4.2.2.5 Ease of Creation and Interaction for Distributed Multi-User Networks
Solutions for opening up the potential of distributed multi-user networked
computing for education are exciting, despite the complexities that need to
be overcome. In the passage below, Yankelovich (personal interview, March 6, 1992)
reflects the central "usability" challenge of the decade for educators and designers
of educational tools:
Yankelovich: Having designed for both networked and stand alone systems,
I think it is dramatically different. Thinking about issues like multi-user access
opens up whole new possibilities for working together electronically which you can't
possibly do with a personal machine. If you are not designing for the network,
you're not taking advantage of the power which that complexity gives you.
The real challenge is taking that complexity, and making it understandable,
so that people can exploit it, but not be overwhelmed by it.
For Context32, and the broader Intermedia project, the educational goal of
collaboration through the use of networks was a goal from the beginning,
and the "usability" issues that emerged were conquered as a means to the
educational ends. The Intermedia team not only resolved the issue of how
to navigate in a large hypertext, they also did so that the solution was
incorporated on a single server in a local area multi-user network.
So they discovered both an adequate solutionfor navigating in "hypertext",
while also arriving at a solution that accommodated collaboration among learners.
In contrast to the emphasis of Intermedia's developers on using networks to support
"collaboration", the Athena project's use of networks at MIT was more "usability"
oriented at the beginning, and only later evolved towards appreciating the power
of the collaborative educational goals the distributed system could support:
The goals of Project Athena were ambitious. First, there was the
concept of coherence. In the past, the campus computing environment consisted
of many vendors' equipment, each running a different operating system.
Courseware would only work on one system, inhibiting portability and sharing
among departments. Students had to learn different protocols and commands for
each department or subject. The Athena system would enforce coherence.
With a single operating system (UNIX) running on the two vendors' equipment
and with a uniform user interface. Students would need to learn one system,
which would then be used for most of their educational computing needs.
Second, a system would be designed and developed which would eventually
accommodate a ubiquitous computing infrastructure consisting of thousands
of workstations linked together with file servers and printers.
(Murman, 1989, p. 1-1)
Athena began with goals of providing a more usable distributed network system.
They opened the "distributed computing" frontier which has now been settled
by more mainstream computing endeavors. As all pioneers must do, they were
the ones who discovered the perils of the frontier, and they were also the
first to receive its bounty. In this case, the ability to adapt to the need
for availability and change turned out to be the biggest perils they faced,
along with each of the other courseware projects in this study.