Educational uses for Rev

Gregory Lypny gregory.lypny at videotron.ca
Thu Aug 12 17:14:41 EDT 2004


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



More information about the use-livecode mailing list