Abstract
This paper takes a pragmatic stance that the key to successful application of technology in education is good teaching: using technology only when it is a cost-effective servant of pedagogy. The paper discusses some fundamental issues in the production of computer-based materials, and considers them in the context of an on-going evaluation of an Internet courseware project.
Although most instructional systems arise from enthusiasm for realizing an educational goal, all too often the educational problems the educator is trying to address are overshadowed by system design constraints. Often, the subordination of educational issues to implementation issues reflects an inadequate understanding of how pedagogic requirements map onto system design decisions - and at what cost. It is all too easy to become engrossed in the challenges of implementation (in what is possible), especially if the pedagogic motivations (what is desirable) are not clearly established, and if their attendant instructional strategies are not firmly specified. Focusing on what is possible tends to lead to simple translations of existing materials into a new medium, whereas reflecting on what is desirable has the potential of identifying underlying goals and supporting them through transformation of practice into a form that exploits the particular advantages of an alternative technology.
This familiar story is characterized in the experiences of the EONT project, described in this paper, which began as an initiative to transform paper-based materials into Internet courseware. These issues are examined in the context of a comparison of two generations of systems developed for an HCI course. The first system, although it set out with ambitions to address specific learning requirements, was overtaken by implementation issues. The specification and resulting product, a fairly direct translation of existing materials, were a realization of the possible. In contrast, the second system began with an analysis of pedagogic problems with a particular attempt to address structure issues such as access. These goals were analysed, categorized and prioritized to provide some coherence to the desirable instructional design driving the implementation. The conclusion from these experiences illustrate that particular attention to pedagogical design is not the only factor in improving Internet courseware: it is necessary to strive for an on-going dialogue between educator and developer to achieve a prioritized set of agreed goals which guards against the pragmatics of real-world development producing the least important and easiest options first.