resources | jackson & hopper, 1992 [research interview]
Gregory Jackson & Mary Hopper, Passages from Personal Interview, March 4, 1992
Passage 1
Jackson: When Athena was young, there wasn't much courseware for UNIX
systems much less X-Windows Systems, so when an instructor said "I'd like
to do something," our staff here went to work and did it. There were
several things that turned out not to be interesting to students or faculty
and they withered away. Then there was a fairly large handful that really
redefined how something was taught, or redefined the notion of what you
could do with computers. The things that began to be notable, that won
prizes outside, that kept getting used around here tended to be simulations.
For example, there's a number of fluid flow simulations. If you pull down
the courseware list, you will see TODOR. But if you go look at several
other things, you'll find things labeled differently, which are actually
exactly the same software. And they're exactly the same software, because
fluid flow does not just apply to air flow over a foil, it also applies
to water flowing through pipes, electrical fields flowing through space,
and microwaves going through tubes. All of these are analytically similar
phenomena, and so one of the things that happened was that once Earll Murman
had done TODOR, other people said, "I can adapt that to demonstrate this."
Another example is a big thing that happened about three years ago nation
wide. Someone realized that finite element analysis programs helped you
understand all sorts of energy transfer problems. All of the sudden there
were 20 finite element programs. And then the next year, there would be
one for civil engineering, one in thermodynamics, and the next year there
would be a generic finite element program with front ends for all these
different disciplines. There's been this evolution away from courseware as
the focus, and toward applications as what we use for courses That's what
we've predicted is going to keep happening. It is often talked about here,
there are a small number of things, which come up no matter which
technical field you end up majoring in. They have different flavors on
them, but you realize that if you can help kids learn these things that are
generically useful, as long as you put a front end on them, they are very
powerful. One of the keys is that it's a community of scholar's solutions.
Something that increases community. It's generally been true of things
that build community catch on like wildfire.
© Mary E. Hopper [MEHopper] |
MEHopper@TheWorld.com
[posted 01/01/01 | revised 02/02/02]