Research Design

The study included approximately 500 fourth and sixth graders in 28 elementary and middle school classes from 7 large urban districts across the United States: Chicago, Dayton, Detroit, Memphis, Miami, Oakland and Washington, D.C. The population was divided into two groups: 14 experimental classes (with online access to Scholastic Network and the Internet) and 14 control classes (without online access). In each city, two classes in each of two schools were selected: an experimental and control fourth grade class from one school, and an experimental and control sixth grade class from the other school. Requirements for city participation in the study were designed to encourage district-level and building-based support for participating teachers.

Both experimental and control groups carried out a common unit of study based on the school's curriculum in conjunction with a curricular framework, activities, and worksheets developed by CAST for the study. Civil rights, a familiar interdisciplinary topic for schools, was selected as the instructional focus for the study. The unit was designed to be taught by teachers in both experimental and control groups in their existing classrooms. All classes were encouraged to use technology-based resources such as multimedia reference materials and video tapes for their projects. Both control and experimental classes were advised to use computers whenever appropriate. Only the experimental classes, however, were allowed to take part in online resources, activities, and communication. In both groups, the emphasis was on integrated learning, helping students to see connections among people, their actions, and the real world.

The goal was for all classes to study civil rights according to the preferences of their particular group, while participating in a small set of activities common to everyone in the study. Students engaged in three major learning activities: communications (discussing civil rights issues with peers, teachers, family members, neighbors, people in the community), research (using a variety of media to explore and synthesize information from multiple sources) and creation of a final project. The project was chosen as the final product for the study because it is commonly part of the curriculum in both fourth and sixth grades, and it provides material for performance assessment.