PERSPECTIVES ON COMPUTERS IN EDUCATION

A. Introductory Background

In some respects, I rather feel that I am here under false pretences. I currently have little involvement in computer‑based education, and very little in the humanities, let alone in the combination. That’s not say I am totally ignorant of either, but I suspect there may be little I can say that is not already patently obvious to you.

On the other hand, I have been working in the computer industry now for nearly 33 years, which means I probably started before many of you were born. Furthermore, I have had something of an interest in the use of computers in the education process for 23 of those years. For some of that time that interest has been quite intense, for instance when I helped to persuade the University of Western Australia and the WA Government to underwrite the acquisition of a Plato system in 1983, which provided a national subscription‑based service.

My interest in humanities computing also goes back a long way, to the time when I was involved in helping set up a computerised version of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, back in 1971 (now available on CD‑ROM, and called the Epigraph database - Jory, 1993). I also well remember being fascinated to read the humorous and informative, but at times heart‑breaking account of a US scholar’s struggles with use of computers in the humanities ‑ this was Ben Schneider’s “Travels in Computerland; or, Incompatibilities and Interfaces”, published in 1974 (Schneider, 1974). It was probably reading this book, more than anything else, that has given me a lasting sympathy for the adventures of the humanitist in IT land. There has actually been one other very significant factor, and that is coming to terms with the fact that my wife has been persistently uncomfortable with technology of all forms, computers included, despite the technological orientation of myself and our 3 sons - and she is a not-unintelligent Arts and Education graduate and English and Language teacher.

What I am trying to say is that I possibly can bring a perspective to bear on your deliberations in this conference that may just be helpful.

Let me say at the outset, lest any of what I have to say may give you cause to doubt it, that I remain very firmly convinced of the promise of computer‑based education, despite some of the disappointments, confusion, wastage and pain I have witnessed over the years.

I must say that it seems very clear to me that this country is much further advanced than Australia in terms of development and infrastructure for CBE. Such initiatives as CTI and TLTP I have sought for some time to have emulated in Australia, with something happening there on this front only now. On the other hand, but without having done a proper study, my impression is that the level of interest and activity, as well as use of CBE, is very comparable between the two countries. Without further investigation, I cannot be sure of the reasons for this discrepancy. One attractive hypothesis is that in the UK the activity is taking place on a much more durable foundation, so that we should see a marked divergence in effective and widespread use in the future.

I should also just comment on my terminology. I prefer to use the term “Computer‑Based Education”, since it covers both teaching (ie the teacher’s perspective) and learning (ie the student’s perspective). I notice that this conference refers to “Computers and Teaching”, but I have assumed that this is not specifically intended to exclude the learning side, or to focus primarily or solely on the teaching side.

B. The Promise

What are some of the promises of CBE? Here is a list from 1983 (Reid, 1983), but it might equally have been made in 1973 or 1993.

a. accelerated learning

b. reduced time required for instruction

c. improved understanding and performance by students

d. improved effectiveness in teaching

e. more pleasurable learning

f. simplified remedial effort

g. brings students to common level of background knowledge more efficiently

h. automated collection and analysis of student performance data

i. simplified prescription of courses of learning

j. improved understanding of student progress

k. accommodates differing rates and styles of learning

l. improved communication between students and lecturers

m. improved opportunities for research into learning patterns

n. more effective use of lecturer time

o. increased flexibility in timetabling

p. improved treatment of specific learning disabilities

q. improved student attitudes to learning

r. ability to teach some material previously not possible

The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but representative of the kind of thing we have been saying for over 20 years. Back in 1983 I could cite serious studies to corroborate each of these promises. I’m sure we could add much to this list now, including the very topical one of enabling lecturers to spend more time on research!

The overall vision we might paint would look something like the following, taken from the Information Technology Strategic Planning Proposals of the University of Western Australia in 1992 (Reid, 1992):

“In the very long term, it is likely that the bulk of the routine, mundane or rote learning tasks will be handled by computer-mediated systems. ... In the longer term, ... lectures will probably only be used when there is something special to say to the whole class, or someone special comes with something to say.

