Online Supplemental Learning

Online Supplemental Learning

In this age of information, students and virtually anyone with access to a computer and the Internet have terabytes of valuable educational material at their fingertips. Yet, the current literature and formal educational practice has focused only on authoritative academic sources to determine the benefits of online learning. This study examines the potential of several widely used but non-academic websites as educational tools to help prepare high school and college students for coursework in various subjects. Building on Rand J. Spiro’s Cognitive Flexibility Theory of teaching ill-structured concepts in a hypermedia environment, video and text-based resources from websites such as YouTube and Wikipedia will be used to establish knowledge schema necessary for learners to assimilate new knowledge. In cooperation with the Center for the Advanced Technology in Education at the University of Oregon, this study will describe and evaluate strategies for the use of these online resources as means to establish context and assist in students’ acquisition and comprehension of knowledge.