New Resources for the Self-
Directed 21st Century Learner
Kevin’s path to higher education may
not have been ideal, but stories like his
may become more common in the
coming years. Imagine a world in which
a bright, motivated high school student
can gain access not just to relatively
boring study guides, but also to a video
of an entire physics course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
To enter this world, simply go to
MIT’s OpenCourse Ware site at
http://ocw.mit.edu/Ocw Web. There you
will find Professor Walter Lewin’s intro-
ductory physics class—one of 1,900
courses available on the site—featuring
originally designed for teacher training,
is increasingly being cited on the Web as
a resource for independent student
learning.
These developments could easily
make key elements of our current system
superfluous and will certainly change
the face of education.
35 videotaped lectures, lecture notes,
assignments, and a wide variety of
related materials.
If a student takes the time to watch
all of these lectures and do the assignments—and can pass an AP physics
exam—has he or she completed a high
school AP physics course? How can a
school certify this student? Should it?
High schools need to be ready to
address these issues because open-
source Web content is proliferating. For
example, the Monterey Institute’s
National Repository for Online Courses
(NROC; www.montereyinstitute
.org/nroc) provides access to an entire
online high school curriculum free of
charge for the individual learner. The
repository’s offerings include both a
standard curriculum and a set of AP
courses. The Annenberg Foundation’s
Learning Math series ( www.learner.org
/resources/ browse.html?discipline= 5),
AP exam or to pass a state assessment in
world history ( www.mrburnett.net
/apworldhistory/ APWorldHistory.htm).
Teacher Keith Hughes at McKinley
High School in Buffalo, New York, is
videotaping and audiotaping lectures for
his U.S. history and AP government
course and posting them to the Web
with a host of other support materials
( www.buffaloschools.org/webpages
/khughes/ index.cfm).
One Possible Future:
Certification Mills
If the role of high schools in our society
remains that of transmitting academic
content to students, schools will find
themselves in direct competition with
the growing universe of diverse,
engaging resources such as those
described here. If students can master
the content outside the classroom, the
role of the school may simply be to
certify that mastery through assessments
and to provide remedial services to
students who are unable to work in
these new environments.
Under this scenario, the supervisory
role played by high schools today might
take place in community learning
centers where students are supervised by
professional staff with low levels of
responsibility for academics (and likely
low salaries). In such centers, students
would be able to access online learning
resources of their choosing and gain
some social benefits of the high school
environment while they move through
the curriculum at their own pace. As
online learning technologies providing
high levels of scaffolding and support
continue to multiply, such centers could
attract not only the most able learners
