Traditionally, a student's introduction to the disciplines of the social and physical sciences is solely through lecture and text. Limited to passively absorbing canonized information, the student's role is not that of explorer and experimenter but rather that of a cipher and chronicler. The teacher becomes a glorified story teller, laboring to create a continuos and coherent narration, ignoring or compromising the contradictions, debates and uncertainties inherent to any discipline. The student provides evidence of mastery of the material by being able to regurgitate prepackaged facts and figures, not by demonstrating the ability to formulate problems and carry out research according to the precepts and paradigms of the subject studied.
Recognizing the need to transcend the limitations of this "chalk and talk" methodology, teachers have long wrestled with the problems of transcending the limits of the conventional classroom experience. Field trips, laboratory exercises, media modalities (tapes, video, slides etc.) have long provided both faculty and students with the opportunity to expand the educational experience. Even the most richly endowed institutions, however, find that operating costs , scheduling constraints and lack of physical space restrict the ability to carry out field trips or conduct laboratory exercises. Consequently, the laboratory or field experience exercises a limited impact on education, one that may be highly prized but which cannot provide day- to -day hands-on experiences that realistically mimic real world research. Of necessity, educational philosophy is sacrificed on the altar of practicality.
To transcend these constraints , we can harness the power of computer based technologies to create computerized simulations that engage students in collaborative efforts , closely mimicking the work of professional researchers in the physical and social sciences. These technologies enable us to aggressively address the problems inherent in any text book bound approach to the study of the social and physical sciences by reorienting the direction of learning. The primary "text" students use in the classroom is thus the actual phenomenal, fossil, artifactual and textual evidences themselves. It becomes the students' responsibility, with the guidance and collaboration of their instructors, to apply the precepts of the disciplines they are studying in order to give meaning and understanding to the materials. The students are confronted with the task of both developing and selecting from among competing models one which best 'fits' the available data (the data base itself a product of the students observations and manipulations of the body of evidence). In turn, the students are required to derive inferences from the explanations that they propose, which can be "tested" against the data they have already collected or data which they generate through further research "on site" or "in lab". The emphasis is on teaching students to develop proper methodological and analytical skills as well as introducing students to basic epistemological questions.
The underlying principle is that students will best learn and internalize these skills and concepts in response to problems emanating from "real-life situations". As the skills that the students acquire have an immediate application to the problems that they encounter daily in carrying out the various tasks associated with their research, they experience them as means rather than ends. Moreover, computers in the classrooms provide the students with repeated opportunities to both develop and refine their newly mastered skills and apply them in a new and changing context: an opportunity which in turn acts to enhance confidence in their ability to make use of these skills. And since these skills are being exercised in a learning situation in which the emphasis is upon delineating possible solutions rather than in determining a single correct answer, the learning experience is all the more applicable to other situations. In this manner the technology can be used to effect multiple modalities of learning , permitting us to create extended learning communities.
The technology also permits us to transcend the spatial and temporal problems inherent in constructing realistic physical simulations. Students can travel anywhere in the world, or indeed the universe, without leaving the confines of their classroom. Even more important for most teachers, computer based simulations do not have to be conducted in real time, liberating both teacher and student from the often suffocating hold that scheduling constraints exercise on the study of both the physical and social sciences. Moreover, neither realism nor complexity have to be compromised in order to carry out the project or experiment. In turn this enables teachers to create truly collaborative learning environments ( i.e.. the complexity of the problem necessitates collaboration with colleagues in order to achieve a successful resolution) as opposed to learning situations in which collaboration is artificially imposed (i.e.. the student can successfully carry out the assignment without the assistance of others) on the students by the teacher.
The technology also makes it possible for both faculty and students to make readily accessible the visual and textual support materials students require in order to carryout their projects or experiments. Moreover, as these resources are being examined in the context of actual research they become both more comprehensible and meaningful than if the same material was presented solely as disembodied abstractions to be absorbed and regurgitated as necessary. The permanence that computer technology affords student's work means that projects can be cumulative as well. Each year, students can expand upon and learn from information and data compiled by their predecessors. As in the real world of science, each generation of students can engage in inquires which are continuos with those of preceding and succeeding generations. The computer's versatility in presenting textual, graphical, and visual materials make it also an ideal forum for organizing and presenting the results of the students' research.
In summary, the computer has enabled us to go beyond lectures and text by creating collaborative and interdisciplinary environments in which students can mimic the work of researchers in the social and physical sciences as closely as classroom and didactic constraints allow. Thus empowered, the students become creators --not merely consumers --of knowledge.