A Website Where Students Can Go Figure
No textbooks were to be found or lectures to be heard in Debi Storing's eighth-grade science class at Yorba Linda Middle School one day last week.
Instead, her students sat down before laptop computers, logged on to a UCLA research website and set to work.
Thirteen-year-old Craig Matthews furrowed his brow as he took on a problem in which he had to piece together a fictional road trip through American cities using limited time and gas.
Clicking between maps and mileage charts, Matthews calculated gas mileage and driving times, methodically eliminating cities until he landed on the only possible itinerary: Detroit to Baltimore via Indianapolis.
Sitting next to Matthews, Trista Dwyer breezed through a problem in which she assumed the role of an assayer from the Wild West, responsible for determining the volume and value of various ores.
Until they graduate from the Placentia-Yorba Linda school district, Matthews, Dwyer and thousands of their fellow students will visit UCLA's Interactive Multi-Media Exercises website countless times. After years helping to develop the research project, district teachers in nearly every grade are using the many problems on the site in their math and science lessons. The program, teachers and researchers say, not only pushes students to think more critically, but also aims to help teachers better understand how students learn.
"At this point, we can start to predict what kids will do with a problem -- the ways they will go about solving it," said Ron Stevens, a UCLA medical professor and the founder of the system.
"We are trying to provide teachers with tools to help guide their instruction."
Stevens developed the IMMEX computer program in 1986 after growing frustrated with using run-of-the-mill, multiple-choice exams to evaluate his students' ability to diagnose complex medical conditions. Stevens designed the system to present students with real-life scenarios that changed as students selected the various tests they would run and the treatments they would pursue. Stevens quickly saw broader possibilities.
"I thought, It's crazy to wait until kids get to medical school to engage them in this type of thinking," he said.
