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
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