[quoting Sherry , 17 May 99] Now here is my quandary. Evaluation data show that site usage (hits) is stable and slightly increasing. Alta Vista shows that there are about 170-180 other URLs that are linking to this site--places that use the OLE as a professional development tool both in the U.S. and internationally. There are many hits on the "submit a form" page each month. That is where the teacher goes through the ID process, selects a standard as an objective to address, designs and implements a lesson based on the continuously updated resources in the OLE, and is supposed to submit it to us (with all intellectual rights residing with the author--that is clearly stated). Our site is free: federally funded. There is even a prize for the best "lesson of the month,"
So here's the problem. Based on teachers' stated intent, we designed an OLE to help them with what they'd like to be "enabled" to do. There are sample lessons, and a few lessons submitted by other teachers over the past two years. These are very popular pages...they like to look at other teachers' actual lessons, which reside in the "lesson bank" of lessons submitted by site users. But very, very few new lessons are being submitted. What's wrong with my scenario?
I spent a few minutes (clearly not enough) at the above site. There's an irony at work here. It sounds like the users (teachers) are, in fact, using it well for their own purposes (frequency of checking out the site, using the scaffolding to learn how to design, looking at sample lessons) but not for the designer's purposes.. In effect, the system has enabled them to do what they seem to want, but they haven't bought into contributing lessons (they may/may not be using the methodology for their own purposes--can't really tell), but we can tell they're not submitting them. Per the paper, "In each case, though, the need to understand is established individually. The individual determines how to proceed based on his or her unique needs, perceptions, and experiences,..." It looks like they did.
Part of the dilemma may be the extent to which their purposes can be reconciled with yours. I remember reading a case study (can't recall the author/source) involving a tool developed to enable learners to manipulate variables (what if types of manipulations)--very popular and useful. The developer added a feature that asked the user to provide an explanation for why the observed effects were consistent with/varied from what was predicted. The developer/researcher wanted to know to what extent the user could reconcile predictions with outcomes, what the nature of the attribution was, and how were subsequent predictions/outcomes were influenced. The feature was explained and its value described and users were encouraged to use it, but actual use was optional. The developer believed that, consistent with generative models of learning, the value of the reflection would become self-evident; it didn't; this feature was hardly ever used. The developer/researcher noted several problems associated with things like deficient metacognitive awareness, when in reality learners did use the tool extensively, but for THEIR purposes, not the researchers. Maybe a similar dilemma is in effect here--what is the perceived value to the users in submitting/contributing a lesson? And what are the consequences of failure to? If its not very compelling, they likely won't submit.
[quoting Tripp, 17 May 99.a] 1. If OLEs, etc., were really as potentially powerful as predicted, I would think we would also be predicting the demise of schools, but I don't see anyone brave enough to go that far yet. Why not?
I'm not sure what the jump to the demise of schools has to do with the pragmatics of assisting people of all ages and in all learning/performing contexts in trying to make sense of resources for their own purposes (or, for that matter, facilitate someone else's' learning using such systems) . OLEs and most methods I'm aware of don't pretend to offer a singular alternative to the complex social institution known as school. Its no different for other kinds of learning contexts or settings. Can all kinds of learning (and all the other aspects of schooling not directly associated with learning) be equally well supported using open versus other kinds of methods/models? I don't think so.
Some people (mostly girls and women, but not only women and girls) don't like to interact with machines all day. The shortage of women majoring in computer science, despite recruiting efforts, is one symptom of this preference. I personally think this difference is mostly due to DNA, not "society," which is why I call it a permanent reason.
I'll leave responding to the gender comments to those among you who want to pursue...feel free to jump in--looks like baiting to me though.
The question about optimizing the utility of resources is important, but there seems to be little interest among ed tech people. The work being done in knowledge objects and ontologies is interesting and relevant. There is a professor at my university modeling knowledge objects as "films", essentially multimedia knowledge objects that "know" about themselves and therefore can be queried, combined, shared, linked, etc. This is interesting but contrary to fundamentalist constructivist theology, which is a roadblock to progress in this area.
I don't disagree that a great deal of the really interesting and provocative work that enables study in this areas is done outside the ed tech community. Chief among those who's work makes OLEs feasible are computer scientists and information scientists who develop and refine the systems and indexing technologies OLEs ride upon. I don't, however, consider this a problem or flag any more than I'd consider the neurosurgery specialist at fault for not developing the imaging (e.g., CAT scan, MRI, etc.) technology that ultimately helps to refine and improve their methods.
"Computers-in-Education" has been greatly oversold and has probably mostly been a waste of money. American students have not gained on Japanese students, even though Japan generally doesn't use CBI. (If there is any solid evidence that students now are better educated as a result this investment, please please put me out of my misery. ... We have to be careful about promising too much, before we have the means of delivering it.
Another baiting comment? Given the pervasiveness of technology in everyday work and society, could we have schools that did not educate students with/about it? Those who promised such targeted gains via computers but failed to allocate effort and priorities accordingly were naive (or savvy in being able to muster the support needed to increase investment). To chastise computers for failing to yield gains in specific academic areas or compared with specific cultures is, well, equally naive. And both points are non-productive at best and destructive at worst. To a large extent, this goes to my initial response--education generally and schools particularly represent very different things in different cultures (the same argument can be made within a given country, state, or school district). Reluctantly, though, I have to acknowledge a basic question/issue reflected in Steve's comment. The issue of what we (educators, students, taxpayers, etc.) expect as benefits from technology is fair game. What value do we anticipate, what impact do we envision, and how do we orchestrate our efforts accordingly. We have precious little reason to believe that simply having technology will raise anything but costs; fortunately, we also have plenty of evidence that focused efforts can and do produce targeted improvements. So, what do we want to improve?