The value of this type of instruction, said Miklos, is its ability to smoothly incorporate many types of learning. Frank Ruggirello of Cogito Media Learning agreed. Cogito is an educational publishing company that relies on multimedia technology for the development of science curricula for advanced placement high-school and undergraduate students. The power of this technology is that it augments lectures and condenses the essentials of the course. Testing shows that students like the interactive nature of the CD-ROM products because of the hyperlinks, which allow for additional exploration.
Educational technology can provide more than an opportunity for random exploration.
It also can provide students with the opportunity to conduct focused reviews of a particular area of science. At Rockefeller University, for example, students participate in an intensive laboratory research experience during which they must learn the nuances of the scientific literature in their host laboratories areas of expertise. As part of this process, they must identify what constitutes a good scientific paper and then learn at the university library how to conduct a search on the Medline database and how to use the Science Citation Index.