"Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards"-review by Jamie Gardner

Robert Marzano's article (2009) "Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards" aimed to evaluate the impact of using interactive whiteboards in classrooms on student achievement. Marzano (2009) begins by describing the relatively new technology of interactive whiteboards. Interactive whiteboards are large displays that connect to a computer and a projector. The computer’s desktop is then projected onto the board’s surface, where users can control the computer with a pen, finger, or alternative device. After a brief description of the novel technology, Marzano purports that while interactive whiteboards have been embraced by many individuals in the education profession, little research has been conducted to demonstrate their effectiveness. Consequently, he conducted a research study that incorporated both a control group and an experimental group using 85 teachers and 170 classrooms. Two sets of lesson plans were developed that differed only in the use of an interactive whiteboard. The study results indicated that the use of interactive whiteboards with classroom instruction was generally associated with a 16 percentile point increase in student achievement (Marzano, 2009). When coupled with personal response systems-handheld voting devices that student use to enter their responses to questions- or with the use of graphics and other visuals to represent information, classroom instruction with whiteboard technology observed a 26 percentile gain in student achievement (Marzano, 2009).

An interesting contradiction to these results was also noted, where in 23% of cases, teachers had better results when teaching without the use of the whiteboards. Upon examination of classroom instruction using whiteboard technology, it was identified that potential pitfalls of the technology were present. These negative results in student achievement was associated with using the personal response systems without utilizing the immediate feedback to guide instruction, not organizing or pacing the content well, using too many visuals, and paying too much attention to reinforcing features (Marzano, 2009). Based on these findings, Marzano purports that the use of whiteboard technology is beneficial in the classroom setting so long as teachers organize their content to keep it as concise and pertinent as possible, use immediate feedback features to guide instruction, and ensure that students are aware of why an answer is correct or incorrect. He further concludes that interactive whiteboards have “great potential as a tool to enhance pedagogical practices in the classroom” (Marzano, 2009, pg. 82), provided that teachers use the technology thoughtfully and incorporate what is already known in regards to best-practices in the education profession.

Whiteboard technology has significant potential application in the educational setting. It is widely accepted that students retain more knowledge if they are actively engaged in the learning process. Moreover, millennial students have been found to prefer the use of technology in classroom instruction, and appreciate immediate feedback and multi-tasking. Interactive whiteboards would serve to accommodate these generational needs, and would also allow teachers to record their lessons for students to review as desired. These recorded teaching lessons could be reviewed by students who are struggling with learning the content, for review prior to administration of a test, by students who were absent from class, or to teach a distance-learning course to reach a wider geographic population of students. It could be used to increase students’ access to higher education, especially those who live in rural areas who do not live in close proximity to a college university.

While interactive whiteboards have a significant potential to improve student learning outcomes, similar to all teaching modalities, they must compliment the expertise and knowledge of the teacher in order for them to achieve their full potential.

Reference

Marzano, R.J. (2009). Teaching with interactive whiteboards. Educational Leadership,67(3), 80-82.