“Interaction between instructor and student will occur through two much enhanced means - electronically and in small tutorial groups. The electronic communication will occur in various forms - broadcast from the instructor to all students, in response to specific requests made by individual students, and also in response to the instructor examining electronic progress reports (eg ‘come and see me because you appear to be having difficulty in this area’).

“The most important interaction will once again revert to the small group model, where there is opportunity to interact in a meaningful way on real matters of issue. This will restore the principal rationale for students choosing to come to [a particular] university - because they will have the opportunity to interact with the best people in their chosen discipline.”

I am encouraged and excited to learn that this vision is shared and is actually being realised, through careful use of technology, in Project Atlantis at McGill University (Piehler, 1994).

The rapidly falling cost of technology compared with conventional teaching methods compels us to believe that we must be on the right track, and that sooner or later CBE must pay off. The cost of CBE is falling, whilst the cost of conventional teaching continues to rise: data for Plato in 1976 suggested the cross-over point (in terms of dollars per hour of instruction) would be reached between 1977 and 1979 for university teaching (Hofstetter, 1981). Even if you may dispute the dates, the trends are true for all CBE (perhaps the trends are even more marked with the advent of micros).

Surely all of us gathered here still believe in all this, do we not?

In fact, with the arrival first of the microcomputer, then of interactive multimedia, including now movie clips, and so on, we are more excited than ever about the promises the technology is making.

I was reading some papers written by Alfred Bork the other day, some dating back to 1971. They could easily have been written today. They explain why it is that computers are going to revolutionise the education process, in a way that parallels the impact of the book. “We stand at one of the great moments in the history of education” he said in 1978 (Bork, 1981).

These writings are mirrored by those of Bengt Kjöllerström just last year (who also, by the way, is a physicist): “IT can transform this [existing university] structure as it will enable students to study when and where it suits them...” (Kjöllerström, 1994).

C. The Pain

We really have to find the solutions to a formidable range of problems, impediments and issues. It seems that every time we overcome one impediment to the effective and widespread use of IT in teaching, something else emerges. I have compiled a list of some of these - not guaranteed to be exhaustive, but rather to give an overview of how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. This analysis is based on personal experience and observation in Australia, and observations in the UK and the USA. It is not inconsistent with others who have analysed the situation (eg see Hammond, 1992).

1. Inappropriate and Untrustworthy Evaluation. We need evaluation capabilities at several levels, as we have for the textbooks that we might select for our courses:

· reviews from the publisher (often with glowing testimonials - something to excite our interest);

· independent reviews in the press (from colleagues we trust or respect);

· ability to see it and try it for ourselves - this is really hard for CBE!

Each of these plays an important part in our evaluation of a potentially suitable textbook. The first two we can get something of a handle on in regard to CBE, but I think we are a long way from solving the third need.

2. The Not‑Invented‑Here (NIH) Syndrome. This also seems largely to have been solved for textbooks, but is a really serious impediment for courseware. This difference is not just a factor of the textbook’s longstanding place in education, versus the newness of CBE. It also has much to do with the power of the technology used for CBE, which makes CBE material very much more complex and intrinsically difficult to compare, and the fact that so little courseware addresses an extensive part of the subject matter. Only when courseware is produced which can be viewed as an integrated whole can it be reasonably be considered for adoption elsewhere than its birthplace.

3. Unavailability of Delivery Platforms. Although progress is being made on this all the time, we are constantly behind the targets of numbers of students for every micro that we have set for ourselves - the recommendations of the national Nelson (1983) and McDonough (1991) Reports were, respectively, 5 by 1990 (which I don’t think was achieved by any UK university), and 4 by 1996. The results of an informal survey conducted in March of this year (Rosner, 1994) indicated that the vast majority of universities were still a very long way from meeting the Nelson or McDonough targets - the overall picture is still quite gloomy. Even these proposed levels of provision would be totally inadequate. And given the manner in which equipment is funded in most universities, the recurrent (replacement and upgrade) implications of the required level of provision haven’t even begun to be considered. This is a really serious issue, on which the whole vision of widespread use of CBE could well founder. A bit of lateral thinking here, however, may help. The place where the fastest deployment of suitable hardware is taking place is in the home. Why duplicate resources to which students already have access? More on this later.

