Types Of Instruction And Instructors For Stellar Schools
Stellar Schools rely on many proven methods of instruction, as detailed in the next section. That instruction will be individualized in a self-paced learning environment. We shall rely on six different kinds of instructors:

• University or college professors in the video lectures.
• Expert K-12 instructors in the video lectures.
• K-12 teachers located at the school sites.
• Teaching assistants located at the school sites.
• Student tutors who are at the school sites.
• Help desk experts located at the network’s central service facility.


The video instruction will be taught by two-person teams composed of an expert K-12 instructor and a college level professor. These two-person teams will also create and maintain the examination databases for each course as well as author the lecture notes. All of the computer based and Web based instruction will be available asynchronously on-demand. Many of the digitized content materials will be linked from the practice tests and other on-line courseware systems as appropriate.

Stellar Schools Course Learning Environments
For each Stellar Schools course we plan to provide several overlapping on-demand learning environments to help students master the course content. There are up to twelve such components. As presently conceived the twelve instructional components are:

1. Lecturettes: For each Learning Concept Group each student may, on demand, receive short video lectures presented by the instructional team, which in the case of our physics prototype has two teachers and two student questioners. By “short” we mean that these lecture segments generally run no longer than 20 minutes.

2. Supplemental Lecturettes: For a subset of Learning Concept Groups, which students often find more difficult than others, we present additional short lectures to help students “around” common mistakes and misconceptions.

3. Lecturette Notes Online: Expanded “scripts” of the Lecturettes are presented online in textbook format and is the primary textbook for the course as it contains all of the Learning Concept Statements and explanatory material that the student is expected to master. Material from the Supplemental Lecturettes is included in its appendices.

4. Lecturette Notes Hardcopy: A physical paper bound version of the Lecturette Notes is also provided to each student.

5. Secondary Text Hardcopy: A physical “trade” textbook. This would be a standard textbook commonly used for the subject.

6. Secondary Text Online: When available, an e-book version of the secondary textbooks will be provided as well. Many textbooks are not currently available in this form from their publishers. We may be permitted to make our own digital copies under the Fair Use doctrine of copyright laws.

7. Confidence Based Assessment System: We intend to use the KnowledgeFactor system of assessment, which we describe in more detail elsewhere. By knowing the confidence with which a student may hold an incorrect understanding of a concept or fact, it enables the instructional systems to better remediate the misunderstanding. Practice tests and official tests are drawn, in each instance, from a random sampling of the examination data base- the only difference being that official tests are proctored.

8. CyberTutor: After each administration of the test, the CyberTutor mechanism compiles a remediation document that includes both textual and video presentations of the issues and concepts surrounding each question answered incorrectly. This means that you’ll encounter your video instructors again in this mode.

9. CyberGames: Various kinds of computer games will be organized around the concepts of each course. Each will be designed in such a way that students who have mastered the course will tend to win more often.

10. Schoolroom Teachers and Teaching Assistants: Within each Stellar Schools schoolroom there will be at least one teacher or teaching assistant- operating in tutoring mode- who can help you learn the material.

11. Student Tutors: Many schoolrooms will also have present more advanced students who have already mastered the course content at a sufficiently high level to be accorded the status of “student tutor.” They will also be available to help.

12. Hub Help Desk: Finally, at the Stellar Schools Central Service Center or Hub- from which we operate the Stellar Schools network- additional teachers will be available to answer questions when the resources at the schoolroom level prove inadequate.