Education in the Computer Age

During are excerpts from President Bok's Annual part to the Board of Overseers for 1983-84, released today, on computers and education:

During the past year, universities have begun to attract at new kind of publicity. The most arresting stories to appear in our newspapers have not featured students or professors or even new curricula. They have focused on machines:

Hewlett-Packard Gives Five Million Dollar Dollar Grant for Computer Equipment to Harvard Medical School.

Digital Plans $45 Million Education Project

A Personal Computer for Every Freshman: Even Faculty Skeptics Are Now Enthusiast

All across the country, headlines like these have signaled the sudden rush of a new technology that promises to leave a lasting imprint on the practice of education at Harvard and other universities.

Technology is already starting to affect the was in which students prepare for classes in several of our professional schools. Last fall, the Business School began requiring every entering student to purchase and IBM personal computer. Those who were unfamiliar with these machines received special instruction in their use Software was distributed to enable students to manipulate financial data. Word processing programs were provided to assist students in preparing their reports. Because of the formidable powers of the personal computer, teachers could assign more complicated problems than before, problems that more closely resembled situations confronting corporate executives in real life.

The Law School has not yet required students to buy computers. But students and professors have formed an alliance to develop programs to help in mastering basic material such as the rules of accounting tax, property, and evidence. Although these exercise are optional, over half the class has used them in some large courses. A more venturesome creation permits students to watch a mock trail on a screen and objects at any point to the questions asked of witnesses. With each objection, a computer asks students to choose the ground for intervening from a list of possible reasons. If the student answers correctly, the computer so states and the trial resumes. If the student gives the wrong answer--or if there is no proper ground for protest-the computer so indicates and explains why the student erred. At the end of the tape, the program automatically flashes back to every point in the testimony at which the student failed to make a valid objection.

In the Medical School, computer programs have been developed to simulate patients with a variety of diseases. With these programs, students can ask the "patient" questions or order medical tests, and plausible answers or test will results will instantly appear on the screen. By framing hypotheses and testing them in this fashion, students can eventually make a diagnosis and either have it confirmed or ask the computer where their reasoning went astray.

More conventional video technology is already in wide use to carry instruction to students at separate geographical locations. At Harvard, the Medical School is connected by closed-circuit TV to our teaching hospitals, to the Science Center in Cambridge, to MIT and even to other, more distant institutions via satellite. Through these links, speeches and seminars at any of these institutions can be viewed by faculty and students in all the others. Elsewhere, universities have launched even more ambitious ventures. Stanford offers engineering courses by closed-circuit TV so that employees in high-tech companies throughout Silicon Valley can attend class without leaving their place of work. The University of Washington gives televised courses to supplement the education of medical students in places as distant as Alaska, Idaho and Montana.

Technology also offers, ways of improving communication outside of class among people in different locations. By linking personal computers to one another, a university can enable students to send messages back and forth and ask questions of instructors or campus officials. In this way, students can seek help from many classmates simultaneously and communicate with their professors.

Libraries provide another fertile place for technological innovation. By next July, almost all of our new acquisitions will be registered in a computer so that librarians can instantly learn the whereabouts of a recent book or periodical, not only in our own collections but in any of a number of cooperating institutions. Medical students will soon be able to use their personal computers to search for articles in a number of journals and instantly reproduce the entire text. It is not yet possible to do the same for all books and articles in a library, since most of these materials do not exist in machine-readable form. In the not--too-distant future, however, computers may be able to conjure up on a screen the titles, table of contents, and indexes not only of all books in a university library but of all volumes in all participating libraries across the country and abroad.