4. Lack of a Viable Market for Courseware. If courseware is ever to be as widely used in education as textbooks, then we need a means of creating and sustaining a market for it that is at least as effective as that for books. At present, few are willing to invest in courseware development, because there are few prospects of any return. People do not beat a path to your door if you build a better mousetrap. Darby (1994) likens our present mode of operation (eg the TLT projects) to famine relief. I like this analogy - such handouts meet the immediate need, but in the process destroy whatever incentives there were for the locals to invest in the next harvest, because they destroy the market (who’s going to pay for food when they can get it free from the relief agencies?). I think we could perhaps take a leaf out of the book of the more thoughtful relief agencies, who advocate purchasing the products of depressed economies rather than sending them handouts (in materials or money). If we follow the analogy, then we should be asking governments to buy the products of entrepreneurial ventures, which obtain loan or similar funding to reach that point, rather than just ask for handouts (of course, that is not to deny the important place of pump-priming).

5. Non‑Cost‑Effective Courseware. This is something that many people in the CBE field shy away from. If full cost-effectiveness studies were carried out for most of the courseware we are currently producing, our funding agencies would be scared off - so we don’t do it. To be honest with ourselves, we need to take into account the full cost of development (which includes the time of academics and others seconded to development teams), the costs of delivery, and the costs of ongoing support and development throughout the life of the product. The effectiveness side of the equation is covered by 1. above. I’m afraid few projects would yield a positive result. As has been said, the outcome is nearly always that the project satisfactorily demonstrates the potential of the technology (eg see Mapp, 1994). This is another reason little interest has been shown in CBE development by commercial concerns.

6. No Incentives for Developers. I think it is agreed by all nowadays that developments must originate with the relevant subject-matter people - the academics who teach it. But there must be substantial incentives for them to embark on something as adventurous as courseware development. At present, these are few and far between. Even those universities who claim to provide promotion and advancement based on teaching as well as research rarely do so in practice. A massive cultural change is required, which will take a long time (and won’t happen of its own accord!). And even if the whole of academia were willing, there is still the serious issue of how you measure achievement in teaching and more specifically courseware development (compared with the well-established “publish or perish” arrangements for research performance).

7. Fear of Redundancy. A powerful disincentive for many lecturers to become involved in development is, of course, the persisting fear that they will, in effect, be doing themselves out of a job in the long run. In a sense they are right, as it seems very likely that the traditional job of lecturer will disappear. But redundancy is only skin-deep; we need to think more radically about the nature and purpose of the academic post - those who are at the forefront of research should also be at the forefront of the teaching of our brightest students - but the form which that teaching takes will change.

8. Technodazzle. So much CBE development is overpowered by the wonder of the latest technology. It marvellously demonstrates the potential of the new technology, but in and of itself is rarely cost-effective. This is linked to point 5 above. It is always going to be hard not to be influenced by the glamour of the latest offering. As has been well said, “What is the question to which interactive multimedia is the answer?”

9. No Examples of Good Practice. After 30 years of courseware development, we still have very few examples that we can point to as models for future development. This is partly because the half-life of courseware is so short, but also because we have very few mechanisms to bring these to people’s attention, or to demonstrate them effectively when we have their attention. Without ample examples of good practice in every discipline, we will not progress.

10. Inability to Maintain Currency. As indicated above, courseware gets out of date very quickly. This happens on two fronts - on the first, the technology advances so quickly that users become bored with the “pedestrian” material developed to exploit older technology; on the second, the subject matter needs updating periodically - this is not so rapid an effect as the first, but is a more serious one, since the effort of updating material can be quite substantial, and not nearly so glamorous as developing it in the first place (the main incentive for authors to produce revisions of their textbooks is the additional revenue they bring in - albeit only pizza money). On a third front related to the first, sometimes material exploits features which are not supported on later versions of the technology (software or hardware). Plans and procedures for updating courseware must be devised.

