Early Childhood Technology Integrated Instructional System (EC-TIIS): Phase 3. Final Report

The Early Childhood Technology Integrated Instructional System 3 (EC-TIIS 3), housed in the Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood (the Center) within the College of Education and Human Services at Western Illinois University (WIU), was funded in 2004 by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) as a three-year Steppingstones of Technology Innovation Phase 3 Project. EC-TIIS 3 was designed to confirm the positive results of EC-TIIS 2 (Hutinger, Robinson, Schneider, & Daytner, 2006) and to test the effects of web-based training on a diverse audience in large, complex settings, ultimately providing a website that is easy for educators and families to use and that contains information leading to improved technology services for young children. The EC-TIIS site is a unique teaching/learning website that combines training content from the Center's tested and effective early childhood technology-related projects, into a series of nine workshops designed to provide technology knowledge and skills. The major goals of EC-TIIS 3 were four-fold: (1) to test the effects of EC-TIIS' online training on a diverse audience in large, complex settings, ultimately providing a teaching/learning community web site easy for families and educators to access and use; (2) to improve access to functional use of technologies in developmentally appropriate curriculum targeting young children with disabilities and their families; (3) to determine the effects of strategies to increase the quantity and quality of web-based training and data collection; and (4) to further refine EC-TIIS usability, to advance the availability, quality, and use of technology in addressing the practical problem of improving online education. Study 3, which included university and community college faculty and students, was designed to explore, confirm, extend, and compare findings related to use of the workshops as a supplement to university and community college courses and as a stand-alone graduate course. Results of EC-TIIS 3 demonstrate attainment of the study's research goals and the effectiveness of the workshops on the use of technology with young children with disabilities. Research results confirm Phase 2 findings. Data results from the surveys and workshop pre and post assessments indicate that EC-TIIS online workshops were effective in increasing knowledge, attitude, and skill in using technologies in the early childhood environment. (Contains 23 tables.