Dive Brief:

• Harvard University physics professor Eric Mazur created a social learning platform called Perusall to get his students to do the reading, and it also helps him figure out where they are confused and tailor his in-class lesson plans.
• According to eSchool News, Mazur latched onto opportunities for peer instruction in his classes, embracing an inquiry-based approach that he transferred to Perusall by allowing students to highlight text and ask and answer questions in the online readings.
• The system automates an assessment of student posts to help the instructor analyze engagement and the intellectual quality of student comments while also running a “confusion report” to highlight the top three areas where students seem to be having the most trouble.

Dive Insight:

Flipped classrooms have been around for decades, but they have become increasingly popular in the last few years as teachers experiment with new instructional strategies aimed at increasing student engagement in class. While eliminating in-class lectures may be less boring, it does require students to actually do the prep work before coming to school, making homework perhaps more important than ever. Besides the motivational challenges inherent to this approach, some kids simply do not have access to the digital technology at home that would allow them to complete such work.

In response to this digital divide, school districts across the country have expanded their IT focus. A district in New York has added wifi to school buses so students can have internet access to do some homework on their rides home. A district in Virginia expanded broadband to its entire 726-square-mile district. And other schools have sent kids home with laptops that have their own mobile hotspots.