Prospects for the New Technology

In theory, at least, the new technology has the power to transform the nature of the university. Much routine advising could shift to a network of personal computers linked to a common data base so that students could instantly have the answers to a host of factual questions, about course requirements, employment interviews, campus events, and homework assignments. In time, lectures could move from classrooms to television screens so that students could listen to a professor and immediately test their comprehension of the material by working through a series of questions and problems presented by an appropriate computer program. Science concentrators could simulate many laboratory experiments on computers without leaving their residence hall. Video technology could not only transmit lectures but bring the resources of the outside world to students in living color. For example, are history majors could use a videodisc linked with a computer to explore the great museums they chose for as long as they wished, and summon up text to explain the picture and the circumstances under which it was painted.

* * *

Experience should also make us wary of dramatic claims for the impact of the new technology. Thomas Edison was clearly wrong in declaring that the phonograph would revolutionize education. Radio could nor make a lasting impact on the public schools even though foundations gave generous subsidies to bring programs into the classroom. Television met a similar fate of glowing predictions heralding its powers to improve learning.

In each instance, technology failed to live up to its early promise for three reasons: resistance by teachers, high cost, and the absence of demonstrable gains in student achievement. There is as yet no clear evidence that computers and videodiscs will meet a happier fate. Faculty members may be as reluctant to give way to computers as they were in the case of radios and television sets. The cost of the equipment likewise remains quite formidable. According to one professor, to provide all of the 460,000 engineering students in America with a modern computer workstation joined by a network and linked to a central database would cost ten billion dollars. True, hardware cost have been declining at a compound rate of 25 percent for a number of years. But hardware makes up only a small fraction of the total cost of computer assisted education; the major expense lies in preparing suitable materials and maintaining the software and the machines. Thus, the overall costs of the new technology seem likely to remain high for the foreseeable future.

Finally, the educational benefits of technology also remain in dispute. There is still little proof that new devices yield lasting improvements in learning. Many studies purport to find such gains. But most of them can be explained on the grounds that students using computers were temporarily motivated by the sheer novelty of the machines or that more effort and better teaching went into the computerized courses than were devoted to the conventional classes with which they were compared. Thus, the learning improvements that early investigators reported form computer-assisted instruction shrank to nothing when the same teacher taught both the experimental and the conventional classes with comparable amounts of preparation. Similarly, the gains achieved in computer experiments lasting less than four weeks dropped by more than two-thirds when the experiments continued beyond eight weeks and the novelty of the new technology began to wear off.

Undaunted by these obstacles, educators and high tech companies are spending huge sums to prove the skeptics wrong Control Data Corporation reputedly invested almost a billion dollars in the computerized college curriculum, PLATO. With assistance from major companies, Brown, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, and other institutions are each spending tens of millions of dollars in equipment and programming to "wire" their campuses. Against the backdrop of these developments. Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Science has launched a comprehensive review of how technology might be best put to use for research, administrative, and not, least educational purposes. It is high time that we studied these questions, for the computer revolution is already upon us. What impact might these machines have on the nature and effectiveness of education? What kinds of innovation are feasible and not prohibitively expensive? What advantages and disadvantages could technology bring to the quality of life in the University?

Machines that Eliminate Drudgery

Many widely used technological innovations seem principally designed to save time or eliminate drudgery and routine. Electronic bulletin boards spare students the burden of finding announcement in campus newspapers or dropping by departmental offices. On-line catalogues save a trip to the library reading room. Word processing avoids the trouble of typing new drafts, while remote-site TV can take away the need to travel from home to campus.

As these conveniences accumulate, one begins to wonder whether machines will eventually permit students to learn at home instead of going to the expense of living and attending courses on a university campus. If so, technology will not merely eliminate drudgery; it will save substantial sums by removing the need dormitories, classrooms, and other costly facilities. The possibility is not entirely fanciful. After all, the Open University in Great Britain is enrolling 100,000 students in televised courses, and that achievement has come about without much use of microcomputers, videodiscs, and other newer devices that promise to expand the variety and challenge of instruction.

