Hands on, online

Chief Executive, The, April, 2005

Students don't all learn the same way, says Harvey Dean, president and CEO of Pitsco, the Pittsburg, Kan.-based learning company. In particular, he says, "we know that the dominant learning style of approximately 30 percent of students is through kinesthetic, or hands-on, learning." But schools provide few, if any, hands-on experiences, so those students become frustrated, bored and at risk of dropping out.

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Dean, who counts himself among such learners and who nearly left high school himself, has devoted his career to reaching all students, particularly that 30 percent. Since the 1970s, his company has provided a variety of educational solutions whereby students engage in learning by building model bridges, catapults, robots and so on. Teachers are provided with supporting materials that link those projects to underlying concepts in engineering, math and science.

In the past few years, Pitsco has revolutionized how content is delivered by integrating its hands-on concept into a new learning model called Synergistic Systems. Students work in teams of two to complete weeklong computer-delivered curricula involving specific content, hands-on activities and assessments. These weeklong modules cover content in math and/or life sciences. Core-content material is presented in the context of various career areas, such as environmental health, financial services or marketing, essentially giving the students "virtual internships," says Dean.

With self-directed modules and the ability to track students' progress on computers, "teachers have more time to teach," says Dean. There are now some 4,000 Pitsco labs in place, and studies from a variety of school districts show that the approach increases student learning and performance on assessments. Moreover, Dean adds, it affords kinesthetic learners success they do not often find in a traditional classroom.

"There aren't any easy answers to the challenges facing education," he says. "But we do know that if you don't engage these students and give them relevant content, they don't have a ghost of a chance."