June 1997 — Features

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The Future of Computers and Learning

ï Highly interactive software is intrinsically motivating. Interaction itself maintains the interest of the student. We can avoid the gimmicks (puppets, loud music, anthropomorphic animals, etc.) that have become common in video and computer educational material.

Since there is so little experience in creating and using highly interactive software, much further experimentation is needed.

Full, Interactive, Computer-Based Courses

The success of textbooks comes in part because they contain full courses, although not interactive. A small amount of learning material can, at best, lead to a small amount of learning.

We require full courses, at all levels, capable of use by large numbers of students, if we are to make major improvements in our learning systems. A small amount of new learning material added to a conventional course, no matter how successful this material is, will make only a small change in student learning.

Several such computer-based courses were produced in the past, primarily at the college level. Examples are the logic and set theory courses at Stanford, and the physics course at the University of California, Irvine. But there are almost no recent examples. Federal funding in the U.S. for such development ended many years ago.

Methods to produce highly interactive courses will be considered later.

Speech as Major Mode of Human-Computer Communication

The dominant mode of interacting with computers is still the keyboard, and the even more limited interaction with the mouse.

The keyboard is an unpleasant device, except for a few experts in its use. For many students, such as preschool children, it is impossible. Learning to use keyboards in school wastes considerable time, time that could be spent in profitable learning activities. In many U.S. schools it is the primary way computers are used, unfortunately.

But for many years in science fiction, people TALK to computers, just as they talk to people. Such fiction suggests that voice is the natural way for humans and computers to interact. Even young children can talk! I maintain that voice is the natural way for humans to interact with computers.

This approach to computers, talking to them, is now possible; we have adequate voice recognition software now, from several vendors. But almost no such software is currently in use for education. Voice-input software is improving rapidly. It is reasonable today to predict the death of the keyboard, not just for education but for most computer use.

Voice-recognition software will be useful in interactive material, making the interaction even more natural than is possible today.