Despite the success of the Open University, the likelihood of depopulating our campuses through televised instruction seems remote. Residential universities offer compelling advantages. For many students, the opportunity for personal contact with faculty members is very important; think of the number of prominent graduates who point to a relationship or even a single encounter with a professor as a critical event in their college years. For most people, learning is also in part a group experience in which each student gains reinforcement from others. Thus, providers of televised learning, including the Open University, have found it necessary to offer tutorials, advising, periods of residency and other devices that give more structure and human contact in contact order to sustain motivation. In addition living with other young people and participating in extracurricular activities not only give pleasure, they contribute much to students' learning and to their tolerance for other points of view, their sense of responsibility, their social and emotional maturity. Apart from these benefits, the years spent living in a university afford to many people an enjoyable experience they would not willingly give up even to save a few thousand dollars a year in room and board. For all these reasons, the residential campus promises to remain a fixture despite its costs.

If the emancipating powers of technology will not do away with the residential university, will they lead to improvements in learning that go beyond mere convenience? It all depends on how students use the time technology saves them. In many cases, however, educational benefits will unquestionably occur. For example, the personal computer has not only enabled our Business School students to avoid drudgery; it has allowed them to grapple with more complicated, realistic problems, using linear programming and other sophisticated analytic techniques not previously reasible for ordinary homework assignments. In the Design School, computer-generated maps and models reduce the time and skill required to complete a drawing so that students can experiment with many more ways of solving landscape planning problems. In the College, word processing en experimental sections of Expository Writing has not merely spared students the drudgery of typing over papers; teachers can now students to revise and rewrite until they submit a more polished piece of work than would have been possible without the new machines. In all these case, time previously spent doing dull, repetitive tasks can now be devoted to thinking about much challenging, important questions.

Objections to the New Technology

Apart from the excitement of the new machines, what is it, exactly, that they can do to improve the process of learning? What effects will they have on the campus environment?

The first point to remember is that many important tasks remain beyond the reach of the new technology. With all its powers, the computer cannot, contribute much to the learning of open-ended subjects like moral philosophy, religion, historical interpretation, literary criticism, or social theory--fields of knowledge that cannot be reduced to formal rules and procedures. Since such subjects are among the most important in the curriculum, this limitation is hardly trivial. Computers are also incapable of inspiring students or serving as role models. They cannot conduct a genuine dialogue because they cannot comprehend analogies or metaphors or even understand conversation beyond the five-year-old level. Finally, machines can rarely tell why a student is experiencing difficulty in learning and understanding (although computers can test students and keep detailed record of their mistakes in order to help the teacher detect learning problems).

Whereas these limitations are important, they still leave ample room for applying technology to learning, especially in the major professional schools, in science departments, in engineering programs, and in many areas of social science. Other criticisms of technology, however, are more sweeping. They warn that computers may harm the entire educational process by gradually eroding some of the intangible, more humane values of university life.

A familiar concern of this kind is that computers may erect barriers that will isolate students and divide teachers from learners. If students have to spend more time with their new machines, they may become more solitary and avoid the human contact that does so much to enrich the university experience. If it really takes 100 or 200 hours to prepare a good program suitable for an hour's instruction, professors may withdraw to develop software leaving students to work alone at their consoles. There is also a risk of overlooking subtler benefits that come from older, less "efficient" methods of education. Lectures may be passive, but as the early devotees of self-paced instruction soon discovered, they can have an inspirational value, not replicable by machines, in showing what it means to be truly in command of an important subject. Answering students questions via computer may be more efficient, but posing a routine question to an advisor is often the way by which a shy student reaches out for help in dealing with homesickness, insecurity, and other problems to which no electronic device can possible respond.

Effects on Learning

The opportunities that technology brings to life have great educational value. At present, most instruction in our universities is far too passive. Professors rely excessively on the lecture. Seminars are often consumed by dull recitations of student work. Discussion groups are typically led by graduate students who lack experience in teaching, especially by the discussion method. Granted, students are challenged to think for themselves in preparing for exams and writing papers. But all too often, exam grades come back with little or no explanation while term papers return with only a few hastily scribbled comments.

