MAC Reaches Three Million Records… and is Still Growing

Two and a half years ago, three local schools became the brave pioneers in the Modeling Across the Curriculum (MAC) research project to test the effects of modeling software on secondary students’ science learning. From that modest beginning, MAC has grown to a total of 111 schools from 36 states and seven foreign countries. And the influx shows no sign of slowing down.

The immediate cause is our decision, in January 2004, to allow schools anywhere to register with our project. We collect data every time these schools run our software, and use it to produce classroom reports that tell the teachers not only how their students did on the last quiz, but how they are going about their investigations – what tools they are using, what manipulations they are making in the models, what online help they are seeking. It’s like looking over the students’ shoulders as they work with the computer.

And, of course, we get to use the data, too. At present, MAC is reaching approximately 6000 students in more than 300 classrooms around the world. For each one of those students, we can tell which activities they have attempted, how long they worked on them, and what they accomplished. (All the data is stored on our server. To ensure privacy, we eliminate names and other personal information pertaining to the students, referring to them only by computer-assigned ID numbers.)

Our database currently contains more than three million records, and it’s growing every day. We are still learning how to analyze all that data and put it to the most effective use – for our research, for the teachers, and for the students themselves. But two things are already clear: (1) software that keeps track of students’ actions is here to stay, and (2) Field of Dreams was right: if you build it, they will come.