Frequently
Asked Questions

This page provides answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Fifth Dimension, specially designed after school programs that involve cooperation between local community organizations, such as Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCAs, colleges and universities, and their neighborhoods. After a decade of implementation and evaluation experience with a variety of communities and age groups, we have found the Fifth Dimension to be effective in addressing many of the problems related to the social and cognitive development of children and adolescents.

Common Questions

Why after school?

We focus on after school time for several reasons. First, our research has revealed a broad desire to increase the number of hours per day when children are engaged in academic tasks.  Second, the changing nature of adult work has brought about significant changes in generally funded at a low level because they depend heavily on philanthropic giving at the local community level. This form of support works well for sports programs, where adults volunteer their time to supervise 25 or so youngsters a few days a week.  But educational concerns don't fare as well in this kind of structure.

In the culture at large, several core after school institutions, such as Boys and Girls Clubs, YMYW'CAs, and church clubs manage  loosely supervised, low overhead efforts that provide a safe space, a few supervised special activities, and a great deal of free play. The turnover of staff is rapid because only a few members of the institution are paid a full time, albeit low, wage. Often teenagers who have coached in a sport league are hired to provide programming and supervise the children. These institutions do a great service to the community along many dimensions and the term, education, is likely to appear in their list of goals. But educational activity is only fitfully present, as it is expensive to maintain. The Fifth Dimension provides a way to increase the educational programming of such institutions without substantially increasing the costs of operation.

Introducing education into the after school hours is not an easy achievement. After school is, traditionally, play time for children.  It is the space between schoolwork and homework.   There is a great need to arrange for children, as a part of their playful, after school hours, opportunities to engage in the kind of educational activity that might boost their chances of attending a college, university, or other post-secondary institution.

One obvious strategy, made more potent owing to the revolution in computer-based games and telecommunications, is to arrange for children  to learn while playing. Alongside learning fearlessness, strategic thinking, and social responsibility on the soccer field, the Fifth Dimension arranges for children to sign up for a form of play in which they learn perseverance, the basic content of many valued intellectual domains and subject matter areas, and the ability to organize their problem solving skills in collaboration with others.

Where are Fifth Dimension
sites located?

Most all Fifth Dimensions are affiliated with colleges and universities; therefore, they are located near campuses.  In the United States, Fifth Dimensions are sponsored by most campuses of the University of California system.  The California group is organized as a state-wide initiative named the University of California Links (UC-LINKS).  A number of private colleges in California, such as Whittier College, also sponsor Fifth Dimension.   Fifth Dimensions are also located at the University of Miami, University of Delaware and Appalachian State University.  At the international level, Fifth Dimensions are found in Israel, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Brazil, and Australia.

What Does A Fifth Dimension Look Like?

In a prototype Fifth Dimension system (local names for them vary),  a dozen or more 5-14 year old children encounter a large variety of off-the-shelf computer games, non-computer games, and telecommunications activities.  As a rule, the Fifth Dimension contains a variety of kinds of computers (Macs,  PCs, and others; low-end and high-end) at a ratio of one computer for every 2-3 children. Computer games, such as Carmen San Diego and The Secret Island of Dr. Brain, The Magic School Bus series  and non-computer games, such as Origami, chess, and Boggle are a part of a make-believe activity system, which transforms the way individual games are experienced by the children. 

Task Cards accompany each game or activity, to help participants get started, to specify expected achievements, and to provide evidence necessary for obtaining credentials as an expert at playing the games. The task cards also provide a variety of obligations to write to someone, to look up information in an encyclopedia, or teach someone else was learned while playing a game.

The organization of family life that make it difficult for adults to provide supervision for their children until 5 or 6 in the evening. Third, after school institutions are

How long do children come to and how long do they stay in a Fifth Dimension?

Children typically visit a Fifth Dimension on a drop in basis.  However, in most public school  Fifth Dimensions, children attend on a daily basis.  Some children spend four to six  hours per week of their after school time participating in the Fifth Dimension, while others may only come once a week for a few hours.  Opportunities and constraints vary across locations, seasons, populations, and sites.  Girls outnumber boys in some Fifth Dimensions, even where larger club setting activities are dominated by boys.

At some locations, adults expect the children to participate regularly in the Fifth Dimension and arrange for them to do so, while at other sites, children are free to choose if and for how long to participate, with homework, basketball, reading or other activities as some of their alternatives.  Many children enter the Fifth Dimension directly after school or homework sessions, and remain there until their parents or school transportation services take them home.

It is not unusual to find Fifth Dimension sites with children who range in age from 5-14.  A great number of these children attend the Fifth Dimension on a regular basis through their middle school years.  At some sites high schoolers who attended the Fifth Dimension even find time to return and act as mentor for the younger children!

What is a Site Coordinator?

Each Fifth Dimension has a "site coordinator" who greets the children and supervises the flow of activity in the room. This person is trained to  recognize and support the pedagogical ideals and curricular materials that mark the Fifth Dimension as "different"--as a different way for kids to use computers, as a different way for adults to interact with children. The site coordinator monitors the balance of education and play in interactions between children and undergraduates. 

A site coordinator may be employed by the community institution or after school program and  may have taken university courses that support the Fifth Dimension, but this is not the case everywhere.  Arrangements for funding the site coordinator position vary--sometimes the partner university or college's research or outreach funds cover the salary to help grow a Fifth Dimension in a setting with modest resources.   In other cases, site coordinator salaries can be absorbed into the operating budget of a club or come from fees charged to parents whose children attend after school programs.