Caveats: NONE
Fred,
There is always peril equal to the promise of technology. In the
interest of promoting discussion I offer a dystopian version of such a
system.=20
Students are placed in large study halls (100-200 students) for 5 hours
a day for independent learning. Study halls are monitored by poorly
paid "teaching assistants" with no educational training. Students work
on courseware that has been purchased from the 3-5 primary content
providers that recruit telegenic "education personalities" to present
the content created by teams of experts with impressive credentials but
no classroom experience. The courseware choices lean heavily towards
the state standards of California, Texas and New York (based on
population). Some providers allow local teachers to upload their own
content but media-tuned students tend to view them as amateurish and
ignore them. =20
Students have thousands of courses to choose from and can move at their
own pace but most follow "recommended" tracks because experimenting with
variations takes too much time and then they fail their weekly automated
progress assessments which requires a visit to a counselor. Video TAs
are housed in call centers around the country to answer questions in
video sessions and live chats. Most follow scripts and their
performance reviews are based on exit surveys presented to students so
they frequently give students "hints" to improve their progress through
the courseware and earn better reviews. Students look at on-line
discussions and group work with trepidation because they know the
conversations are data-mined and used to improve anti-plagiarism tools.
Students have 2 hours of classes with teachers each day. Teachers
generally cobble together a career out of visiting 3-5 schools a week
for classes. A single teacher typically serves 100-500 students.
Students initially failed interim assessments as a way of getting
individual attention and getting out of study hall but as the courseware
improved attending too many "teacher based" classes stigmatized students
as SPED. Grading and evaluation is done by educational processors that
use AI to look for key words and arguments and are QCed by humans on a
random basis to assure the quality of the AI. There are hundreds of
sites dedicated to gaming the AI and the courseware but TurnItIn and
others have branched out with programs that analyze usage patterns and
parents are emailed automated expulsion notices if their students
exhibit browsing behaviors that appear to be intended to game or probe
the courseware. Cozy ties between courseware providers and assessors
yield numerous grade inflation scandals. =20
Boutique independent schools crop-up offering parents "computer-less
classes" with social, emotional and educational benefits of human
interaction.
_Jason
___________________________________
Jason Johnson - Program Director
Web Services Branch - Walter Reed Army Medical Center Ingenium (ISO
9001:2000 certified)
Office: 202-782-1047
Cell: 202-262-0516
jason.johnson@ingenium.net
jason.p.johnson2@us.army.mil=20
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED=20
Caveats: NONE
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
