resources | bucciarelli & hopper, 1992 [research interview]
Larry Bucciarelli & Mary Hopper, Passages from Personal Interview, June 23, 1992
Passage 1
Bucciarelli: Forget a textbook type of application. We should think more
in terms of providing faculty and staff with programming languages and
tools to develop their own materials. The good thing about cT is that it
has an easy to learn interface. I found it quite easy to get into and I found
students have taken to it without much difficulty.
Passage 2
Bucciarelli: I got this idea to see what we can do with this CT
language. So I got a student to do just a few things on linear regression with it
in the fall . And I decided we should try the problem set solutions for the
mechanics course I was teaching in the Spring. The idea was that instead
of cryptic or opaque solutions that you give the students, let's give them
something on Athena that allows them to play with it, and interact with it,
simulations. The students still had to do the problem sets. These function
as the problem set solutions. I would put these solutions up after they
handed in their problems.
Passage 3
Bucciarelli: These are all problems I made up before I decided to do this,
but they are variants on other problems. I do a little pre work, to make
sure I can solve the problem. What I do is go to the computer, sit down,
and do them. I customize the text, in the process. If the programming
language is appropriate, so that you can rewrite things, and you don't feel
that you've lost things if you rewrite them, and you have enough memory
to store things, why would you want to write things down at all? The
advantage of an electronic medium is it doesn't cost you anything to erase,
you're not wasting paper. In fact, it's too easy to erase.
Passage 4
Bucciarelli: I found it interesting to do. I was trying to do it in real time,
I didn't have any student support. I spent roughly 25 hours a week on this.
It was an experiment about whether it's possible to do this in real time.
I think the classic notion of the production of computer aided instructional
software is that somebody develops it over here, like a textbook, and then
someone else adopts that package and uses it in their course. Well,
I think that's the wrong model for this. That's not going to work.
What ought to be available are the tools for faculty to develop their
own lecture notes, problem set solutions, quizzes, review, interactive
sections, interfaces with laboratory experiments, overhead projections,
and dynamic demonstrations for lecture. What the resources should be are the
programming tools and programming environment, and that those are to
be portable across all systems, and the level of platform you need ought
not to be more than a 386 or its equivalent. These are the tools that ought
to be available to faculty and teaching assistants, so that they can develop
in real time. And then they can develop a body of materials like lecture
notes that are stored electronically and are easily adapted to different
circumstances. That's different than producing a package and marketing
it. Another point I make is that if your model is the textbook, then you
need expert programmers that can produce the equivalent of a text, which
is well tested and has all the bugs out. If that's your model, then you need
a lot of resources. On the other hand, if you accept my model for what
you should be doing, then resources don't become a problem. What are
the resources you need? It's your own time, or it's a teaching assistant's
time. If you don't take that route, it's not going to make it, because the
resources aren't there. If the resources become the question, then it's not
going to happen.
Passage 5
Bucciarelli: The real problem is not just a matter of resources, but instead
it is a matter of changing the way people think of what they're doing in a
classroom. I urge my colleagues to not just think about how this is going
to improve what they teach, but also to reflect on the ways they teach now,
and the limitations and the advantages of what they do now. There are a
lot of efficiencies in the way we teach now. For example, what could be
more efficient than the way we lecture? A faculty member puts in an hour
preparing the lecture, an hour giving the lecture. What could be more
efficient? Faculty are not going to change from this efficient system until
they're told "yes, it's efficient, but it's not doing the job." We could be
doing a much better job, and computer information processing technology
could be a strong part of doing the job better. The faculty have to see this
is possible, and they haven't been shown that yet. When you start using
this technology, and then reflect on what you're doing, you find out what
you're doing is not adequate, or has made some presumptions about what
students are learning. It calls into question the whole approach to the
course, both the content as well as the way you teach it. When you start
doing interactive problem sets, you're not just doing the same problems.
You are changing the problems. The problems are not the same single
answer problems anymore, because the potential is there for making them
more open ended, and for getting the students involved more actively. So
you're changing, you're not just adding on something to do what you're
doing now better. I think that it's only going to get into the curriculum
development when you recognize that the content, style, and format that
you are using now is all up for grabs. That doesn't happen easily.
© Mary E. Hopper [MEHopper] |
MEHopper@TheWorld.com
[posted 01/01/01 | revised 02/02/02]