June 1997 — Features
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The Future of Computers and Learning
This confusion of information and learning is particularly important with areas that depend heavily on problem solving. It is also of major concern because it is immediate information, not problem solving and creativity, that is most easily tested.
Costs
Another serious problem is the cost of learning. The costs per student for an hour of instruction are an important factor. New proposals often cost more money. The critical factor is not the cost of development, but the cost per student for learning.
In developed counties there is often tax-resistant pressure to increasing the cost of education. In the less-developed areas of the world, the costs of education are often out of the question. Can we meet educational needs for all students worldwide with lower costs per student?
HISTORY UNTIL NOW FOR COMPUTERS IN LEARNING
Computers have been used in learning environments since the late 1950s, with increasing amounts of money going in this direction. But looking nationally and internationally it is difficult to see that this usage has improved learning for most students. Often the same approaches are tried several different times, with no knowledge of previous approaches. The problems of using technology to improve learning are seldom mentioned. Instead we tend to see one fad after another, driven by the most recent hardware advances.
Emphasis on Hardware
A strong push with technology in education is toward more and more equipment. Initially this simply meant more and more computers, but today "infrastructure" (networks, connections to networks, computers to run networks) is also likely to be included.
Seldom do these hardware pushers have any coherent view about how the new equipment is to be used to improve learning. As the other items in this section will suggest, there is STILL little worthwhile software to use in schools, 30 years after this use began. This includes the vast amount of mostly low-quality material to be found on the World Wide Web.
I was recently at a meeting for a school district that typifies this situation for me. A large amount of money was about to be devoted to hardware, millions in the next several years. But there was only the vaguest notion as to how these new computers and networks were to be used.
When software is considered, it is usually system software rather than learning software, or software developed for non-learning use, such as business software.
Low Quality of Individualization
A problem often stressed is that our students are all very different. But almost all the curriculum approaches we have now (books and lectures) treat them alike. So it is not too surprising that existing computer learning material d'es the same. We need learning that is individualized to the needs of each student. The key to achieving effective learning is to use the interactive capabilities of modern computers.
