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Learning with Personal Computers

A different strategy, also based on modern interactive technology, involves the use of personal computers in the home environment, or perhaps in specialized locations such as libraries and shopping centers that people can go to to use the computers. Here the learning material is in interactive programs directly on the personal computers, or from networks, programs supplied by the distance learning institute, or recommended by them. They can be supplied by disk, or downloaded over a network, through wires, fiber optics, or electromagnetic waves.

This is the type of strategy highly recommended for distance learning in the present document. But it has been little used so far for delivering full courses, and so needs more experimental work.

The greatest degree of interaction, with maximum feedback individualized to each student, can come from this procedure, of all the ones discussed here. Achieving this level of interaction demands the production of very carefully done full scale courses, as do many of the other distance learning strategies considered. The interaction can be on a Socratic basis, or with other learning styles. Unlike some other approaches there is only a small increase in costs as the number of students increase, so this method is available for widespread use, scalable to large numbers of students. All learning can be individually paced.

Several such courses were developed over a dozen years ago, at Stanford University and at the University of California, Irvine for use in a traditional university environment. But these depended on older computer facilities. Now that we have the means of distributing such material widely, through powerful and inexpensive personal computers, and now that we have the possibility of a full multimedia environment, through the use of the laserdisc and the CD-ROM, and now that we have powerful networks, no such courses are being developed! This is in sharp contrast to the sizable development of video based courses. This situation should change. This paper suggests such a change.

Highly interactive technology mostly plays a minor role in existing courses, in all learning environments today. A few computer programs may be supplied for a fundamentally lecture or video based course, both in traditional universities and distance learning institutions. These computer programs occupy only a small amount of the total student learning time. Few involve full multimedia capabilities.

The distance learners represent an enormous and complex spectrum of capabilities,cognitive styles, interests and previous backgrounds. Much of the learning material available to them, such as video and print material, is incapable of responding to individual differences in any detailed way. But the use of modern interactive technology via personal computer allows such individualized responses, allowing all students to master all of the material.