Blogging Disrupting Class #7: Chapter 4 -- Disruptively Deploying Computers (Pt. 3)

The previous post summarizes how the second part of Chapter 4 of Disrupting Class introduces its biggest bombshell re how computers will radically transform public schools: their prediction that half of all courses in K-12 public education will be online in just ten years or so, and 80% in just 16 years or so. The rest of Chapter 4 focuses on the classroom of the future and how assessment will be done.

"The Future Classroom" section of Chapter 4 starts off with featuring an example which I have to love, but is not all that futuristic. The Virtual ChemLab (pp. 105-106) is an effective product -- in fact, I wrote an Effective Practices description about it in 2003 and updated it in 2006. In fact, IMO it is better than Disrupting Class gives it credit for; in keeping with their theory that initial disruptive products are not as good -- in this case, "not as good, perhaps, as doing the experiments hands-on (some have pointed out that these students could enter college science courses without having used a real Bunsen burner" Gasp! Horrors! And so the authors (along with a number of science teachers, to be fair) miss the point that most students who take college science courses never become scientists or use Bunsen burners ever again, so why is it so important for them to "feel the heat" (p.106), or as I like to put it, smell the formaldehyde?

Still, this criticism does not deflect the authors' central argument, which is that here is a widely used (some 150,000 students and growing according to Disrupting Class) product which is far better than no access to chemistry labs. The authors point out that these labs will only get better; in fact, based on what I saw that Rio Salado College is doing with science labs at the Carefree conference in Arizona earlier this year, online labs are already improving rapidly. The authors then use a fictional example of an online Mandarin Chinese course to illustrate what could happen "provided the technology is introduced disruptively" (p.106).

The next paragraph's discussion of how such products make possible more individualized instruction instead of one-size-fits-all lessons (p.107) invoked instant deja vu -- for I have been here before, specifically with the Comprehensive Competencies Program (CCP) , which I worked with from the mid-80s to early 90s. Self-pacing, mastery-based, multiple curricular options for each lesson, teachers "traveling from student to student to help individuals with individual problems" -- yep, been there done that. "Real-time computer data on how the student is learning" made me wonder, whatever did happen to the Integrated Learning System (ILS) craze in the 80s and 90s? (Apparently they are still alive and kicking as well, with mixed results.)

The question is, in other words, what if anything is new about what the authors are proposing? Perhaps it is that online delivery allows for greater customization than was possible with the previous technology -- customize the lessons themselves instead of sequenced instruction? Give students choices in building their own lesson content instead of just selecting which content to use? (Not a word from the authors on this yet.) Reduce costs greatly? The CCP used to come in a massive set of binders which filled an entire wall's worth of bookcases -- and it used to cost ~$5000 or so, the content of which could be put onto a few CDs for probably $19.95 or so now. So huge cost reduction there -- but reducing the cost of materials is only a small part of the system. So the answer to how this is going to catch on is not yet apparent IMO.

The section on assessment (pp.107-113) is similarly disappointing because it frames learning into the drearily familiar boxes of mastering fixed content and comparing students on how well they do that (p.108). True, the current system doesn't measure content mastery well because exams tend to be snapshots of learning taken within fixed time frames. The example of how Toyota train production workers by using variable time frames and interweaving assessment with content delivery (pp.108-110) is nice as far as it goes. But Toyota's intended outcome is skills training: all production workers to do certain things in certain ways -- training, not education. In other words, the antidote to "fixed time, variable learning" is not "variable time, fixed learning." But this seems to be what the authors want with their strategies to "verify mastery continually to create tight, closed feedback loops" which will eliminate "misunderstandings" and result in much more consistent learning (p.111).

Here's the kind of future this makes me envision: no one leaves high school until you've mastered those Bunsen burners!

Disrupting Class doesn't do much better with the second stated reason for testing, since it takes the current reasons for comparing students at face value -- college admissions decisions built around test scores, NCLB-induced comparisons of schools and districts' "job performance" based on standardized test scores, honor rolls -- all of these are considered "sound" reasons for comparing students. Apparently Christensen et al. are firmly in the camp of the "standaridistas" . Never mind that hundreds of colleges are sensibly moving away from or de-emphasizing standardized test results in making admissions decisions , or that relying on standardized test scores to measure a school's performance is reductive madness -- or is it simply mass ignorance?

But here is the key sentence where Disrupting Class loses me: "Since learning will no longer be as variable, we can compare students not by what percentage of the material they have mastered, but by comparing how far they have moved through a body of material" (pp.111-112). To the contrary, it is precisely these constructs that we must move away from: isn't less variable learning the same as more monolithic learning, that is, an exchange of monolithic inputs ("monolithic instruction") for monolithic outputs?

And putting distance traveled through a "body of material" is equally misguided; of what use will this fixed body of material be for helping today's students who will be working at jobs and having to solve problems which don't yet exist?

Why would we want to do this? It seems that the authors are stuck in some dated conceptions of education and learning, for instance the reference to how we are "wired to learn" (p.112) -- and, this is probably as good a time as any to question the authors' assumption that learner's intelligence types are somehow fixed, so that we have to find ways to teach (for example) chemistry to students with bodily-kinesthetic intelligence and then also find ways to compare that learning with students with logical-mathematical intelligence (p.112). I think this is stretching multiple intelligences theory well beyond its useful limits, and at this point the excessive reliance on this theory as the basis for pedagogical and curricular reform is starting to get a little annoying.

The end of this chapter sets the stage for the next one by pointing out that opportunity for transformative student-centric technology is outside the present education system. They describe this as an "exciting opportunity" (p.113), but my excitement has been dampened considerably by the previous ten pages...

Chapter 4 (Part 2)
Chapter 4 (Part 1)
Chapter 3
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Introduction