Computer-based education makes it possible for gifted and talented middle school and early high school students to complete advanced courses in mathematics and physics several years before they would nocinally do so Since the fall of 1990, three such groups of students at the Education Program for Gifted Youth at Stanford University have taken courses at the advanced placement level and have done exceedingly well. This report details those results.
I n this article, we describe two college-level introductory courses in physics, with calcuhs prerequisites, that are entirely computer-based. These courses have been developed by the Educátion Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) at Stanford,' a research project that provides year-round, accelerated instruction in mathematics and physics to gifted or advanced middle-and high-school students via computer-based courseware.Students in EPGY run multimedia courseware at home or in school on personal computers using the MS-Windows operating system. Our software, unlike traditional applications of computers in education, 1s intended to be the primary means of instruction and not merely a supplement to a regular class. It is precisely in those settings in which a regular class cannot be offered, either because of an insufficient number of students or the absence of a qualified instructor, that our software is intended to be used. Because we are concerned with college-level physics courses, which presuppose calculus, the issue of teacher qualification is a significant one.We have used our course model over the last four years
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