Key Idea: Teaching is four jobs: delivering, practising, noticing who is lost, and making somebody want to continue. Digital systems do the first two well and the last two barely at all — and both failures have the same cause.
Paper 1
- Part a: outline what online learning does better, or a change in research
- Part b: explain why free is not equal
- Part c: evaluate online learning or the reliability of research
Paper 2
- Q2: explain a source's claim about learning or evidence
- Q3: compare sources on remote education
- Q4: synthesise sources on access and outcomes
Everywhere else
- Social: the second digital divide is this topic's mechanism
- Systems: research incentives are a feedback problem
- HL 5.1: inequality in education is the standard Paper 3 case
Four jobs, and how well each one moves
| Job | Moves online? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Delivering | Better than before | Can be paused, repeated, taken at your own speed |
| Practising | Well | Feedback arrives while the thinking is fresh |
| Noticing who is lost | Badly | A system sees scores, not the student |
| Motivating | Barely | It depends on a person expecting you |
Noticing and motivating both depend on a relationship with a particular person, which is the property no system supplies. One cause, two failures.
Knowledge: four steps got faster, one did not
The imbalance and what follows
- Gathering and analysing collapsed in cost, and publication became immediate.
- Checking did not, because reproducing work takes the same effort as before.
- Nobody is rewarded for checking, so no researcher acting reasonably chooses to do it.
- So results outran verification, and wrong ones stay in the record while later work is built on them.
Important: Publishing the data and the code, and registering the method before looking, make checking cheap. Making production cheaper again widens the gap it was supposed to close.
Exam-style questions
Compare the effect of digital systems on school education and on scientific research.
🔒 Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Justify the claim that online learning widens rather than narrows educational inequality.
🔒 Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Quick check
The four jobs Delivering, practising, noticing who is lost, making somebody want to continue.
Why do two of them fail? Both depend on a relationship with a particular person, which no system supplies.
Which research step did not get faster? Checking — it takes the same work and nobody is rewarded for it.
Why is free not equal? What surrounds the tool — a device, a quiet hour, somebody to ask — decides who finishes.
Exam tips
- Name which of the four jobs a proposal addresses.
- 'Production outran checking' transfers to research, news and AI-generated content.
- 'Equal access, unequal outcome' is four words and it is the whole argument.