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Mr. Somade told me recently that "the general idea is that if I don't have to come to class, I don't want to come to class—and technology is giving students more and more reason not to come."

In an era when students can easily grab material online, including lectures by gifted speakers in every field, a learning environment that avoids courses completely—or seriously reshapes them—might produce a very effective new form of college.

much of what students rate as the most valuable part of their learning experience at college these days takes place outside the traditional classroom, citing data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, an annual study based at Indiana University at Bloomington. Four of the eight "high-impact" learning activities identified by survey participants required no classroom time at all: internships, study-abroad programs, senior thesis or other "capstone" projects, or the mundane-sounding "undergraduate research," meaning working with faculty members on original research, much as graduate students do.

For years, students have had to search through volume after volume of books before finding the right formula — but no more. Josephine says that "with books being digitized and available through full text search capabilities, they can find that formula quite easily."

Keller expects that, eventually, there won't be any books on the shelves at all.

Given the nature of engineering, that actually comes in handy. Engineering uses some basic formulas but is generally a rapidly changing field — particularly in specialties such as software and bioengineering. Traditional textbooks have rarely been able to keep up.

"We want them to start modeling what they're going to see when they get out of here," said Lee, who envisions someday replacing students' print planners with online calendars. Most of all, he wants to cultivate what he calls good digital citizenship.

Drawing inspiration from fake Twitter accounts that parody celebrities or historical figures, Haines has had his students tweet as characters from George Orwell's "Animal Farm."

There is little data on how many school districts across the country have policies allowing the use of cellphones and other digital devices in class. A 2009 U.S. Department of Education survey shows only 4 percent of public-school teachers say a handheld device is available in the classroom every day.

Given the evolution of new media, how can educators determine what to use, when, and why? Hence, our guiding question is, how should educators assess the effectiveness of new media using performance-based measures—not relying only on the often-used survey of student satisfaction?

One strategy we employ applies equally to any new approach in teaching, whether it employs “new media” or not. That strategy is to apply some of the best current knowledge from cognitive and learning sciences to assess proposed teaching innovation.

What is the educational need, problem, or gap for which use of new media might potentially enhance learning?