their ability in using multimedia technology (Keengwe & On-
chwari, 2009). Therefore, it is essential to train and equip tea-
chers with the skills necessary to improve their ability in the
integration of technology (Keengwe, 2007). In fact, teachers
still play the role of user in the integration of multimedia in
classroom teaching. Teachers could not make courseware for
themselves and although they preferred to spend a lot of effort
and time in searching for and selecting suitable digital material
for their teaching, they frequently found that the materials did
not exactly fit their actual needs. This situation creates a lot of
obstacles for teachers in the process of technology integration.
Therefore, a teacher’s role should be promoted from the user to
the designer in order to create the digital courseware which can
actually fulfill their teaching needs. Through a series of training
courses during their teacher-training period, teachers can be-
come courseware designers and will have the capacity and ex-
perience to integrate and produce multimedia courseware in
their future classroom teaching.
Conclusion
Integration of digital multimedia in classroom teaching is not
just a slogan or a concept to be understood. Instead, it is the
implementation of computer technology in combination with
teaching and learning. Through the rapid development of com-
puter technology various digital courseware and teaching aids
are developed and have evolved swiftly. However, these de-
signed coursewares do not normally fit the teachers’ needs
completely because most of the designers are not teachers who
actually teach in the classroom. Teachers can only select and
adopt some related and useful digital material from the pub-
lished market, which causes an inefficient and ineffective inte-
gration in classroom teaching. In order to resolve this awkward
situatio n, the time for teachers to become coursewa re designers
has arrived. They are no longer just playing the passive role of
“a user” but an active role of “a creator”.
One condition to be overcome for teachers to become de-
signers is to develop their ability to use multimedia technology.
But the traditional training course, seminar and workshop are
too brief and do not provide enough detailed information to
train teachers to become courseware designers. Only a series of
multimedia training courses and long term training can develop
teachers to become practical courseware designers during their
teacher training period. Therefore, this study aims to provide an
insight into the experience of a group of pre-service teachers
during a year of digital technique training through a series of
courseware designing courses. This study shows that pre-ser-
vice teachers can be trained to be courseware designers capable
of planning and producing sufficient digital courseware which
can fulfill teachers’ classroom teaching needs. This study has
also demonstrated an adequate training course and pattern to
train teachers to be courseware producers; an experience which
can be referenced by other teacher training institutions. This
result has broken the barrier that defined the production of mul-
timedia teaching aids or courseware as the domain of the engi-
neer or computer programmer, it is now within the domain of
the qualified school teacher. We also advocate that the role of
teacher-user should be promoted to the role of teacher-designer.
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