5.3.4 Financial Resources
During conceptualization, the role of resources was not that which was sought,
as much as that which provided an opportunity, for the initiation of
courseware projects. Even a few resources ignited well conceptualized
projects well founded in the broader experience of a discipline and the
recognition of the ways in which computational technology could uniquely
address existing needs. The early money was often enough to provide for
development equipment and graduate student support. At that point,
a well conceived project took root. The following is a description of
the circumstances surrounding the late phases of conceptualization of
the ESCAPE project. What is key to note in this process is the ways in
which resource considerations highly influenced the project that was
finally created, compared to the version that would have been created
if a much greater set of resources were available (S. Ward, personal
interview, June 22, 1992):
Ward: We started out in 1988. At that point in time,
HyperCard was new, and Macintoshes had only been available for a short 6 months.
When Bill LeBold realized he had something that was not a traditional programming tool,
he saw extensive possibilities. He had the idea of developing an Engineering
Information System similar to Discover. But he wanted to go beyond an Information System.
He wanted to incorporate a scheduling system. He was also hoping to incorporate our
Purdue Interest Questionnaire, and a multitude of other things that were available
across ten different systems at that point. So, we started out on a chalk board,
and I used my knowledge of systems development to diagram what parts the project
would encompass. We started calculating the storage and some of the physical
requirements to incorporate the master plan. Then we saw that in order to
incorporate the things that we could do, like the PIQ and the Academic record query,
we were talking Gigabytes of data. Back in 1988, twenty megabytes was a lot of space.
After doing that, we came back through a process of elimination, to what was
technically possible, and financially doable. At that time, much of it was
technically possible, but too extensive in terms of the amount of money,
number of man hours, and equipment. So we pulled in our horns and looked at
the unique properties of HyperCard and what we could do with that. In essence,
we ended up with an information system. Then we asked, "What bits and pieces
should we have?"
Not only did funding play a key role in the decisions surrounding what would be
accomplished by the ESCAPE project, but it was of continual concern during the
ESCAPE project, because it functioned in a largely shoestring fashion over the
course of these activities with only periodic support from funds directly provided
for these activities. The first, and probably initiating source of funding was a
Creative Undergraduate Instructional Grant from the Purdue Dean's Club and Engineering
Student Council.
For Context32, development was supported by contracts from the IBM corporation and the
Annenberg/CPB. Additional development was funded by Apple Computer. In this situation,
the software as well as courseware was developed, so "making" the Intermedia development
effort required the majority of the funds, while Context32 courseware development
accounted for a small percentage of total funding. The degree to which this is the
common reality on courseware projects associated with experimental hypermedia systems
is reflected by Landow in the following passage:
The most significant literary hypermedia projects have been funded on
an experimental basis by foundations and corporate sponsors, such as Annenberg/CPB Project,
Apple Computers, and IBM for Intermedia and Context32 and the Annenberg /CPB Project for
Perseus. Much of this support has gone into developing basic hypermedia programs:
Intermedia required about 45 person years of programming to bring to its current
stage of development. (Landow & Delany, 1991, p. 40)
In the early days of Athena, the issue of resources would be resolved early in
courseware projects, before production began. While it appears that the MIT and
Brown projects received a large amount of support, it is important to remember
that there was both software and courseware development taking place.
Only a percentage of the funding was for the actual courseware. The majority of
funds were used to create the software that supported the courseware.
The distinction is apparent in the description below:
MIT enlisted International Business Machines (IBM) and
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as partners for a five year project.
The two partners pledged to contribute a total of $50 million in equipment
and maintenance, along with five staff members each. MIT pledged to raise
$20 million to support the design and installation of the distributed
computing system and curriculum development projects. Funding as made
available for the first five years of Athena (1983-1988). Project grants
ranged form $5000 to about $1 million, and overall, 125 projects were funded.
