Educational affordances that support the development of innovative thinking skills in large classes were examined. Focus groups with students found that providing access to lecture materials before class, using technology to demonstrate problems step-by-step, and enabling collaboration and feedback helped develop skills like knowledge acquisition, critical thinking, and entrepreneurialism. However, students felt some instructors underutilized technology affordances and suggested minimum technology standards. Developing innovative thinking requires balancing instructor support, learning tasks, effective technology use, and learner autonomy.

1. Educational Affordances that Support Development
of Innovative Thinking Skills in Large Classes
Julaine Fowlin, jfowlin@vt.edu
(Instructional Design and Technology)
Dr. Catherine Amelink and Dr. Glenda Scales
(Dean’s Office, College of Engineering)
Research Funded by NSF TUES Grant # 1140425

2. Session Goals
 Share how a modified educational model was used to
examine how innovative thinking skills can be developed
in large lecture classes.
 Describe implications for designing innovative learning
experiences.

3. Educating Undergraduate Engineers
High school to university transition
Larger class size
Digital generation?
Their needs?
Generation gap between
teacher and students
Teaching with technology
Industry needs
“Teaching is a complicated practice… an example of an ill-structured discipline, requiring
teachers to apply complex knowledge structures across different cases and contexts.”
(Koehler and Mishra, 2009 p. 61)

4. Developing Innovative Thinking
“Industry needs engineers who can think globally and work in teams; society needs
engineer-entrepreneurs who can start their own companies and create jobs.” (Lumsdaine
and Lumsdaine, 1995 p. 200)
What are the
characteristics
of innovative
thinkers?
Can these skills
be facilitated in
large classes?

5. Developing Innovative Thinking
Skill
Knowledge
Acquisition
Scaling
Elaboration
Critical Thinking
Self-Initiated
Exploration
Collaboration
Entrepreneurialism
Related Process
Identifying new words and concepts, use of rehearsal strategies to
memorize information.
Organizing information and concepts so that they can be integrated into
designing of new ideas and information.
Summarizing known information; ability to reframe content.
Application of previous knowledge to unknown, ill-defined and/or new
situations; generation of new ideas.
Ability to determine own level of understanding; ability to question
ideas and information being presented.
Ability to seek and entertain new ideas from peers and instructors;
ability to utilize peers as a means to check new ideas and concepts.
Use of team members to determine what creative ideas can
become valuable innovations; effective presentation of new ideas to
others.

6. Educational Affordances
Affords: Support or make possible (Koehler
and Mishra, 2009 )
Educational affordances
• Characteristics of the educational
environment that support or make
possible specific learning outcomes.
• Relationship between learner and
properties of the educational
environment.
(Krishner, 2002)
Tripartite model based on “Teacher Understandings of Technology Affordances and Their Impact on the Design of
Engaging Learning Experiences,” by Foo et al., 2008, Educational Media International,42(4), p. 305.

7. Method and Analysis
 3 Separate focus groups (N=15)
• Purposeful Sampling: Students enrolled in courses taught by 3 faculty members that
taught large lecture classes and used very different pedagogical approaches.
 Protocol
•
•
•
Students’ motivation for using technology or other learning tools
Instructor’s pedagogy that they perceived helped them with innovative thinking and
learning in general
Tools they found helpful in the learning environment
 Analysis
•
An a priori coding scheme, based on the educational affordances conceptual framework
posed by Foo et al. (2005), and indicators (derived from social constructivist theory) of
innovative skills, was used to identify themes that emerged.

8. Findings: What Worked for Innovative Skills Development

Access to PowerPoint slides before class

Maximize presentation features of available technology

Work problems in class step by step using tablet and/or
on paper using ELMO and different color markers

On demand access to recorded slides from class

Pull students work anonymously in class and give constructive feedback

Ability to sync electronic files using applications like, Google Drive, Dropbox and
Skydrive.

Ability to use technology to collaborate and communicate

Office hours especially virtual

Text book tutorials or other online resources

9. Findings: Additional Themes
 Balance between instructor support and learner autonomy especially for using
software like Mathematica and Matlab
 More opportunities for collaboration and entrepreneurialism
 More qualitative feedback on assignments
 Under utilization or ineffective use of technology affordances
• Students actually suggested that their be a minimum standard of use
among faculty regarding technology use

10. Take Away
Teacher
Support
Problem Solving
Learning Tasks
Effective use of
Technology
Innovative Thinking
Skills Development
Learner
Autonomy

11. Works Cited
Foo Seau, Y., Ho, J., & Hedberg, J. (2005). Teacher understandings of technology
affordances and their impact on the design of engaging learning experiences.
Educational Media International, 42(4), 297-316.
Kirschner, P. A., 2002. Can We Support CSCL? Educational, Social and Technological
Affordances for Learning. Retrieved from
http://dspace.ou.nl/bitstream/1820/1618/1/Three%20worlds%20of%20CSCL%20Ca
n%20we%20support%20CSCL.pdf
Koehler, M., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is Technological Pedagogical Content
Knowledge (TPACK)? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education,
9(1), 60-70.
Lumsdaine, M., & Lumsdaine, E. (1995). Thinking preferences of engineering students:
implications for curriculum restructuring. Journal of Engineering Education, 84(2),
193-204.