You're most welcome, Judy.
In fact, I've opposed the development of online courses at Concordia, not only because the professor as communicator of his or her own research and art is removed from the equation (that online forums do not fill the gap is another story we could get into) and student interaction becomes marginal (it need not, but it does), but because web stuff is almost always more form than content and is generally not even developed by the educator. I haven't seen many online courses that are not fluff.
The potential benefits of standalone courseware, created with HyperCard-like languages, as complements to traditional lectures is, in my opinion, mind boggling. It would be trivial, for example, to create a Revolution stack that selects random excerpts of prose by authors who are considered to write in the same genre and present these to the student for comparison. But better still, have the professor use the stack in the class as a presentation vehicle so that he or she is also in the dark as to the prose that will be pulled up for comparison, and therefore would not benefit from the perfect foresight of dusty old critiques that otherwise could be used as a weapon of mass smugness (nasty, eh?). Make the profs earn their keep.
I have long stopped evangelizing courseware because the response I get from colleagues is that they do not want to be involved with its development. The incentive to do the work is simply not there. I make my stuff freely available to my colleagues, but their enthusiasm quickly peters when I explained that some work is required to get it to do what they want it to do. They'll only give it a spin if it's ready to go right off the shelf. But what is right off the shelf often wasn't developed with the direct and ongoing involvement of the educator and is unlikely to have the educational depth that it otherwise could. (In deference to everyone on this list, I'm not saying that you have to be an educator to create something educational. Quite the contrary: some of the fluffiest stuff I've seen was created by educators who don't have a particular speciality in any discipline. What I am saying is that courseware will be meatier if it is created by a scholar, which is someone who has a speciality and has produced original work in the sciences, humanities or art.) Of course, the dilemma faced by companies such as Runtime Revolution is that they can never make their software easy enough to use to appeal to a big enough market of individual educators because of the incentive problem. Some hope does lie with the many consultants and free-lance developers who have a scholarly bent, or have formed close collaborations with those who do. But I think that many of them would agree that the education market is not particularly lucrative, and we're back to where we started. I should leave this with a positive spin: courseware = cool, untapped potential. We just need more impressive examples of it in use.
Gregory
On Aug 12, 2004, at 2:57 PM, Judy Perry wrote:
Thanks, Gregory, for this insight.
I find it particularly interesting given that I just finished a master's
in instructional design & technology... in which the mantra seemed to be
"web uber alles". And, like you, I tended to disagree.
I think the problem with the web uber alles folks is that they do not possess the ability (much less the interest, I guess) of producing standalone interactive courseware. So what we get is alot of form trumping function.
A pity...
Judy
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