Guide
Guide > Core: The Modules > ARCHIVES

INTRODUCTION TO THE ARCHIVES

Goal

The Archives enable students to look at and analyze all the responses to the questionnaires and all forums that have taken place since the beginning of this project, namely since the Fall of 1997.

Students can therefore compare the answers to their own questionnaires with all the preceding ones. They can check whether the answers tend to be similar from year to year or not. They can read all the earlier commentaries on the on-line Forums and see what questions were posed, how they were answered. Students will also have access to the archives from the High School experiment (between Lenox Memorial High School and the Lycée Marcellin Berthelot in Pantin, outside of Paris).

When to use the Archives

It depends on what scenario you use.

1. If you work with partners abroad (i.e. if you use Cultura as a live experiment), it is best to keep them for analysis until the end of:

• either each module (to compare the answers and the forums of the current experiment with those of the preceding years)
• or the semester (as a module of its own)

2. If you use Cultura on your own, without the benefit of partners (which can be done), then you will use the Archives much earlier. As a matter-of-fact, they will become your first and primary document, since they contain the questionnaires - the essential starting point of Cultura.

If you have no partners, the questionnaires can be used in two ways: - they can be analyzed as such - before you have your students analyze them, you can first "simulate" a live experiment by typing three blank questionnaires, having your students answer the questions (on separate pieces of paper). This will then allow your students to check their own answers against all the others.