Andrea Jenkins Blackwell

  The development side of educational technology is sometimes overlooked by teachers and other educational staff. However, working in the classroom and watching students interact with technology, we have an opportunity to see how it clicks with students first hand. Meet Andrea Jenkins Blackwell, an individual who has worked on both spectrums of educational technology. She has a wonderful insight into educational technology as a result of her education and experience.

Background

In her youth, Andrea was always strong in the subjects of Math and Science. Outside of school, she was involved with projects relating to art, science, and many other activities that were hands-on. As she describes it, “Technology seemed like a natural fit.” In high school, Andrea was involved with several STEM programs. During her junior year, she attended a program at Michigan Tech, and, in her senior year, she attended a program at U of M in which the students were basically involved with all aspects of engineering, where she attended for her undergraduate and graduate degrees.

After graduating from U of M, Andrea began her career working for Microsoft, specifically Publisher. She worked as a software test engineer, responsible for quality assurance for applications, and learned a lot working there, but had a calling to explore technology and how it could serve people in a greater way. “I really liked technology, but I wanted to see if technology could do more for society. I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go when I left Microsoft. I wanted to build applications that were socially responsible or socially aware, and that led me to the Educational Technology program at U of M.”

From there, Andrea completed her masters degree in Technology in Education through the University of Michigan and went on to teach at ITT, Baker College, and U of M Flint. “I’ve always had an interest in teaching, and, because of that love for technology and the thought of wanting to work on technology where I could actually work directly with the customer or the individuals that I was impacting, educational technology seemed to be a good fit for me.” Following teaching, Andrea returned to world of software development, working directly with technology. She began working with a couple of start ups. As she describes it, “I was lucky enough to get to develop software in an educational space.” She worked with companies such as Cengage Learning in Farmington Hills and later with College Board.

User Interface/Educational Design Philosophies

Andrea cites her time working at Cengage Learning as one of her most interesting experiences in educational user interface. Aligned with a specific textbook curriculum, Mind Tap is a management tool produced through Cengage. Having the course management tools that one would find with learning management systems (LMS) such as Blackboard, it also includes a MindTap reader with a text-to-speech reader linked to the textbook, because it went along with a specific textbook curriculum.

There were many tools that went along with the actual course that she found served the students particularly well: students could add notes in line, use flash cards, make cross-references, find related videos or charts, and basically additional information for the actual reading that you were doing. Students could see what they completed, view grades, and see what was to come. Andrea believed that the main thing that would keep the students engaged with this LMS was that there were so many ways for students to customize their classes. “It really helped with a mastery of the materials. The biggest benefit that the students found was that it helped improve their scores,” she stated. In terms of user interface, she believes that keeping the interface as simple as possible and using tools with which users are familiar are elements of design that will help keep the students engaged and motivated.

However, Andrea admits that, working as a developer, she sometimes has not been able to put all of her ideas into practice. “As a user interface developer, I had a little control, but not complete,” she said. “Coming out of the (ed tech) program, I was very into interactive learning and community-based learning, and when I entered the field of educational technology, I found that it was behind the philosophy that I had learn. But being in the field I felt like I was still contributing and making the world of educational technology better.”

Trends

Having worked in a wide variety of settings in the educational technology world, Andrea has noticed a few trends. One of projects with which she has worked is predictive testing, which adjusts the difficulty or mastery level of questions based on how the student answered the previous question. Using data analytics is trend that she has found interesting. “With Mind Tap, teachers can easily pinpoint specific areas where students are struggling, and provide intervention a lot quicker than in a solely face-to-face class.” This is one way that technology can help connect teachers to their students in a more effective way.

Another trend that Andrea has seen in her line of work is that technology is beginning to catch up with pedagogy. Through her work with ProQuest, the College Board and other companies, she has seen an interesting balance between education and technology. “I believe that pedagogy is the most important and the tech should purport that. But depending on what company you work for, that might not be the case.”

Furthermore, Andrea has noticed that technology is becoming more and more accessible to educators.”When you see tech designed by developers, it ignores some of these philosophical principles, not necessarily thinking about their consumers,” she noted.  “As technology is changing, I see it moving more in the direction of focusing on the consumer/student and good ideas,” she said. Much of the technology is becoming easier to develop ideas, so that education is more of the focus. “With so many websites using WordPress or Drupal which makes it easier to get a lot of functionality up and working quickly.” She sees this as a way for teachers to catch up with the technology and making technology more accessible to any with a good idea.

Whatever direction that technology in education is heading in the future, it is clear that Andrea Jenkins Blackwell will be working to develop it in ways that remain student-focused.

Written by: Dominic Cascarelli August, 2016