SAMR model

Over the course of this academic year, a team I am a part of will be developing resources to help staff and students progress in their use of technology at Haileybury. We will be adopting the SAMR model proposed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura. SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition, and it nicely encapsulates how to move beyond simply using technology to complete tasks that could easily be done without that technology, and towards something that is redefined and unique precisely because we use technology.

The model is shown below:

Substitution

Essentially, an activity at the Substitution level might involve using a word processor, or Notability on the iPad, to complete an electronic worksheet. The task itself – completing a worksheet – could easily be achieved using a written worksheet, or writing down in an exercise book. So in this sense, the technology has substituted a paper-based resource for an electronic one, without requiring the student to do anything in addition with the technology.

Augmentation

The above activity might involve additional steps, such as using autocorrect / autogrammatical tools like Grammarly to enhance the writing, or students might be asked to insert a relevant video into the document to illustrate a point. This has a functional improvement but does not fundamentally alter the task itself.

Modification

Students could use a collaborative platform such as O365 or Google Workspace, and they could collectively create something new from this. So they could use the original document as a basis for their endeavours, then create perhaps an interactive mindmap or timeline document. In this sense they are creating a new digital artefact, and they original task has been redesigned.

Redefinition

At this stage, the students could be collaborating with other students from an entirely different location. I have organised live paired-review of programming tasks via Skype (remember Skype?!) from my school in Italy to another in Sussex. The students discussed the code, use an e-whiteboard to record suggestions, and jointly crafted new code as a result. This activity is just not possible without the use of technology to a reasonably sophisticated level, and it therefore qualified in the SAMR model as a Redefinition of the original task.

Caveat

It is important to note that the SAMR model is not, strictly speaking, a pedagogical ladder up which we must all aspire to climb by the end of every lesson. A great many lessons work perfectly well, and are entirely well reasoned and planned, at the Substitution level. It would be a shame, however, if all we considered a bunch of laptops or iPads, and a bunch of willing students who, let’s face it, like technology, and if we concluded that all we wanted to do is keep them at the level of Substitution.

Video overview

I have produced a video overview of SAMR for my school and am sharing it below:

Dr. Ruben Puentedura himself: