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Re: Time to retire?



----- Original Message -----
From: "William Beaty" <billb@ESKIMO.COM>


On Sun, 5 May 2002, Rick Tarara wrote:

This phenomenon makes me very skeptical about internet based
learning (but then as most have gathered, I'm skeptical about a lot of
things! ;-)

Well, comic books are better than TV (that's how I learned to read.) And
internet-based learning could be nothing more than library books put
online, such as these sites:

Online books, by title
http://www.gutenberg.org/index/by-title.html

NAP books online
http://books.nap.edu/info/browse.htm


My own website is intentionally subversive: full of weird projects which
should be extremely attractive to kids doing science fairs... but with
huge amounts of text, and almost no diagrams. No bright colors to attract
them, just magical physics and word of mouth advertizing. I'm running at
150,000 hits per month right now, and it grows about 4x higher during
science fair season.

That's great, and I'm sure more than a few students (and faculty) find your
site a great help, but I've also watched students use the internet for
science/technology related projects. Many simply print out anything and
everything that seems related. They then skim what they've printed for
(what they think) is relative information, usually triggered by one or two
key words. When it comes time to use the information, it becomes painfully
clear that they have not really read the material, understand even less
about it, and most of the time, the information they think they have is
irrelevant to their particular enquiry.

While my evidence for this _is_ anecdotal, it is based on assignments to a
large class, meeting with small project sub-groups to help them define their
work and the information they will need, and then meeting with these groups
again after they supposedly have researched their topic in order to help
with calculations. I find that about 2/3 or the groups have not found what
they were directed to. They may have printed versions (from the Web) of
appropriate material, but they have not distilled the information
needed--despite being advised at the 1st meeting that they were to do so. I
suspect there are two thing going on here. One, they often do choose source
material that is too technical for their level...again despite guidance on
this point. Two, is the more serious problem which we've discussed
often--lack of reading skills. Some of it may be laziness--not actually
reading the material...a habit which I fear they pick up before College due
to the types of assignments and tests they've been given. That could be
fixed. I'm more worried that they really are not learning to read for
comprehension--at least not that well. Of course, the best students do read
well, and consequently do well, but the reading skills of the middle of the
pack have fallen. At one point I had some hope that the Internet and Web
would really help, but as of yet, I'm not seeing any positive results.
Maybe in a couple more years....

Rick

**********************************************
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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