This chapter describes the history of UC Links, including the original Fifth Dimension and its later adaptation, La Clase Mágica, and how through these programs' learning activities, undergraduates enrolled in a university practicum course, and younger peers, participating in a local after-school program, together engage in the joint exploration of digital technologies. The authors then describe how the original model began to be adopted and adapted in a network of colleges and universities throughout the United States and beyond. The chapter offers concise descriptions of UC Links founding university-community partnerships and a summary of its institutional strategies for ensuring program accountability and sustainability. The chapter closes with an ethnographic focus on the historical development of the Fifth Dimension in Solana Beach, from the time it became a UC Links program in 1996 to the present.
TopIntroduction
The original Fifth Dimension was located at the Boys and Girls Club in Solana Beach, California, a coastal city a few miles north of UC San Diego (UCSD). One afternoon, shortly after the establishment of UC Links 1996, one of the authors (Charles) visited the program with colleagues from UCSD and other campuses. We went inside, looking for our host, Michael Cole, a professor at the University of California, San Diego. When we didn’t find him, we walked further through the entryway, and then saw him in a room opening to the side, in conversation with a young child. Around the room – the program’s specially designated room inside the Solana Beach Boys and Girls Club – about 25 or 30 elementary school children were clustered with a handful of university students around 10 or 12 desktop computers. Guided by the undergraduate students, the younger students were working, sometimes alone and sometimes together, on various computer-based activities. The children were intent on their work, but despite their serious faces, the students’ lively, boisterous voices implied that they were having fun. Even when things went wrong, the work of fixing the problem was framed with cheerful shouts and laughter.
“Hey, my screen froze!” Alan said.
“What? again?” said another child.
“This computer’s crumby!” Alan complained, almost laughing.
“Ha ha! Sure it’s the computer?” a third child laughed.
“Here,” one of the undergraduates said. “Can you do this?”
“Hey, that worked! Cool. Is my work saved?”
“Save it now,” the undergraduate said. “Do you know how?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Alan said. “I’m on this.”
We walked around the room with Mike Cole, who created the original idea for the Fifth Dimension, a model that has since been adapted and modified to fit the needs and local cultures of communities throughout the world.
“It looks like chaos,” Mike said. “It is chaos. But chaos with a purpose.” He explained that the purpose was to create optimal conditions for learning in which the children and their older peers could participate flexibly, not hierarchically, each sometimes taking on the role of expert and sometimes the role of novice to discover and learn together how to enact the activities in which they were engaged.
“Just watch and see for yourself,” he said. We moved away, looking around the room, but then Mike called to us.
“But don’t just watch. Get in there and talk to the kids. Sit down and play with them. See for yourself what it’s like.” He joined a couple of children who were engrossed in a computer game.
Left to our own discretion, we too joined a group of children sitting around two computers. The number of children at each computer shifted constantly. Sometimes there was one child playing a game on one computer and sometimes another child shifted his weight to lean over and joined him in the game, pointing out an opportunity for points or a hazard to be avoided. We decided to kneel next to the cluster of children (sometimes two and sometimes three) and focus on one computer screen, although it was constantly tempting to look over at the next screen only a few feet away.
The children were playing Oregon Trail, a kind of strategy game with a journey motif, based on the historic path across the North American West. The object was to pick up enough provisions to make it across unpredictable terrain to the next provisioning station. There were hazards along the way, rivers to cross and wagon breakdowns to mend, all of which taxed one’s provisions, but there were also opportunities to fulfill, chances to restock one’s provisions. There were also blockages and dilemmas that perplexed even the more advanced players. Sometimes a child would say, “What do we do now?” Usually, one of more of the other children would quickly shout advice or reach for the keyboard and make a move, often with a calm explanation or rationale for the move.
“It’s risky, but this way we’ll use up less of our food supplies.”
At times, they were baffled by the choices a hazard required them to make. Then the undergraduate, who mostly kept quiet or commented in agreement, asked them a question.
“What about the benefits? Can you balance the benefits against the risks?”
In this way, the children took turns, working the keyboard irregularly, often on impulse, as they moved along the trail past the various pitfalls and prospects. One of the opportunities that all the children enjoyed was to stop along the way, in a forest or on the open plain, to hunt for deer, buffalo, or other game. In this part of the game, an animal would dart across the screen and the player had to click the mouse at the right time to bring it down. The tendency for novice players was to stop and “kill” as many buffalo or deer as possible.