Example Of Research Paper On Digital Tools For Adult Learners

Digital tools to increase academic success for the adult learner

Modern society is at a critical stage of its development. Unfolding civilizational shift involves changing ways of life, different mentality and behavior. Person ceases to be primarily subject to influence from the impersonal economic and political structures, and becomes the subject actively implementing the right to choose, by means of which personality is self-fulfilling. Under these conditions, there arise new demands to education, as the socio-cultural system is largely determined by the nature of society and the individual; there matures the need to address the contradiction between the declared goals of the educational process and its actual results.
However, the way to eliminate many of the problems is through the computerization of society, because information is infinite, all being updated by resource development. In the world, there come the new information technologies (computer, global information knowledge base, satellite communications systems, etc.), replacing traditional media of communication: mail, letter, phone. New technologies are based on fundamental principles, including those relating to the world (Selwyn, Gorard & Furlong, 2006). Rapidly changing face of the modern world, the nature and the way of human communication, manufacturing activity. All this has a serious impact on the quality of the character of the educational process. It is with the computerization of education and adult learning in particular that specialists presently hope for a real opportunity to build a modern public education system.
Currently in the world, there goes formation of a new educational system focused on uniting the global information educational space. This process is accompanied by substantial changes in pedagogical theory and practice of the educational process. The content of education is enriched by new procedural skills, capacity to handle information, creatively solve educational problems, with emphasis on individualization of educational programs. Traditional methods of information - oral and written language, telephone and radio communications are giving way to computer-aided learning, the use of telecommunication networks on a global scale. There is increasing the role of science in the creation of educational technologies, adequate to the level of public knowledge.
The concept of technology is one of the most popular in the modern science of education. Despite this, there are different points of view on the possibility of using the term technology in relation to the educational process, as technology involves a set of methods of processing, manufacturing, change of state, properties, shape, material, carried out in the process of production, which is contrary to the principle of individualization of the learning process. Another problem is the lack of a unified approach to the definition of the concept of educational technology.
The UNESCO education technology is considered as a systematic method of creation, application and definition of the whole process of teaching and learning with the acquisition of knowledge, taking into account technical and human resources and their interactions, which concentrates on optimizing forms of education. For the traditional learning process, there always existed and exists its own traditional education technology, typical of those methods and means that the teacher uses in the organization and conduct of the educational process. Education technology, on the one hand, is perceived as a set of methods and means of the processing, presentation, measurement and presentation of educational information, and on the other hand, educational technology - the science of how the teacher can influence the student in the learning process with the necessary technical or information media.
Background of training technology starts in the first half of the XX century with the advent of a technical device to test knowledge. For some time, learning technology was understood as the use of technology in teaching, which gave rise to speaking about the industrial revolution in education. In this case, scientists believe that the use of technology had so far mostly auxiliary character of presenting information. However, there was rapidly developing technology inclusion in the educational process at different stages. In the future, scientists predict the independent use of automated training systems without training and educational institutions. Since the 1950ies, searches of scientists took a different direction: not technology and mechanization, but technology and technologization of training. Technological basis for understanding learning, except for programmed instruction, were computer science, cybernetics and systematic approach. The learning process has been considered widely, systematically: analysis and development of all components of the learning system, from setting the purpose to monitoring the results. And the main idea was the idea of ​​the reproducibility of educational technology.
Today, educational technology refers to the direction in didactics, area of ​​research aimed at identifying the principles and the development of optimal systems for designing reproducible teaching process with predetermined characteristics (Prensky, 2001). The main problem to be solved through technology – control of the learning process. Traditional, non-technological methods of teaching have a significant disadvantage blur, uncertainty, fuzzy target orientation and little control over procedure exercises, subjective and random checks of assimilated material.
Researchers believe that any learning process is realized in the framework of teaching (didactic) system, structure, composition and communication components of which should be realized by the one teaching, as well as by the one who is learning. The task of learning technologies is the study of all the elements of the training system and the design of the learning process, so that through this training and educational work evolves from a training set of actions to purposeful process.
Going back to the origins of research in the field of educational technology, we recall that they were based on the study of mechanisms for the application in the educational process of technical training and programming capabilities. Today ideas expressed a century ago have evolved and gave rise to new pedagogical technologies - information and direction - Informatization of Education.

Analysis of scientific, methodical literature leads to the following conclusions:

1. Introduction of digital tools is possible in two ways: as part of already existing socio-cultural system as part of its conservation and stabilization and as a basis for changes in the system. Informatization of education is the most important social innovation. It allows for full realization of the most traditional educational potential, as well as building a fundamentally different system of education and training of the person (Ala-Mutka, Punie & Redecker, 2008). These processes are interconnected with each other, characterized by a dialectical position as the interaction of opposites, tempo, character, whose direction depends on a combination of social, cultural, regional, subjective and objective factors.
2. The process of computerization of education in its development goes through two stages. At the first stage, there is the limited policy of informatization, in the course of which the computer becomes an object of study. The implementation of limited policy is necessary, but insufficient moment of transformation of modern education system, so it becomes an expression of absolutisation of technocratic view of the place and role of human in the industrial society.
3. Socio-cultural nature of informatization is determined by their place and role in the socio-cultural structure of society and opportunities of qualitatively new way of understanding reality, caused by the technology itself. The socio-cultural significance of digital tools is that they change the way of thinking, way of life, of human orientation in the social space. As a necessary product of social development of the second half of the XX century, in the answer to the challenge of the present stage of scientific and technological revolution, IT became the basis for a real change in the nature of the social organism.
4. Socio-cultural significance of digital tools is also determined by the fact that they serve at the same time as a means of professionalization and socialization of the individual, and as a means of obtaining the necessary production and scientific knowledge for living and working in the information society (Barret, 2007). They are also the basis for changing the style of thinking and values ​​of the younger generation. It is a fundamental importance, by ignoring which it gets impossible to determine the social, cultural, educational significance of training information technology.
5. Digital tools depending on their socio-cultural orientation can serve as the basis for creating a uniform extruded consciousness, suppression of creativity in the individual, and the formation of a new culture of thinking and acting, thinking about ways of the world, the system of value orientations characteristic of the information civilization.
6. The current education system is focused on the new socio-cultural goals, norms of action and thoughts associated with the dynamics, continuous updating and changing society at the end of XX century. Digital tools are among the most important elements of the reform of the traditional education system. Informatization of education as a sociocultural phenomenon is carried out within the whole process of development of the Information Society. In turn, the education system has a powerful impact on social life, exacerbating or resolving conflicts, contradictions, present and future.
7. Modern information society culture enables a person to remain within the humanistic paradigm, as it allows one to model and consider the consequences of actions. Therefore, education is not just a breeding ground for scientific and technological progress, but it also lays the foundations of information culture.

References

Ala-Mutka, K., Punie, Y., & Redecker, C. (2008). Digital competence for lifelong learning. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), European Commission, Joint Research Centre. Technical Note: JRC, 48708.
Barrett, H. C. (2007). Researching electronic portfolios and learner engagement: The REFLECT initiative. Journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 50(6), 436-449.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Selwyn, N., Gorard, S., & Furlong, J. (2006). Adult learning in the digital age: Information technology and the learning society. Routledge.