Abstract:

Background:
The reality today around information gathering hinges on more and more complex issues. In academic institutions, there is still talk of plagiarism, yet everyone is encouraged to make use of the new learning technologies, to surf for information on-line.
The new learning technologies afford learners access to a wide span of informative resources, presented in various ways in order to accommodate various learning styles, through visuals (graphs, animations, videos, pictures, visual organizers, text to voice and voice to text), offering different levels of depth, and by allowing adjustments in pacing and the possibility of multiple repetitions and reviews. These latter, not only encompass accessing the same source any number of times, but also present the possibility for multiple comparisons on the same topic around keywords entered into the system. Thus, a user-friendly content determined by user’s choice can be selected for learning, with the same content presented in gradations and, or through different forms of media.
All these ways of doing should result in enhanced learning.
With this in mind, in my teaching context in teacher preparation I encourage students, to not only explore the links that I recommend to them, but to further search on Internet to find different versions on the topic under scrutiny.

Method:
The chosen method is of a qualitative nature. It will entail the exploration of all the ramifications and steps that are entailed both within a discovery approach to learning assigned topics. The approach used is qualitative as it allows to uncover the details sought to answer the research question (Creswell, 2009; Creswell & Poth, 2017) namely how to develop judgement ‘ability’ in the use of technologies. It consists of text analysis, namely the analysis of course notes.

Findings:
There are several key findings.
Widely exploring extensive materials in a subject and what such recognized people have done in the field provides more variety to students’ offerings in a course. The instructor’s guidance however is a key elements.
Students’ explorations were encouraged and as students share what they gleaned within groups, they are guided and questioned in order to expand their horizons. Thus they increase their judgement 'ability'.
These explorations also highlighted areas of instructor learning. Indeed some students shared interesting thoughts about different connections they made to the materials.
Moreover, as according to the Ministry of Education, one of our objectives is to train future teachers for collaboration, this approach worked well in that sense. The community building aspect was strong (Lave, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 2018).
One of the objectives of the assignments was to suggest a novel idea, and the results from this were mixed: some students’ new idea was rather traditional with only a few interesting leaps suggested. This finding may point to limitations to the approach: however, in the latter case one can wonder if the students concerned actually engaged with the assigned explorations. At any rate it is telling about their level of understanding.
As well, as students selected known research outcomes over others their choice making is being honed, and again with instructor’s guidance and supervision they forged ahead on a new track.
In the process, the instructor is also benefitting from the different lenses offered as well as different worldviews.

Keywords:

Training, enhanced learning, technologies.