As knowledge increases and methods of analysis grow more complex, it is less and less desirable to base education so heavily on the passive experience of listening to lectures and reading texts. Habits of critical thinking, of perceiving and solving problems, of deriving useful generalizations from bodies of data, all seem increasingly important and all require more active effort by the student. In the words of a recent report for the National Academy of Science, "Cognitive research confirms that knowledge learned without conceptual understanding or functional application to problems is either forgotten or remains inert when it is needed in situations that differ from ones in which the knowledge was acquired." To the extent that new technology can offer a student challenging problems, opportunities for repeated practice in finding solutions, and possibilities for immediate feedback, it will provide exactly the kind of educational experiences most needed today in our universities.

Even if technology could not enhance the learning process, we can be reasonably sure that the graduates of most professional schools will need to work with computers--or at least understand their uses and limitations--in order to practice their calling in later life. With the waves of technical information that are engulfing medical practice, most physicians will have to use these machines to summon up the data they need and manipulate it to aid in reaching clinical decisions. Corporate executives already call on sophisticated computer analysis in reaching many business decisions. Even lawyers have come to rely on computers to do their research and may look to expert systems for help in making certain kinds of professional judgements. As the use of these machines continues to expand, therefore, it is the responsibility of most professional schools to familiarize their students with the technology and make them reasonable proficient in its use. Many of the computer applications we have discussed will have precisely this effect.

* * *

As more people be in to use technology for educational purposes, they are bound to think more carefully about the best ways to help students absorb new knowledge and master new intellectual skills. One simply cannot produce good software for teaching without paying close attention to the details of how best to present the material to enhance learning and sustain student interest. This is not characteristic of traditional instruction. For most professors, lecturing requires much knowledge and a fair amount of organization but other wise proceeds intuitively with little conscious thought about how students actually learn. The same is even true of many seminars and tutorials. The task of designing educational software, however, cannot go forward in this manner. Every step of the process must proceed with a careful eye to its effect on the student of the program will not work.

This is the critical difference the probably accounts for most of the gains in speed and effectiveness of learning often attributed to computer-assisted learning. It is not necessarily the machines that produce these gains. More likely, the improvements occur because of the increased time and thought that enter into creating the program. Either way students stand to benefit from the result.

Despite these bright prospects, success is not assured and will probably not occur without the active help of those in positions of academic leadership. For all the experiments and publicity, we still have little first-rate software. Most of the programs available today are basic drill-and-practice routines that resemble expensive electronic work books rather than the more imaginative examples described in this report. Small wonder, since good programs often require more than 200 hours of preparation for a single hour of instruction. To surmount this barrier, university administrators will have to do much more than shower their campuses, with expensive equipment. A more important step will be to persuade some of the best teachers on the faculty to take an active interest in the new technology and give them the funds and technical help they need to develop imaginative applications. As in all human enterprise, choosing the right participants will be crucial. By and large, the best teachers have thought most about how students learn and will attract the widest interest and command the greatest respect for the work they do in using technology in their courses. The greatest challenge for educators will be to find ways of persuading such teachers to develop a keen interest in lending their talents to this task.

* * *

Conclusion

In the end, therefore, with all the exaggerated claims and the media hype, we can still look upon the new technology with cautious enthusiasm. At the very least, universities should manage to use technology to engage students in a more active process of thinking and problem solving that will help them learn more effectively. At best, the new machines may also be a catalyst to hasten the development of new insights into human cognition and new ways of helping students learn.

In many ways, this last possibility is the most is the most intriguing. It is embarrassing that professors, who spend so much time evaluating and criticizing other institutions, devote so little effort to finding ways to improve their own methods of instruction. The task is surely complex and results may be long in coming--but that is no more true of educational research than it is of many other fields of inquiry to which faculty members devote their energies. In view of the billions spent on higher education and its growing importance to modern society, there is an evident need to work systematically at its improvement. It technology can help in encouraging such an effort, that is reason enough to welcome its appearance.