NL research on ICT in Education

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Four in Balance Monitor 2011

The Four in Balance Monitor is an annual publication of Kennisnet, the Dutch, state-funded national School Network, and provides insight into the situation regarding ICT use in education. It focuses in particular on the benefits of ICT in education. From it I have selected and translated a number of paragraphs that relate to IWBs in Education in particular.

Introduction
ICT in primary, secondary, and vocational schools appears to have become a natural part of education in recent years. That is shown in the Four in Balance Monitor 2011 reporting the current state of ICT use in education in the Netherlands. ICT makes teaching more efficient, effective and attractive, but the purchase of computers or interactive whiteboards (IWBs) does not lead automatically to quality improvement. The effectiveness of ICT is closely linked to the presence of a teacher who manages to bring coherence between the learning content, ICT application and the student. 

Teachers use computers in their lessons for an average of 8 hours a week. This figure is the same as last year’s. Teachers forecast that the amount of the lesson time spent using computers will increase in the next three years by approximately 40%, to an average of 11 hours a week (Figure 3.3).

Four in Balance, Main findings, p. 8

The introduction of the IWB has been faster than managers were expecting according to previous research. Almost every school has one or more IWBs. It is expected that soon almost every classroom in primary schools will be equipped with an IWB.

Four in Balance, Added value ICT, p. 20
The IWB turns out to be a good medium for enriching classroom instruction. A classroom teacher can support plenary instructions and explanations with image, sound and video, which helps the students to remember content and stay engaged.
Another advantage is that the teacher can reuse the digital lessons and publish them in the electronic learning environment (VLE) for future consulation by the students.  The impact of the IWB can be enhanced with the use of response systems (also known as clickers), for example to check whether students have understood the content  and so make lessons more interactive (Lemke, 2009).

Research studies on the use of the IWB for instructional purposes are thus largely positive. Teachers and students are generally very enthusiastic about the interactive whiteboard. Students who were instructed on the IWB by  a competent teacher with mastery of content, methodology and  technical skills, performed better (Fisser, 2007, Van Ast, 2010; Heemskerk, 2010, Somekh, 2007, Marzano, 2009, Oberon, 2010).

Four in Balance, Vision, p. 45
  [...] Teachers also expect to be using the IWB more intensively. Currently half of the teachers works with the IWB often or very often and – according to the teachers – this will have increased by 25%.

Four in Balance, ICT infrastructure, p 60
While in recent years schools have mainly invested in computers, the emphasis now is more on the purchase of IWBs.
School managers indicate that the number of IWBs over the next years will further increase. Additional budgetary priorities are fast and wireless internet connections.

Four in Balance, IT infrastructure, p 62
In recent years schools have replaced the traditional chalkboard by the IWB (Figure 7.4) in a remarkably fast pace. In secondary vocational education teachers in almost 90% of all training programmes have access to an IWB. In primary and secondary education there are IWBs in almost all schools. The introduction of the IWB has gone faster than management expected in previous polls (Kennisnet, 2009)

Four in Balance, IT infrastructure, p 63

Figure 7.4 shows that the percentage of schools with an interactive whiteboard is  approaching saturation. To more accurately indicate the degree to which teachers have access to IWBs , we use the so-called digital-classroom ratio, the ratio of IWBs and the number of classrooms.

The digital classroom ratio indicates that in primary education almost one in two classrooms is equipped with an interactive whiteboard. In secondary education there is an IWB in one in six classrooms, and in vocational education the ration is one eleven. School leaders expect in to invest heavily in additional purchases of IWBs the coming period. For primary schools this means  that soon there will be an IWB in almost every classroom.

PS In the meantime an English version of the full report has become available and can be downloaded here.
PS 2 A special thanks to the researchers who granted permission to re-use some of the graphs.