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Gifted Adolescents' Talent Development Through Distance Learning
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Gifted Adolescents' Talent Development Through Distance Learning
| With increasing distance learning opportunities offered through correspondence and cyberspace, the Center for Talent Development decided to examine the impact of the medium on young gifted learners. The center’s Gifted LearningLinks distance learning program (LL), in existence since 1982 offers both honors-level and Advanced Placement courses to students in grades 6 through 12. Using surveys from 87 (out of 207) students who took Advanced Placement courses and 62 (out of 450) students who took honors courses, we studied how academically talented students use a university-based distance-learning program, its role in students’ education and talent development, and students’ experience with distance education. Overall, the study indicated that students’ interests in the subject areas and desire for enriching and accelerating themselves (69.4%), and the unavailability of the courses in their home schools (37.1%) were the major reasons they enrolled in the CTD distance-learning courses. Other reasons included the desire to work through the study material at one’s own pace (30.6%) and to advance more quickly to the next level in the subject area (22.6%). Only 4.5% of the students reported earning AP credit for college as a motive. Honors level students thought that the honors level courses had an appropriate level of challenge for them. They also were generally satisfied with the quality of communication with instructors and/or classmates, and the majority agreed that they enjoyed communicating with their instructor and/or classmate via e-mail (81.3%), that their teacher provided useful feedback and information about their work in the class (76.6%) and that getting in touch with the instructor was easy (64.0%). However, our data also supports other researchers (e.g., Gallagher, 2001; McBride, 1991; University of Plymouth, 2002) who proposed that the lack of communication and interaction between teachers and students is a major challenge of distance-education programs. Some students mentioned that their least favorite component of the Gifted LearningLinks program was lack of interaction with the teacher. Nearly half (47.4%) of the students reported earning credit from their home schools, while only 32.1% of them had course grades factored into their high school GPAs or were allowed to move to sequential courses in their schools. This indicates that local schools are still reluctant to award credit or advance students for outside-of-school courses as previously found by other researchers (e.g., Olszewski-Kubilius, 1989; Lynch, 1990; Mills, Ablard, & Lynch, 1992; Olszewski-Kubilius, Laubscher, Wohl, & Grant, 1996). Some students involved in this study were reluctant to ask their schools for credit or placement for the next course in sequence, even though previous research showed that schools react more favorably when students actively pursued credit (Olszewski-Kubilius, Laubscher, Wohl, & Grant). Families need to communicate with local school personnel to receive appropriate educational actions or services for outside-of-school coursework. For nearly half of the honors level students, no further courses were available in the same subject matter at their home schools, indicating a general lack of opportunity for continuous study in the subject area. Armed with this information, students and their families must be aware they most likely will have to seek out further learning opportunities such as dual enrollment, early college entrance programs, or more distance learning courses to find appropriately challenging courses for students. Most of the students excelled on AP exams after the Gifted LearningLinks course (63.3% reported scoring 4 points or higher on their AP exams after the course), and the majority felt that the distance-learning courses prepared them extremely well for their exams. For students who did not take the AP exams after the Gifted LearningLinks course, college credit was not a major interest, and scheduling conflicts or other commitments were often barriers that prevented them from taking the exams. A majority of students (69.5%) chose not to take the Gifted LearningLinks course in the on-line-format, although most students wanted to combine traditional textbooks and written course materials with computer technologies for easy access to the teacher (via email), easy access to course information (via web pages), and easy interactions with other students (via on-line or posted discussions). Of the students who took the online courses, 73.3% are considering future on-line coursework, attesting to their satisfaction. Most were satisfied with the quality of overall technical support, reporting easy access to information, adequate technical support help, clear navigation and organization of course websites, and quality online communication with their instructors. Communication with instructors and/or classmates and submission of assignments were two major course functions students performed on-line. More research is still needed on distance learning to pinpoint how it can be most helpful for gifted students. In particular, continued comparison of distance learning to traditional learning formats should help researchers determine what features are essential elements of successful distance learning for talented adolescents. References
by Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, Ph.D & Seon-Young Lee, Ph.D, Fall 2003  E-mail this story
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