11. Lone Enthusiasts. How often have projects petered out when the originator, the main driving force, the enthusiast departs? This is due partly to over-zealous enthusiasts (beware the person with fire in their eyes!), partly to lack of institutional support for specific projects (to remove the dependency on one person), and partly to the fact that CBE has not yet been institutionalised, ie made something that is considered a normal part of the life of academia. These factors are, I believe, being addressed now rather effectively, by such means as the TLTP receiving a high institutional and national profile. This appears to me to be less well-established in the humanities than in other disciplines, however.

12. Inefficient Courseware Development. I used to think that this was the chief impediment to more widespread adoption of CBE, and campaigned against home-grown software, against the use of standard programming languages for development, and for the institutional adoption of high-level, “intuitive” development tools. These goals are still not achieved very often, but even where they are, it is clear that the real impediments go far beyond the actual writing process. The writing is such a small component of the whole development process, that even if it were reduced to zero, the overall project time would not be substantially affected. Nonetheless, there are still very good reasons to pursue these goals, not so much to reduce development time, as to develop reusable material and reusable expertise.

13. Piecemeal Development. So much courseware development has occurred in a piecemeal fashion in the past. This is equivalent to writing a few examples for a chapter of a textbook. This material may have enjoyed some success at the place where it was developed by the developers or their immediate associates, but it rarely receives wider use, and invariably experiences a quiet death after a short period. To be effective and have lasting and widespread impact, it must be a part of a larger whole. Otherwise it will never be regarded as anything other than a clever experiment - by the institution, by peers and even by the students who have used it.

14. Lack of Integration into Curriculum or Institution. The ultimate answer to problem 13 is thorough integration into the curriculum, and into the academic life of the institution. So often CBE has been promoted by isolated individuals or groups, who do not have the recognition of their peers, their universities, or sometimes even their departments. It is inevitable in these circumstances that their impact would be minimal and not lasting. This is gradually changing, again through the national recognition now being afforded such initiatives. It is becoming “respectable”!

15. Inadequate Support Services. Resources are required to support development and use within institutions, and to support distribution and dissemination. A corollary to and consequence of 14 is that such efforts have been under-resourced (often, the enthusiast wildly underestimates the required resources in the first place!). The under-resourcing takes place at the level of the individual effort, the institutional scene, and nationally. CTI Centres, their equivalent at an institutional level, and the national CTISS services are helping to address these deficiencies.

16. Low Priority for Educational Objectives. As indicated in 8 above, the priority in development of CBE materials has all too often not been directed primarily towards meeting educational goals. Instead, the glamour of the technology, or the opportunity to obtain some funding, or the attraction of being involved in a leading‑edge project, have deflected many from asking first what are the educational needs that are to be addressed. Too often, what is easy to accomplish with the technology is what gets tackled, rather than what may be really needed.

17. Failure to Value Intellectual Property. Copyright issues have not really come to the fore much yet. But they loom as potentially a very thorny issue. Much of the culture of courseware to date has been free distribution. This is being reinforced by the TLTP requirement that all products be freely distributed. I do not happen to think that this is the best means of ensuring both comprehensive distribution and sustainable development (as indicated by my comments in 4 above).

18. Overselling. A final pain which we are probably all guilty of inflicting on ourselves is overselling the technology. This may yield short-term gains, but when we cannot deliver on the exaggerated promises we have made, as is inevitable, serious disillusionment sets in with the funding agencies and with our institutional leadership.

D. The Prospect

Let’s now turn to the future and what I believe are the prospects for CBE. As I have hinted through the course of reviewing the above problems, solutions to some of them are now in place, solutions to others are likely to emerge with little redirection of effort, and just a few will remain thorns in our side. These I believe will only be overcome by radical thinking and endeavour. Bork asserted 16 years ago that we were on the brink of a revolution. I believe we are at that point now.

