BY GLENN RALSTON
Abstract: "Our ... educational mission in the near future might be manageable, but we are not doing enough, quickly enough, to deal with big changes. Unfortunately, those of us over the age of 55 were trained in an era when none of today's powerful electronic media forces had been unleashed. Our evaluations and decisions are made largely without benefit of the knowledge or intuition gained by today's experience of growing up with the overwhelming media environment prevalent now."
As a working group of interested parties, informally called Desktop Media Advisory Council, we submitted the following as a coda to the ICHE 1992 draft Policy Paper on Distance Education.
It is useful to think of an expanded concept of distance education. Using fashionable buzzwords of the day, we consider it necessary to engage a "paradigm shift" in thinking about Distance Learning in opposition to conventional models of Distance Education.
One monumental educational challenge in Indiana is using today¹s electronic media and microcomputers for expressing the humanities and the arts and sciences, just as previously we used the old media technologies chalk & slate, pencil & paper, artist brushes, and typewriters, and even television.
Today¹s increasingly powerful desktop microcomputers are cheaper, faster and far more versatile than somewhat older mainframe and minicomputer systems. As leveraged media, desktop microcomputers and related media are ideally suited for independent studies, classroom teaching, and/or distance education. These advantages should be especially evident on our college campuses. But often, many educational administrators are ensconced in 1960s technical solutions that deprive today¹s students of the technological experiences necessary for them to prepare for their future lives. This lack of foresight is costly for Indiana.
Our Indiana educational mission in the near future might be manageable, but we are not doing enough, quickly enough, to deal with big changes. Unfortunately, those of us over the age of 55 were trained in an era when none of today's powerful electronic media forces had been unleashed. Our evaluations and decisions are made largely without benefit of the knowledge or intuition gained by today's experience of growing up with the overwhelming media environment prevalent now.
There is a lifestyle "cruise control" for those of us over 55 (much like on the highway) where we sit back and watch the scenery go by. Too often, an administrator won't risk decisions that require new investments and new techniques. Retirement on the horizon means less driving, more coasting, more maintenance, not starting up new machinery that isn't familiar. Students of all ages cannot be served well by decision makers who don't have their eye on the road fifteen to twenty years ahead.
Today, a classroom without computers is like a classroom without a blackboard. Tomorrow,
it will be like a classroom without pencil and paper. In the late 1800s and early 20th Century,
each student had a slate and chalk in their oneroom Indiana schoolhouse. Now, 100 years later,
the computer keyboard becomes the student¹s chalk
and the screen the slate. Young leadership, who have had their intuitions shaped by the
pervasive media environment of today's world, can better anticipate some of those future
challenges to our students.
Indiana educators must immediately make desktop microcomputers as much a fundamental of education as pencils and paper. We need educators who are willing to risk investments. And we need leadership who can tell our state legislators that an absurdly low threshold cost of $150 per year (amortized over a 4 or 5 year useful life) per student can begin providing each with sufficient access to desktop computer training.comparable amount of dollars spent can better prepare our students for their future not our past.
Contrary to popular myth fed by persistent "gloom and doom" news reports, there have rarely been microcomputer industry "slumps". The expanding microcomputer market has increased 10 to 45% each year for all but one of the past ten. And each year this increasing growth leaves behind a larger installed base of computers and users for continuing sales of software, peripherals, upgrades and replacements. Now, with a maturing market, recent growth rates [then 10-15%] should not be considered by commentators or observers to be disappointing. Such growth will continue to compound indefinitely as replacement needs kick in.
Many college administrators, bank loan officers, journalists, teachers and parents and the rest of us [were] confused by egregiously misleading news reports of PC industry slumps. It is true that industry revenues [were] slipping because of a rapidly declining price structure, but that fuels increasing growth in unit shipments. Today America has nearly one microcomputer for every three adults aged 20 to 64, a ratio that will likely double over the next five years even with sagging sales or an industry "slump". In another ten years, there¹ll be as many personal computers as there are adults.
As a result of these market forces, a monumental media shift is beginning for American households (over the next three to five years) as much cheaper computer memory storage is used for personal microcomputers in the home and office. Plummeting costs for microcomputer power consistently better than 30% per year mean that huge memory capabilities will be cheaply and easily accessed by increasingly inexpensive personal computers. The following five years will likely bring great market penetration; and five years more could quickly make most American households and businesses computerbased, with computers holding unexpectedly powerful and easy to use memories. Social and market trends point to the probability that 50% or more of American households will have personal computers within ten years (25% already do), and all at about the price of a fancy TV set, $500 to $900 or less.
Anecdotal reports indicate that as many as 30% of entering students are now bringing PCs or word processors to college with them. New educational initiatives are sorely needed in Indiana to help our students best cope with the wrenching changes that result in the office, classroom and home. Let¹s make a specific challenge. Any educator who has not individually "journeyed" through Robert Winter¹s HyperMedia presentation of Beethoven¹s Ninth for example would not know what we are talking about. It could be said, "they just don¹t get it". It is our experience that campuses in Bloomington, Indianapolis and Muncie for example, again do not have ready resources to experience this vital piece of the educational scene. Consequently, few educators have been exposed to this momentous educational journey. For a first step, educators must at least take the initiative of experiencing first hand the inexpensive power of Desktop Media.
In particular, we feel that powerful and inexpensive Desktop Media fits comfortably into the vision expressed by the ICHE draft Policy Paper on seeing the entire state community as a learning environment benefiting from the variety of now readily available off-the-shelf, powerful and inexpensive resources.
The ICHE draft Policy Paper notes that "postsecondary education in the 1990s and beyond requires a substantial change in perception..." "Contemporary [with this]...is a change in technological delivery capacities of revolutionary proportions [emphasis added]. To date, however, the vision and organizational commitment to take advantage of this ability to meet Indiana¹s needs has not been articulated." "...what is required is a transformation...to a view that the entire state is the campus of each state institution. Technology, properly tapped, can make this transformation possible."
We agree. This is a momentous statement for Indiana policy makers. Indiana, as elsewhere, lies at a crossroads in intellectual and cultural life where print, TV, PCs, phones, cable, satellite, and recorded formats are abruptly converging into a digital potpourri with wide ranging concourse. The IHETS backbone, as distinguished from its present programming associations, can obviously serve a useful role in providing broadband digital channels for voice, data, and video.
In summary, we feel current manifestations of Desktop Media to be potentially far more powerful, with far lower threshold costs, and far more responsive to the requirements of the individual learner and the real marketplace than is offered by the typical offering of the IHETS [2-way TV] Distance Education programming.
Such Desktop Media configurations are:
-powerful
-inexpensive
-highly interactive
-individually controlled for self-pacing
-suitable for independent studies, and distance learning
-and, ultimately empowering to the learner.
Should we provide any less for Indiana?
Presented August 13, 1992 to the Indiana Commission on Higher Education by: Glenn Ralston (coordinator), John Cowie, David Caucci, John Kline, Gary Sriver, Patrick Wootan.
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