In the fall of 1996, thirty-three students in a social studies course at California State University in Northridge were randomly divided into two groups; one taught in a traditional classroom and the other taught virtually on the Web. The teaching model wasn't changed fundamentally -- texts, lectures and exams were standardized across the two groups. Despite this, the Web-based class scored, on average, 20 percent higher. The Web class had more contact with one another and was more interested in the class work. Web class members also felt that they understood the material better and that they had greater flexibility in how they learned.ii
The ultimate interactive learning environment will be the Web and the Net as a whole. It increasingly includes the vast repository of human knowledge, tools to manage this knowledge, access to people, and a growing galaxy of services, ranging from sandbox environments for preschoolers to virtual laboratories for medical students studying neural psychiatry. Today's baby will learn tomorrow about Michaelangelo by walking through the Sistine Chapel, watching him paint, and perhaps stopping for a conversation. Elementary school students will stroll on the moon. Medical students will navigate through your cardiovascular system.
This book promotion highlights an issue that came up in class Friday. It ignited quite a bit of sidebar discussion during the breaks and in the ensuing days. (The Davidson Institute, by the way, is one of the few organizations in this country that focus on profound giftedness and on how to develop that talent. Their work looks at an educational culture that focuses on differentiation for struggling learners, but not so much for learners who need more, deeper, swifter). Our sidebar discussions sprang from the action research article about the teacher who apparently let much of the class languish while concentrating efforts on the group of below-proficient math students. Someone noted that it looked as if the proficient kids were left hanging for weeks while the others caught up. You can't re-capture lost instructional time. The notable thing for me is how many passionate views and personal stories came out of this. Many people have experienced first-hand--as teachers, curriculum specialists, and parents--that we really only differentiate "down." Differentiation "down" or "up" is hard work, but . . . With all the talk for excellence, many people in the field still believe that we aim for mediocrity--this is what many are seeing, but are afraid to shout out. Then you get into he interesting conversation about the strain in American society that fears intellectual achievement and cries "elitism." It seems to be a form of populism. At the same time, if we repress or under-serve our best and brightest, "Good luck finding those scientists who will make alternative energy, those researchers who will cure cancer, those thinkers who will solve the health care crisis, or those artists and writers who will polish the mirror of human experience for us." This is just one facet of an endlessly interesting conversation!
