Are Personalized Online Courses Our Future?

Will computers eventually take the place of high school teachers?

I am somewhat familiar with Apex Learning, a creator of educational computer programs that increases "access to high quality educational alternatives for all students through online learning."

Over the last few years many of my high school kept students from self-destructing, AKA, not graduating, by using APEX software (link here) and giving these kids a last chance chance to make up the missing credits. Two teachers oversaw twenty or so students that failed mandatory classes and needed credits to graduate. The units were made up on a pass/fail basis, and just about every student that needed this remedial work successfully completed it. None of these students were accepted to four-year colleges in the fall, but all of them received a high school diploma.

The APEX license is expensive, so my school can afford a limited amount of students that need remedial work.

APEX also provides learning programs for honors and AP classes, though my school has not used them. APEX describes its courses as a "digital curriculum — that comprises standards-based instructional content specifically developed for online delivery, with assessment opportunities integrated throughout, scaffolding to support learning for all students, and resources to support effective teaching." In other words, APEX provides "personalized learning."

Teachers make sure that students show up and are engaged in their work at the computers, but other than those exhortative and administrative functions, are teachers needed in the classroom? Right now the answer is yes, because the APEX and other online learning firms are too expensive to use for our entire school body.  In addition to incurring the fee for the license, the school would still incur the costs for hiring prison guards with whips (oops) teachers to keep the students on track, interact with parents, and do grading.

If costs were not a factor, does APEX and programs like it, educate children better than traditional methods? Are teachers going the way of the dodo bird and evolving into classroom policemen?

Esther Quintero writes (in The Real “Trouble” With Technology, Online Education And Learning),

personalized learning uses technology to adapt the presentation of content to students’ strength and weaknesses, as indicated by their prior responses to the material. The basic premise is that, when software is able to gauge a student’s level and adjust subsequent material to his/her pace and style of learning, the result is a more effective and higher quality learning experience.

However, personalized learning may not challenge students in unexpected ways. Quintero continues:

More fundamentally, learning occurs, at least in part, when unexpected things push us out of our comfort zone. Somewhere I read that the purpose of education is to give people the opportunity to learn something they ordinarily wouldn’t. There is a missing ingredient in most models of personalized learning: basically, the natural entropy that characterizes human experience. After all, let’s not forget that adaptive learning is based on the same technology that is used to generate automatic movie and music recommendations – and most of us would agree that that these have their limitations.

I have convinced many students to examine new ideas when they didn't have enough intellectual curiosity or confidence to  tackle them on their own. This may turn out to be my best and most human function in the classroom. Teachers are still necessary.

Update: October 6, 2012:  The New York Times takes a look at advances in computer tutoring, especially for math here. Annie Murphy Paul writes about the creator of ASSISTments, a computerized math tutor.

Computers excel in following a precise plan of instruction. A computer never gets impatient or annoyed. But it never gets excited or enthusiastic either. Nor can a computer guide a student through an open-ended exploration of literature or history....While a computer can emulate, and in some ways exceed, the abilities of a human teacher, it will not replace her. Rather, it’s the emerging hybrid of human and computer instruction — not either one alone — that may well transform education.

Progressive Religious Movements are Losing Members

Photo by Josh Haner/The New York Times

Ross Douthat, in his Op/Ed New York Times column, Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved? sounds the death knell for progressive religious movements in America. Members of the liberal Episcopal Church have watched attendance figures drop 23 percent in the last decade, "and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase." The problem is not contained to the Episcopal Church.

"Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance. Within the Catholic Church, too, the most progressive-minded religious orders have often failed to generate the vocations necessary to sustain themselves."

Judaism shows the same trends. The Jewish Daily Forward reports that "nearly half of Jewish adults raised Reform [the most liberal wing of American Judaism], a new study shows, leave the denomination, most of them in favor of an unaffiliated Jewish life. In recent years, the movement’s growth has stalled, with affiliation holding steady thanks only to new members replacing those who have left."