But revolutions are messy things! They hardly ever happen in the manner anticipated (almost by definition!). Furthermore, those who are in the vanguard frequently get swept away with the tide they unwittingly unleash. How do we know how this revolution is going to take shape, and what impact it will have on how we teach the humanities in universities?

1. Potential of the Computer

It may be helpful to consider how information technology is impacting scholarship generally. It is happening through 3 modes of use of the computer, which have emerged in sequence over the life of the device.

In the first mode, computers are used to do faster and more accurately the things we were already doing (typically, long and tedious calculations); they improved efficiency. You could say that they enable us to do the previously impracticable.

As the first mode has gathered momentum, a second, overlapping mode has emerged, as we started to realise more of the potential of the computer. In this mode we use computers to change how we do things, to change our methods of solving problems. We can start to tackle new problems. This enables us to do the previously impossible. It is as this mode emerged, I believe, that the use of computers in the humanities gathered momentum.

The third mode is only just beginning to emerge. In this mode, computers enable us to change what we do, to allow questions to be asked which we could not even think of asking before. This enables us to do the previously inconceivable.

The applications belonging to this third mode will and do catch us unawares. They express the revolutionary nature of the computer. Because they are unpredictable, and only starting to emerge, I can’t really give you any good examples.

But it may help if you consider the impact of various other fairly pervasive technologies, such as the telephone or the car, and consider how blinkered the inventors’ vision of their impact was, compared with what has happened. The telephone has changed the very nature of communication, the car has changed how we live, not just how we are transported (eg it accounts for the rise of suburbs). These technologies have thus had massive, unforeseen and possibly unforeseeable social implications. So will the computer.

2. Predictions

In making some predictions, then, about the prospects for CBE in universities, I am conscious that it is very difficult to be right! The best way to be correct, I believe, is to make many and radical predictions about the future (not necessarily contradictory ones), so that at least one of them will turn out right. It also helps to be very cagey about the timescale. This, I think, is how Nostradamus did it!

So I will be bold enough to make some predictions about how I think things will develop, which may help to provide a vision of where we’re going and why ‑ some light at the end of the tunnel to give us hope (albeit just me waving a flashlight!). Without a vision, the Bible says, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18).

Prediction 1: The only CBE developments that will have any impact will be the very ambitious and well-resourced, or the primitive, simple, almost naïve ones.

The first because they are the only ones which can hope to fulfill the requirements of full integration into and serious impact upon the curriculum and the institution. A good example is the 30-person team used by the Texas Learning Technology Group to create the 160 hours of the Chemistry 1 course for 15 year-olds (McKendree, 1994). The team included video producers, graphics designers, graphics software programmers, authoring software programmers, subject matter experts, classroom teachers, and instructional designers.

The second because such developments will quietly infiltrate their way into the system, and no serious investment of resources is required. To some extent, this is represented in part by what Erhmann calls “worldware” - the use of standard packages such as Lotus 123 to facilitate adjunct teaching functions (Ehrmann, 1994). But it also includes small, quickly-built tools; the tools and products may not themselves propagate (indeed, most will die an early death), but the ideas they embody will propagate and perpetuate.

Products which fall between these two ends of the spectrum will be short-lived.

Prediction 2: CBE will make a great leap forward in terms of its effectiveness, pervasiveness and impact - but this will occur in ways that we do not currently expect. I suspect that this will occur outside the traditional education system, probably centred in the home or office, and will be controlled by commercial interests linked to entertainment and the media.

This should not trouble us, as I can think of no greater outcome than that everyone (possibly starting with mature and continuing students) should have the opportunity to obtain a grounding in the humanities.

The challenge for us is to be in the vanguard of developing the materials to convey this grounding, and to be ready and willing to enter into strategic partnerships with the media, publishers or other interested backers.

Prediction 3: Central funding for development and distribution will dry up in a few years - well before you believe that it reasonably should. Another period in the wilderness will ensue unless the momentum, the development and distribution systems, the infrastructure, and the alliances are in place by then.

This prediction has really nothing much to do with the technology, its promise, or our claims about it and whether or not they are realised (though all of these will have some influence). It is purely a recognition of the “fickle” nature of such funding. This year CBE, next year something else...

