The Computer Revolution in Education: New Technologies for Distance Teaching, A. Jones, E. Scanlon, & T. O'Shea (Eds). New York by St. Martin's Press, 1987, 282 pages. |
This book contains a selection of articles written mostly by staff at the Open University in the United Kingdom about how they have studied and applied the use of computer technology in distance education. Although not stated explicitly by the editors, it appears that the objective of the book is to provide a review of the "state of the art," at least at the time the articles were written. Unfortunately, in spite of the more recent publication date, most of the articles date from the early 1980s.
Nevertheless, the book brings together a number of interesting articles that are in general well- documented studies, covering a variety of subject disciplines and technologies. The collection leaves me with the overwhelming impression of the formidable challenge facing those who want to make any pedagogical use of computer technology, especially under the constraints of delivery at a distance.
In order to face the challenge, we must integrate
hardware development, software development, and data communication on the technical side. Lest the poor student be forgotten altogether, we must make the entire system easy to use (at a distance!), and adaptive to needs of individual students and their learning styles, which brings in issues in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. These possibilities have long been the attraction of computer-aided instruction, and unfortunately, as the authors are all too-well aware, attempts to realize them are seldom completely successful in practice.
Thus, many of the articles stand out as good examples of careful and successful use of computer technology in distance education. The hardware environments range from micros to mainframes, from telephone to video disc, from computer graphics to speech synthesis. The subject areas include programming, physics, biology, and arithmetic. Some of the general principles proposed should be interesting to a varied audience, but many of the systems described cannot easily be adopted in other environments. Overall, the selection of articles seems to indicate a lack of structure and general knowledge in the effective use of computer technology for distance education, and it is unfortunate that the editors have chosen to use a sampling technique to the exclusion of articles that might have wider individual appeal. This could perhaps be addressed by expanding the editors' excellent introduction, which makes more sense after having read the book than on an initial reading.
As I consider the book in its entirety, one of its messages is the tremendous cost and effort required to produce high-quality distance education materials that make effective and pedagogically sound use of modern computer technology. One of the most important of the intangible costs is the need for a multidisciplinary course development team involving subject specialists, cognitive psychologists, and technical hardware and software specialists, and one can only conclude that such resources are very difficult to muster in ordinary academic institutions. However, the positive results reported in this book can perhaps goad the rest of us into thinking more seriously and constructivel y about how computer technology can best enhance both the delivery of course materials (through electronic mail, for example) and the learning environment of the student (a much harder problem, by far). Finally, I agree with the editors' claim that "artificial intelligence is the key area for techniques and methods to apply to the implementation of computer tutors that we might wish to describe as having some intelligence, or (even to the implementation of) less ambitious packages that are easy to use and understand."