Why? Douthat claims that "leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don't seem to be offering anything you can't already get from purely secular liberalism." I agree. Those that aren't interested in praying to a transcendent G-d can give charity, support the homeless, work for income equality, provide education, fight injustice, and find a community of like-minded individuals outside of any religious institution. If a church or synagogue membership predominantly serves as a triage officer, directing people here and there for good works and downplays spiritual fervor and a relationship with and, especially, responsibilities to G-d, why not join any benevolence society instead? If G-d won't reward you for taking communion or saying the Shema or punish you for not doing so, why not just join the Democratic party and keep your weekends free?

The Main Difference Between Men and Women: Packing for Vacation

South Lake Tahoe Photo by Mark Miller

My significant other and I just concluded a relaxing five-day vacation at South Lake Tahoe, Nevada. I threw one light bag in the trunk of my car, and that bag was small enough to fit in an airplane overhead. I also added a duffel bag for dirty laundry, two books and two magazines, pencil and paper, and two pairs of shoes (running shoes and dress shoes). I was wearing sandals for the ride. I packed a shirt and work out clothes for every day, one pair of jeans and slacks, my shaver, dental floss, toothbrush and tooth paste. Done!

In contrast the lovely lady packed a monstrous piece of luggage, roughly the size of the Loch Ness Monster, stunning in color and shape, and fit for the Queen of England. She packed outfits for hiking, lounging, running, and swimming (numerous swimsuits, goggles, ear plugs, head cover, and the most stylistic plastic sandals for lounging at the pool). If we ate by the pool she dressed properly. If somehow, every day, we were transported to four-star restaurants in Manhattan (see link), she had different outfits ready for each evening.

My favorite sub-bag (bag within the main luggage) and the main object of my ridicule was her large container housing all her hair and makeup products. I don't know what any of that stuff did. It looked like dangerous potions fit for chemistry class, only it somehow ended up on her face. She had colored pencils that did things to her eyes, I don't know what, and more of those pencils than I have at my desk at work.She had so many different hair condiments that I was able to borrow a shampoo, and she never had to ask for it back. Without any smugness she stated, "See? It's good to pack different shampoos." "I was expecting a free one in the bathroom," I mumbled.

A day after we arrived I discovered that I forgot to pack any underwear other than what I was wearing and the three useful but uncomfortable athletic supporters I packed for the gym and trails. Again vindicated, she suggested I go into town and buy some underwear. Thinking quickly, I called the front desk and found a washer and drier one floor below. Laundry detergent was there for the taking and the machines were industrial size and free. I washed her dirty stuff too.

How I Will Change My Teaching of a Low-Level History Class

Bloom's Taxonomy

Sophomore World History is a challenging class to teach at my high school. The best students are diverted into our AP program, leaving me three or four classes filled with many uninterested and unmotivated kids that have a history of behavioral problems. I taught four sections of these kids last year. Here are the harsh realities I observed working with this struggling population:

• Half the students will do homework some of the time.
• About one third will not complete ANY homework on time for the entire year.
• Half the students hate reading and do not understand what they read
• Half will take notes only if forced. Next to none will use notes to prepare for a test. (They prefer using the textbook, amazingly.)
• The students are unwilling to do true group work. One student in the group would do the work and the rest would watch or be off task.
• Activities such as skits and reenactments are only partially effective, because so many of the kids have too little background knowledge to understand the relevance of the activity.

I do convince a few students that history is interesting. I do help some students to enjoy reading, and I do get some students to take notes more effectively. However, too many students in these classes were not fully engaged by my methods last year. So I plan to do a few things differently.

• I will assign fewer readings as homework. We will do almost all reading in the classroom.
• Most lectures will be read-alouds of the textbook. Only after that will students be assigned an in-class reading of the same material.
• I used a variation of Cornell notes last year. Few students benefited. This year we will learn by presenting the material and going over it with frequent informal formative assessments such as fast-paced in-class questions ("peppering").
• I plan more summative assessments that include writing--short essay questions that ask for items high on Bloom's Taxonomy such as evaluating why one leader was better than another. These questions will be complex, so no two answers should be alike.

I hope these changes result in greater student engagement and achievement.

Postscript: January 7, 2012:  These changes have produced better though not radically improved grades. Additionally, I will examine the results of standardized testing, available in August.2013.