We are in the midst of a major turning point in our educational system. Years from now we will look back and try to pinpoint when the change actually occurred. The massive change going on now started years ago and will take many years to complete. What follows are very brief summaries of two articles I read yesterday that capture the essence of what is happening.

Distance Education is Changing the World of Education

As a faculty member at the University of Oregon I taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate students. There was a “rule of thumb” that undergraduates were expected to spend two hours of time studying outside of class for each hour in class, and that graduate students were expected to spend three hours outside of class for each hour in class. The rules of thumb were in reference to courses that had one hour of class meeting per week for each hour of credit in the course.

Over my years of teaching, I gradually became suspicious that many students were not paying much attention to such guidelines. When my wife’s daughter began attending the University of Oregon a little over 15 years ago, she reported that her undergraduate peers seemed to be doing about one hour of work outside of class for each hour in class.

It was, of course, obvious to me that some students were doing much more than this. The same situation seemed to exist at the graduate level. While some students were working much more than three hours outside of class for each hour in class, some were working much much less.

The purpose of this IAE Blog entry is to help readers learn to differentiate between correlational  and causality research.

Undoubtedly you have heard of the Mozart Effect (have prenatal children listen to Mozart and they will turn out to be much smarter than they would be otherwise). The popular media is full of ideas such as this on how to improve intelligence and education. Most of these ideas have not been well researched. The following paper is representative of the quality of research that is needed.