June 1997 — Features

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The Future of Computers and Learning

But this is not the critical figure. We want not the total development cost, but rather the cost for each student. Thus material to be used by millions, or billions, of students, can be inexpensive even though total development costs are high.

WHO D'ES IT?

Who will perform the experiments? Who is to construct the further courses? Who is to construct the distance learning institutions to follow? The answers to these complex problems may differ from market to market. Here are some of the possibilities.

Governments

Outside the United States almost all the attempts to create major distance learning institutes have been government funded, so they are likely future funding sources. Experimental efforts, not expected to make an immediate profit, are particular candidates for government funding.

Companies

Eventually, in almost all areas distance learning institutions are likely to be highly profitable. Hence companies will be attracted to an area, particularly when profit is likely to be soon or when experiments lead to very positive results. The preschool market is a likely example.

But companies are conservative, and it may take considerable time for them to see the possible large future profits in this direction. The likely initial markets are the home markets.

International Organizations

The fact that education is a worldwide problem has been stressed here. This suggests that international organizations with an interest in education are likely funding sources. The United Nations and the World Bank are two such organizations that come to mind.

CONCLUSION

The world has increasing problems in education. A reasonable possibility to explore is the development of highly interactive computer-based courses.[8] These courses would interact with the student in the studentís own language, finding learning weaknesses. They would also store information about such learning weaknesses, and use this information in helping the individual student.

I do not see that any other current proposals will meet the challenge of providing adequate education. But we need more experimental work to test this approach.