PSU TLT

"At Penn State, we needed a clicker system that was both easy to use and flexible enough to support our wide-ranging teaching methodologies," said Dave Test, a member of the university's technology classroom support organization. "With i>clicker, our faculty can easily implement clickers into their courses, adding myriad engagement opportunities with their students, but without the steep learning curve that we've experienced in the past. i>clicker gives us rock solid reliability and all of the features we need, without all of the headaches of other clicker systems."

In a former textile mill in downtown Manchester, the university's president, Paul J. ­LeBlanc, has installed a team of for-profit veterans who help run a highly autonomous online outfit that caters to older students, with classes taught mostly by low-paid adjuncts. Their online operation is the institution's economic engine, subsidizing its money-losing undergraduate campus, known as University College, whose 2,350 students enjoy a new dining hall, Olympic-size pool, and small classes taught largely by full-time professors. "The traditional campus, in some ways, now has the resources to be even more traditional," Mr. LeBlanc says in his office on the suburban main campus, four miles from the online college. "And the nontraditional, with this split, has the ability to be even more nontraditional."

"It doesn't seem to me to be the 'disruptive innovation' that's going to transform things," says Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at New York University and one of the authors of Academically Adrift, a harsh critique of undergraduate learning. "It seems to me like just business as usual.

A lucrative one, too. With 7,000 online students, up from 1,700 four years ago, the College of Online and Continuing Education is on track to generate $73-million in revenues this year and more than $100-million next year. It posted a 41-percent "profit" margin in the 2011 fiscal year. The university plows the surplus into new buildings, employee salaries, financial aid at the traditional campus, and improvements in the online program.

This centralized resource was set up in order to avoid duplication of resources, to ensure consistency of quality and user interface/experience and to be sure branding guidelines are followed.

Instead of the traditional schedule of eight 45-minute classes each day, with courses broken into two semesters, high school students at Calhoun intensively study three to five subjects in each of five terms, or modules, that are 32 to 36 days long. Classes are in blocks of 65 or 130 minutes each day. Every day, students have 45 minutes of “community time,” an intentionally unstructured period for the students to hang out.

What started five years ago as an effort to accommodate maddeningly complex schedules in a relatively small space quickly became a sort of evangelical mission to make progressive education more, well, progressive: embracing depth over breadth, allowing for more experiential learning in Central Park and at nearby museums, and, administrators said they hoped, reducing stress. Steven J. Nelson, Calhoun’s head of school, said the new schedule fostered teaching in the ways children learn best.

A seventh-grader from Milwaukee Montessori School is among the winners of a nationwide video game design challenge launched at the White House last fall. Shireen Zaineb created a game called "Discover.." that earned her a victory in the National STEM Video Game Challenge, which was designed to generate interest in science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM. Zaineb's Web-based game teaches players about concepts such as mass, friction, weight and gravity through a series of platforming challenges in which players must jump a character through 2-D environments and collect items.

Eduardo M. Ochoa, assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, said at a panel session on Monday that "less labor-intensive" instruction methods will be required to increase the nation's number of college graduates. He conceded that technology presents upfront costs for colleges. But, he said, "eventually, the way things are done becomes qualitatively different."

While the course redesigns differ from campus to campus, they often involve the use of low-stakes online quizzes to promote student mastery of material. Such quizzes and other online tasks can replace the need for class time and reduce the number of professors required to teach a course, Ms. Twigg said. On average, the course redesigns reduce costs by 37 percent, she said.

Ms. Twigg has argued for more than a decade that, when used effectively, technology can both improve student achievement and reduce costs.

When he reviewed studies of learning styles, he found no scientific evidence backing up the idea. "We have not found evidence from a randomized control trial supporting any of these," he says, "and until such evidence exists, we don't recommend that they be used." Willingham suggests it might be more useful to figure out similarities in how our brains learn, rather than differences. And, in that case, he says, there's a lot of common ground. For example, variety. "Mixing things up is something we know is scientifically supported as something that boosts attention," he says, adding that studies show that when students pay closer attention, they learn better.

So, why are they so involved in social media? Geoff Halberstadt, undergraduate student in the College of the Liberal Arts, said that social media has reached the point where it cannot be ignored. Students are heavily engaged in social media, and it is a primary method of communication for them. “Students live in an age of technology, an instantaneous age, and they want information now,” Halberstadt said. “The College can truly engage students by providing instant information.”