June 1997 — Features

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The Future of Computers and Learning

If computer learning material is to consider and assist with individual student problems, it must be interactive, probing to find what the student needs help with and providing that help. Only highly interactive learning approaches can discover individual problems and offer relevant learning experiences. As I stress, little such material exists. But there is enough to show that we can prepare such material.

Lack of Interactive Curriculum Material

What we have so far in the way of computer learning material could best be described mostly as "bits and pieces," small isolated components of material, seldom individualized. But full learning demands whole courses and full curricula, sizable chunks of material. Very few interactive courses have been produced.

Lack of Empirical Information

I have always found amazing in education the very strongly held views based on minimal or nonexistent evidence.

Because people have been to schools and universities, they tend to consider themselves experts in education. Seldom are careful experiments available or suggested. Good experiments in this area are expensive, because large numbers must be involved to obtain reliable results. It is even uncommon to gather detailed performance results in standard classes.

THE NEXT 25 YEARS OF LEARNING

How can we use computers to make major improvements in the educational process, for all students worldwide? I argue that this is possible, but only if we consider carefully the problems of education (already mentioned) and the capabilities of interactive technology in solving them.

Although we have major problems in learning, we now have the technology to solve these problems, the interactive technology provided by the computer. But new approaches are needed; learning materials, schools and universities in their current form must change greatly. We have not begun the process needed.

The remainder of this paper proposes a strategy for rebuilding education, using highly interactive technology. I do not claim that this is the only possibility, but that this approach is worth careful consideration and exploration.

All levels and all geographic locations are involved. The following items are I believe the critical factors for considering future highly interactive learning.

Superior Help for Individualization of Learning

I have emphasized the importance of working individually with the problems and potentialities of students. As we have had more and more students, this has become increasingly difficult. Our current grading system, with many students receiving poor grades, indicates that we are now mostly unsuccessful in helping the individual student. Grade inflation only further emphasizes this problem.