Wednesday, 3 October 2012

Study Opens Window Into How Students Hunt for Educational Content Online: But what are they finding?

This reminds me of Brian Dorn’s work, and points out a weakness of this study. Brian went out to check if the knowledge that the students needed was actually in the places where they looked. Morgan’s study is telling us where they’re looking. But it’s not telling us what the students are learning.  It’s nothing new to hear that students supplement their studies with other universities’ online lecture videos. But Ms. Morgan’s research—backed by the National Science Foundation, based on 14 focus-group interviews at a range of colleges, and buttressed by a large online survey going on now—paints a broader picture of how they’re finding content, where they’re getting it, and why they’re using it.

Ms. Morgan borrows the phrase “free-range learning” to describe students’ behavior, and she finds that they generally shop around for content in places educators would endorse. Students seem most favorably inclined to materials from other universities. They mention lecture videos from Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology far more than the widely publicized Khan Academy, she says. If they’re on a pre-med or health-science track, they prefer recognized “brands” like the Mayo Clinic. Students often seek this outside content due to dissatisfaction with their own professors, Ms. Morgan says. via ‘Free-Range Learners’: Study Opens Window Into How Students Hunt for Educational Content Online – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Deepa Singh
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