€ The percentages reflect those students who reported that, compared to other courses without the particular innovations presented in that course, they were more likely or much more likely to....
Data Presented on 5/28/97:
Flashlight is . . .
... a "tool kit" that colleges and universities can use to devise their own assessments of their own uses of computers, video and telecommunications. It is a project of the American Association for Higher Education, developed in collaboration with a set of partners that currently include the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunication and Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis. Support has been received from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education of the US Department of Education for planning, and from the Annenberg/CPB Projects of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for initial implementation.
On Learning
"Is there any general guiding principle? Brain research establishes and confirms that multiple complex and concrete experiences are essential for meaningful learning and teaching.... In essence, students learn from their entire ongoing experience. In many ways, content is inseparable from context."
--from Caine & Caine, Teaching and the Human Brain, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, Virginia, 1991.
On Collaboration
"Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which [students] grow into the intellectual life of those around them."
--from L.S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society, Harvard University Press, 1978
On Interdisciplinary Virtual Collaboration
The Extended Degree Program pilot Seminars, in which two classes conducted weekly conference calls and, for three weeks, collaborated using conference call technology to engage in interdisciplinary discussions, proved to be remarkably valuable to students. One student reported that she recognized not only the "valuable and vital relationship between...classes. And not only these two classes, but almost if not all, of the classes I've taken." She concluded: "There is finally continuity--a thread that unites the seemingly diverse subjects taken on the path towards this BA degree."