 
TONY SCARLATOS |
B R O O K L Y N C O L L E G E
Brooklyn College, funded by a grant from the Department of Commerce's Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP), has teamed up with four public high schools in Brooklyn, the City University of New York, and the College Board to create a unique learning experience that we call the Learning Café. In this environment, students who were formerly at risk of dropping out of high school may learn to use the new technology, explore career options, and get a head start on their college careers. Students who successfully complete the earlier parts of the curriculum will be allowed to take a Brooklyn College Core course for college credit at no charge. Students who successfully complete the full curriculum will be guaranteed a place in the next Brooklyn College freshman class. Brooklyn College has helped
each of the four high schools to set up a Learning
Café equipped with 30 PC workstations and a server,
all with T-1 internet access. We have also assembled a
quality instructional team comprised of faculty, library and
technical staff, and designers. In creating this dynamic
learning environment we have developed the following
software for the project.
The Learning Café
browser is a custom piece of software that we developed to
serve up the on-line course content. Our primary goal in the
Learning Café was to ensure that students entering
the classroom would always be able to access their lessons
in a friendly, non-threatening environment. We also wanted
to help the students to stay on track, increasing their
chances of successfully completing the courses. Finally, we
wanted to provide a computer interface that was fun,
engaging, and simple to use, even for the rawest novice. The
Learning Café browser helps us to realize these goals
by controlling and monitoring the on-line environment within
a virtual café setting.
The Learning Café
database serves two purposes. It stores organizational and
transient data for the on-line courses, including pointers
to lesson web pages and questions for on-line quizzes. The
database also tracks student usage and performance by
recording information such as what lesson a student is
currently working on, and what grades he or she got on the
on-line quizzes. Altogether, this database allows us to
dynamically create informative, individualized content and
customized quizzes for the students, supports automatic
grading of multiple choice quizzes, facilitates evaluation
of individual students and the Learning Café project,
and simplifies the process of adding new quizzes, lessons,
and courses to the Learning Café.
We have developed two fully on-line courses for juniors, which are served up by the Learning Café browser. Information Literacy teaches students about the computer as well as other research tools, and gives them experience using the tools in practical scenarios. Pre-Core English provides lessons on writing and composition, and encourage students to share their writing via email and threaded discussions. The content for both courses is richly illustrated with cartoons and animations, and provides numerous on-line exercises that help students to reinforce the principles that they are learning. Student understanding for both of these courses is tested primarily via on-line quizzes, which the students must take in order to progress to the next lesson. Although these consist primarily of multiple-choice questions, most quizzes also have short answer questions that are graded by a high school teacher. Students in these courses also take proctored midterm and final exams. Seniors who do well in their courses may then choose to take one of three fully on-line college-level Core courses: Biology, History, or English. These courses are conducted by Brooklyn College faculty and carry college credit. This project was presented at the Syllabus conference in Santa Clara, July 1999. Click on the thumbnails above for a full scale view, or visit the site at: |
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