Case Study – Blended Learning with Runestone interactive textbooks

Brad Miller introduces an early version of Runestone Interactive and the engaging, interactive features that can drive student engagement.

Introduction

A new day is dawning for the 21st-century student. While computers are an increasingly ubiquitous force in modern education, the tool itself is seldom understood as much as it is relied upon. Enter Computer Science, a relative newcomer to the K-12 scene that invites students to reach beyond the screen to grasp the fundamental principles driving technology (Mohr‐Schroeder, 2019). As a partner in this endeavor, Interactive digital textbooks provide an all-in-one, integrated learning environment available anywhere students have access to the internet. Recognizing their power to facilitate broad exposure to the field of Computer Science, the open-source eLearning environment Runestone Interactive gives teachers access to dozens of free courses plus the power to create their own; indeed, their mantra is “democratizing textbooks for the 21st century” (Miller, 2019).

Blended Learning is Personalized Learning

Chapter 20 of Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology describes the engagement strategy of personalized learning as that which, among other things, allows students to “progress through learning goals at their own pace” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2017, p. 177). Blended learning is one such personal learning model that mixes traditional teacher-delivered content and assessment with interactive online sources, introducing greater variety to the classroom experience and giving students a more active role in learning. Teachers can guide student learning, introducing concepts and providing necessary scaffolding along the way, but the role previously played by the printed textbook is filled by a much richer and more engaging counterpart. As a result, e-textbooks “also do not seem to favor traditional teacher centered approaches in which the teacher is the main source of feedback in the classroom” (de Oliveira et al., 2014, p. 93) An ever-increasing volume of online sources exist for such interactive learning environments, and some are not only free but structured to allow students to log directly into their personal portal to the learning environment previously arranged by their teacher.

Active Learning Demands Interactive Resources

Research shows that “interactivity is considered as a critical factor to promote student learning effectiveness, in not only the traditional classroom setting but also online education” (Sun et al., 2018, p. 323). This begs the question as to what constitutes real “interactivity.” The SAMR model of technology integration differentiates between technology that is merely a substitute (“S”) for traditional resources and that which augments, modifies, and redefines the educational practices of the past (Reiser & Dempsey, 2017, p. 176). Unquestionably, the initial adoption of e-textbooks was merely substitutionary, although they certainly offered some improvement with regards to longevity and portability. Runestone Interactive takes interactivity to the other end of the acronym bringing together on a single page the instructor’s recorded video, live programming examples, and responsive assessments with feedback. Not only can the student run their code to see its result, Runestone Interactive encourages students to edit and re-edit the provided code snippets to see how their changes affect the program’s functionality. Since this happens right on the same page with the instructional material, students don’t have to shift their focus away from the textbook which gives them ready, contextual access to the very documents that inform their experimentation. Finally, the “Codelens” feature opens a window into the internal memory representation of the program’s data while it runs, providing critical insight into how the language stores and manipulates information, an important perspective for beginners in appreciating the fundamental principles of data processing (Silver, 2017).

Motivation for Constructing Meaning

Researchers studying the positive effects of interactive textbooks on business school students suggest that “students who are engaged with interactive activities would have more effective learning than those who are not, as they are more intrinsically and extrinsically motivated and more likely to have flow learning experience” (Sun et al., 2018, p. 325). In fact, students in their study displayed a change in attitude from skepticism to preference for digital textbooks precisely because those resources were interactive. Their research contributes significantly to our understanding of how interactive textbooks affect student engagement because, contrary to what one might expect from a tech-savvy generation, students and teachers alike have even recently shown a lack of appreciation if not antipathy toward e-textbook adoption (McNeish et al., 2014). In defense of richer, interactive textbooks, Hoadley and Van Haneghan point out that the field of instructional design has come to appreciate how important multiple literacies are in the process of personal meaning-making (Reiser & Dempsey, 2017, p. 72). For example, ideas derived from the process of decoding symbolic representations contained in diagrams or illustrations contribute substantively to the meaning made through the reading of text alone. While traditional textbooks certainly contain such additional representations, interactive textbooks add video, animations, and responsive assessments to the list of resources from which the user can construct meaning.

Conclusion

Runestone Interactive, like several other interactive textbook endeavors, is in its relative infancy. It is exciting, nevertheless, to witness the intersection of two undeniable entrepreneurial currents: the arrival of rich and interactive Web 2.0 technologies widely available to students on affordable personal devices, and the maturing of instructional design beyond a focus on any one delivery system in favor of understanding and unleashing the human mental technology behind how students construct meaning for themselves (cf. Reiser and Dempsey, 2017, Section I). Perhaps the time is just right for an explosion of interactive textbook adoption in the 21st-century classroom.

References

de Oliveira, J., Camacho, M., & Gisbert, M. (2014). Exploring Student and Teacher Perception of E-textbooks in a Primary School. Explorando La Percepción de Estudiantes y Profesor Sobre El Libro de Texto Electrónico En Educación Primaria., 21(42), 87–95. Academic Search Complete.

McNeish, J., Foster, M., Francescucci, A., & West, B. (2014). Exploring e-Book Adopters’ Resistance to Giving Up Paper. International Journal of the Book, 11(4), 23–35. Humanities International Complete.

Miller, B. (2019). About—Runestone Interactive. Runestone Interactive. https://www.runestoneinteractive.org/pages/about.html

Mohr‐Schroeder, M. J. (2019). The Race to Implement Computer Science for All. School Science & Mathematics, 119(5), 237–239. Education Research Complete.

Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (Eds.). (2017). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (Fourth edition). Pearson.

Silver, M. S. (2017). How You Store Information Affects How You Can Retrieve It: A Fundamental Principle for Business Students Studying Information Systems and Technology. American Journal of Business Education, 10(4), 127–142. ERIC.

Sun, Q., Norman, T. J., & Abdourazakou, Y. (2018). Perceived Value of Interactive Digital Textbook and Adaptive Learning: Implications on Student Learning Effectiveness. Journal of Education for Business, 93(7), 323–331. Academic Search Complete.