resources | davis & hopper, 1992 [research interview]
Ben Davis & Mary Hopper, Passages from Personal Interview, December 8, 1992
Passage 1
Davis: We're interested in trigger materials, which are things like videos or
images that will trigger student's curiosity. It is like what an artist does
when they do an exhibition. He or she takes their personal vision and goes public.
They basically have to teach the public what they think about, and what's
important to them when they lay out the exhibition. The way to lay out an art
exhibition is to try and lead somebody through a thought progression of
some kind, and that same process is the way you design courseware. You
lay out the path, both consciously and unconsciously, through the
materials. What would be the trigger to get you to look at this
point, to get you to read this, or listen to this, and then it's time for the
graphic. A lot of it is the orchestration of media. These materials are a
lot like operas, because they are about visually creating moments for the
viewer, where somebody goes, "Ah ha! I got it!"
There are a few teachers in education who know how to create these
moments for students. It begins with teachers who are interested in "ways
of learning". They are the ones who intuitively understand our work. All
they are doing is using the computer to model something they
already know how to do. They have to have that knowledge of how to
create that moment, and then be able to translate that into the media. They
usually want to create that moment with anything can get their hands on. I
think the interesting teachers are the ones who are interested in learning.
They're interested in the science of learning. So we try or find those
people that are inspired to be teachers, because of their own interest in the
subject. The technology does not come first. It is an interesting
dimension. It's a tool for their pursuit.
Passage 2
Davis: The traditional way to build projects in industry was to write a brief
abstract of what the goals and objectives are, build a flow chart of your
imagined path through the materials, build story boards for the interface
design, and then have a meeting and say, "the deadline for this is one year
from now, so you do this and you do this." That's the industry model. But
that process falls apart in academia. An important variable in an
academic model is local culture. How does your academic organization
actually operate, and what are the dynamics of the politics, the funding,
the rivalries, the resources and the personalities? There are things that you
cannot control as you can in industry, where you can fire somebody if
they're not producing the story board. In academia, it's more of a
collaborative effort, which requires a lot of latitude. You have to focus on
what people are really good at, and what people have time to do. Because
in academia, you are doing something that is not in the charter of the
institution. Nothing is budgeted to do this, and the technology itself has
effects, as Athena proved. No one said that it was going to cause a
convulsion in the way the institute does it's educational business. But it
does, and the repercussions of that are just beginning to be understood.
My function was coordinating among the faculty, the software design
people, and the people who wanted to work on interfaces. I would go
around, between them, constantly. My training for it was having
taught in an Art school, where the process of teaching visual thinking is to
work with people, give them skills, have them use the skills on actual
things like video tapes or photographs, evaluate those things, and then
have them make other things. Also it was important to have the ability to
work with creative people's personalities.
Hopper: You've been involved in projects that incorporate the digital
media that you're going to see in the near future on a common basis. Will
a team be important for these projects?
Davis: So far I haven't met anybody who knows how to do it all. It's
almost too much. To know about text, graphics, animation, video, color
composition, interactivity, and all the other things too.
Hopper: Why is it too much?
Davis: I think it's just too big of an integration. Ultimately, it is also not
as interesting as working with a group. It's as if the Beatles was all John
Lennon. He wasn't the Beatles. It's more than the sum of its parts. That's
what orchestration is about.
Hopper: Part of orchestration then is not just the media, but the people
involved, and how to orchestrate their particular skills, talents, and
abilities into something that is complimentary.
Davis: Absolutely. The team has to be people who are interested in
everything. The core people have to be interested in how the video works,
how the interface works, how the software works, what the content is.
They're interested in the connections between things as much as they are
the things.
Passage 3
Davis: We're only beginning to understand the process, having done it
by falling down and getting up, and trying to step back occasionally to
see what's worked and what hasn't. We've come out of the project Athena model,
where everything was basically paid for by two sponsors, into a new thing,
called CECI, where we actually do fund raising. One aspect of fund raising
is to show people new things.
I've divided time here between four areas, problem solving, tactical
behavior, creative behavior, and miscellaneous activities, and it's a loop.
Basically problem solving is the research we get paid to do. The tactical
part of it is how do you do demos, and generate new projects.
Then the creative part is the part that absolutely has to be there, in order to
get back to the beginning of the process. You have to have new ideas to
get new income. It's been our experience here, that when we begin
having ideas, our loop is closed, and we're creating again. We take new
ideas, and we incorporate them somewhere else. So that's how the wheel
turns. You have to be doing something. The big frustration here is when
we don't have any new demos. So we encourage people here to make
things themselves, that may not be for any course, or teacher, but just
some little thing that they have played with, that we can all look at, or
show. Prototyping is really key. We've been talking lately about a
prototyping fund, where people in the group can come and say, "Look, I
have an idea about plants. I would like to do a little thing." Everybody
has to be an artist of some kind. They have to have the confidence in their
creative abilities, they have to come up with new ideas, and defend those
ideas, and prove those ideas while having them criticized, and so forth.
It's confidence in your own inventiveness. You don't have to know how to
draw, or be the traditional artist activities, but you have to have the
confidence to say, "This idea goes with this idea, and this is why."
Miscellaneous activities means that you're willing to help move the video
recorder where it needs to go, you're willing to do anything that
precipitates the other three things. It's essential that nobody in the group
says, "Gee, I don't move furniture." Another thing that makes the wheel
turn is a sense of mission about the product. That people really are
interested in improving education, or making learning exciting. So they
do whatever it takes to get that condition.
Then what is interesting about this technology is, once you show a teacher
that doesn't do this, models all in one place on a screen, you are
immediately teaching them what needs to be done. It's an incredible sales
tool. They go, "Oh, I know what I should do now, because this is more
interesting than what I've been doing." Sometimes we get people in who
think they just ought to keep up with what's going on in education. But
then, within 15 minutes, they are going, "you know what else you could
put in there." And once you've done that, you' have triggered their
imagination. The demonstration has done its job, and they are different
teachers. So it works. That's the interesting thing about us doing
demonstrations for people. The minute the client or the teacher you're
doing the demonstration for begins designing, by going, "Oh, I could use
this for my project I'm doing." You've done it. That is how it goes. It's
been our experience here, that when they begin having ideas, that our loop
is closed, and we are creating again. We take these ideas, that's a good
idea, we'll incorporate that somewhere else. So that's how the wheel turns.
Passage 4
Davis: The professor is going to do this with his students. There's the
complete team. That's what we're interested in. We help the teacher
create something, then the students use it, and they change it. They teach
the teacher something. This is my model of a good teacher. You learn
from your students, and if the students are engaged enough to change the
textbook, they're really learning.
Hopper: But will that change your role then, if it moves to where the
instructor's having the students use it?
Davis: Hopefully. We don't want to do the same thing forever.
Hopper: So you prepare it for the teachers, and then you start new
projects. So you make seed projects then?
Davis: Well, in a sense, yes. We can't make everything for everybody.
The intention is to get that mechanism moving.
Hopper: Will your authoring tools then have a gentle enough slope to help
support that kind of activity?
Davis: Yes. That's the intention. We try to use that model as a way to
construct the authoring language, so it would be easy enough for anybody
to use at whatever level. We've designed it so you can use the top level
graphical tools, the middle level text, or code C++ , or you can move all
the way into UNIX.
© Mary E. Hopper [MEHopper] |
MEHopper@TheWorld.com
[posted 01/01/01 | revised 02/02/02]