Prediction 4: CBE will have a greater impact, and developments will be more radical, in the humanities than in the sciences.

This will occur because, although both fields are concerned about teaching both facts and how to think critically, the latter is of greater concern to the humanities (Webster, 1994). Furthermore, the third, more radical or revolutionary impact of the computer is primarily to do with the social impact, the consequences for human systems, and so will more quickly be perceived and exploited by the humanities.

The real challenge here is to have sufficient numbers of humanities scholars equipped to recognise these trends and exploit them. I fear that humanities scholars, in general, may have little ability or inclination to see the potential of technology beyond their immediate application. However, I am encouraged by the projects which are on the agenda for this conference, some of which appear to exhibit just the right degree of radical thinking to indicate the appropriate kind of awareness. How can that attitude be conveyed to your peers?

3. Postscript

I am sorry if my suggestions do not sound very rosy for many conventional courseware development projects. Of course, I may be quite wrong; but if I have stimulated you to look again at what you have been doing, or where you think you are going, and to attempt a defence of that, then I shall be content.

But I must say that I think this may be what you already are doing. I am pleased that the theme of this conference is “Courseware in Action” - because only when we focus on the proper, durable means of implementation and integration, rather than just on the development, as we have so often done to date, will we have a reasonable prospect of overcoming the pain and problems on which I have dwelt so much in this paper, and realise the promise of computer-based education in teaching the humanities.

E. References

Bork, A: Interactive Learning: Millikan Lecture, American Association of Physics Teachers, June 1978, in Learning With Computers, Bork, A, Digital Press, 1981, p285.

Darby, J: remarks made in discussion at National Initiatives: Value for Money?, ALT Briefing, London, 5 September 1994.

Ehrmann, S: Looking Backward: US Efforts to Use Technology to Transform Undergraduate Education, in Higher Education 1998 Transformed by Learning Technology, edited by Martin, J, Darby, J & Kjöllerström, B, CTISS Publications, 1994, p10.

Hammond, N, Gardner, N, Heath, S, Kibby, M, Mayes, T, McAleese, R, Mullings, C, & Trapp, A: Blocks to the Effective Use of Information Technology in Higher Education, Computers and Education, Vol 18, no. 1-3, 1992, pp155-162.

Hofstetter, F T: Using the PLATO System: Features, Research and the Future, ADCIS Proceedings, 1981.

Jory, E J: Epigraph: A Database of Roman Inscriptions, The University of Western Australia, 1993.

Kjöllerström, B: An Introduction, in Higher Education 1998 Transformed by Learning Technology, edited by Martin, J, Darby, J & Kjöllerström, B, CTISS Publications, 1994, p7.

McDonough, W R (Chair): Report of the Working Party On the Provision of Computing Facilities for Teaching, Inter-University Committee on Computing, September 1991.

McKendree, J: Who is the Audience? Design versus Modifiability, in TLTP Newsletter, No. 1, July 1994, p6.

Mapp, L: Learning >From Learning Technology: A Framework of Implementation Issues, The CTISS File, No. 17, July 1994, pp23-26.

Nelson, D (Chair): Report of a Working Party on Computer Facilities for Teaching in Universities, Computer Board for Universities and Research Councils, 1983.

Piehler, P: Atlantis: An Ancient Initiative, in The Oxford Magazine, No. 107, Fourth Week, Trinity Term 1994, p1.

Reid, T A: The Benefits of Using Plato and CBE Generally, internal paper, University of Western Australia, 11-Oct-93.

Reid, T A: Information Technology Strategic Planning Proposals, Office of IT, University of Western Australia, March 1992, p39.

Rosner, R: Survey of Student Access to Workstations, University College London, electronic survey and communication, 12-May-94.

Schneider, Ben R Jr: Travels in Computerland; or, Incompatibilities and Interfaces, Addison-Wesley, 1974.

Webster, F: Mission That is Humanly Possible, in Synthesis: Multimedia for Teaching and Learning, The Times Higher, 13-May-94, page v.