3.1.1 Educational Goals of ESCAPE
The first courseware project to be considered will be ESCAPE,
which was developed using HyperCard.
The major discipline oriented goal for ESCAPE was to play a role in pre-professional engineering programs at
Purdue and around the country. The ESCAPE materials were developed to help
these students learn about their choices, and provide answers to the critical question;
"What does an engineer do?" The ESCAPE project
was based on the belief that the computer would provide many opportunities to represent the information
in formats better than textbooks and chalk boards through methods like the dynamic modeling of electrical
systems or multidimensional structures. The director also believed that early exposure to computer skills
would also be valuable experience for students in engineering disciplines today. However, he was also careful
to avoid employing computing technology in inappropriate ways. In the passage below, the director of the
ESCAPE project demonstrates his own conscious efforts to
not have key educational goals be overshadowed by the technology:
LeBold: The biggest problem I see is that it could
become too technology oriented, so that the personal dimension gets lost which I think is central
to doing any really good counseling. I think
the person to person contact is central, and that's the important thing.
(LeBold & Hopper, 1992)
This statement is not a reflection of an actuality, as much as a pointer to an issue which participants
like LeBold needed to watch in order to avoid it becoming a reality.