Marzano weighs in on Interactive Whiteboards

Dr. Robert Marzano is one of the leading researchers in education and I highly recommend any of his books. He's a true believer in data driven instruction and uses research to back his claims on the best way to instruct.

I ran across this article in Educational Leadership that he wrote about interactive whiteboards.

A few interesting tidbits...

"The study results indicated that, in general, using interactive whiteboards was associated with a 16 percentile point gain in student achievement. This means that we can expect a student at the 50th percentile in a classroom without the technology to increase to the 66th percentile in a classroom using whiteboards.

A second feature is the use of graphics and other visuals to represent information. These include downloaded pictures and video clips from the Internet, sites such as Google Earth, and graphs and charts. Use of these aids was also associated with a 26 percentile point gain in student achievement.

A third feature is the interactive whiteboard reinforcer—applications that teachers can use to signal that an answer is correct or to present information in an unusual context. These applications include dragging and dropping correct answers into specific locations, acknowledging correct answers with virtual applause, and uncovering information hidden under objects. These practices were associated with a 31 percentile point gain in student achievement."

He also weighs in on the use of "clickers" that allow the teachers to use data driven instruction. The best part of the article however is when he explains specifically what you should or shouldn't do to have the best results. For all of us SMART users - think SMART notebook when he says "flipchart."

Marzano's recommendations:

• Teachers should think through how they intend to organize information. They should group information into small, meaningful segments before they start developing the digital flipcharts. Once they've organized the content, then they can design the flipcharts to complement the organization. To ensure that they don't run through the flipcharts too quickly, teachers can insert flipcharts that remind them to stop the presentation so students can process and analyze the new information.

• Digital flipcharts should contain visuals, but those visuals should clearly focus on the important information. Also, no single flipchart should contain too many visuals or too much written information.
• After asking a question and getting student responses using voting devices, the teacher should typically discuss the correct answer along with the incorrect answers, making sure to elicit opinions from as many students as possible.
• When using reinforcing features like virtual applause, teachers should make sure that students focus on why an answer is correct or incorrect. Although these features can produce high engagement and certainly enliven the atmosphere in a classroom, they can also be distracting if used without a clear focus on essential content.

Read the full article here.