The faculty were encouraged to be bold and creative, and $8 million was
earmarked for salaries for faculty, students, and staff to develop courseware
and new curricula. (Murman, 1989, p. 1-1)
Faculty members who wanted to use Athena as an integral part of their courses
could obtain funding and hardware from the Athena resource allocation committees.
The faculty member would develop the pedagogical concept and lay out the general
functionality of the software (Champine, 1991).
After conceptualization and initial creation was successful, funds were needed
to cultivate the project on a long term basis. This general approach of starting
small and looking for successful efforts was described in one interview at Purdue
with Putnam (personal interview, July 30, 1992):
Putnam: The point is you also have to conceive of why is it digitized,
who's going to use it now that it's in that form, and how are you going to put that
together. The problem is that to do good development using these tools takes a lot
of time and effort. If I were going to try to give you one piece of advice that
would best help steer your efforts, the one thing I would suggest is to be very
careful that you don't mistake the means as the end. Start with the specific
curriculum that you want to deliver, and then figure out how to deliver it with
the facilities at hand. Then you can begin to balance the materials, their volume,
their presentation, how their integrated and the cost of doing this in different ways.
Take a specific problem that somebody has, which has a specific end in mind that
is related to education, and then be sure that putting the computer to work to
deliver that is helpful. I think you'll have much better focus on your end product,
and you'll begin to understand the issues of cost and efficiency in that environment,
than if you start with saying lets start with the media, lets start with the
technology and put all these materials together, then have people use it.
I think you're likely to spend a lot of time thrashing around taking that direction.
If you get to the point, in the process of developing specific educational materials,
where you find that you need a place to put it so that other people can get it,
you have the beginnings of a larger project.
The consideration that appears essential to remember is that seed funds without
provision for cultivation later will result in the discontinuation of projects
in the majority of cases. At some point, the initial funding which provided
the impetus for the creation of the courseware project runs out, but if the
project ends, courseware falls into disuse. To continue being viable,
courseware needed to be used and updated. In order to obtain funding to continue
the project, the project leaders needed to address the efficiency and effectiveness
considerations that ultimately needed to be considered for educational courseware
to become successful in a broad range of contexts. This will continue to be the
predominant concern of educators in the future, if the projects are to attain
funds through the decisions of administrators with an eye to the issues of cost
(T. Putnam, personal interview, July 30, 1992):
Putnam: We get fascinated with the medium, and the whole problem is
the means become the end. Then you end up with lots of technologically
knowledgeable people, who are proselytizing their particular religion which is,
"hey, we can do this on computers and it's interactive and individualized and
multimedia, and" Wait a minute, did we ask the important questions? "Did this
in fact substantially improve the delivery of education. "Did the student learn
more as a result of this enormous expense we went to?" Did we, in fact, do a better job?"
And in fact, it is possible to do a better job, and in theory it is possible to do
some things that you couldn't do with a textbook or standing in a classroom or a
lecture environment. But, I think what ends up happening all to often, is that
we get fascinated with technology, and nobody ask the question, "Was this worth
it in the first place?" You also have to ask whether it was worth it. For example,
there are a lot of good things we can do given time, and money, and people,
and intellect, and things like that. The problem is we never have enough time,
money, people, or intellect to do all of these things which can be done.
So at some point, if somebody is in a position where they are trying to make
decisions about what's strategically important, they don't try to do everything.
They pick those things which have a big payoff for the investment dollars,
and they invest in those.
This passage may point to the greatest variable in common for all successful projects.
For broader reasons, the faculty who conceptualized the project found ways in which
the computer could serve goals which were either unattainable by more traditional
means, or were less cost effective. Resources were critical to sustain courseware
and the way they were obtained was through demonstrations of more than just the fact
that courseware functioned. Courseware needed to provide opportunities that were
indispensable and not able to be provided in any other more cost effective way.
While obtaining initial funding is relatively common, gaining resources for
continuation of the courseware project was the challenge.