As with any learning activity, it is the quality of students' participation that matters. Educational computing has the potential to enhance learning, but it will go unrealized unless educators use technology in environments which encourage learners to cull these benefits. Integrated Learning Environments Integrated classrooms create environments that invite students to mindfully engage in learning. By bringing together disciplines, people, communities, and institutions in meaningful ways, integration changes the complex of personal, social, and structural factors which constitute the learning environment. Under these circumstances, learning activities closely resemble their uses in the community outside the classroom.
Students expend effort because learning is authentic.
However, without motivation to combine these activities, students view integration as an extra, artificial chore. Therefore, the instructors restructure the assignment, making it more authentic, by asking students to use these general education skills to become change agents on issues they find personally meaningful. Once we do this, however, almost every aspect of our classroom changes, as well. Students find that they achieve their objectives better in cooperative teams. Time to meet and work in the community becomes more important than time in the classroom.