The opportunities that technology brings to life have great educational value. At present, most instruction in our universities is far too passive. Professors rely excessively on the lecture. Seminars are often consumed by dull recitations of student work. Discussion groups are typically led by graduate students who lack experience in teaching, especially by the discussion method. Granted, students are challenged to think for themselves in preparing for exams and writing papers. But all too often, exam grades come back with little or no explanation while term papers return with only a few hastily scribbled comments.

As knowledge increases and methods of analysis grow more complex, it is less and less desirable to base education so heavily on the passive experience of listening to lectures and reading texts. Habits of critical thinking, of perceiving and solving problems, of deriving useful generalizations from bodies of data, all seem increasingly important and all require more active effort by the student. In the words of a recent report for the National Academy of Science, "Cognitive research confirms that knowledge learned without conceptual understanding or functional application to problems is either forgotten or remains inert when it is needed in situations that differ from ones in which the knowledge was acquired." To the extent that new technology can offer a student challenging problems, opportunities for repeated practice in finding solutions, and possibilities for immediate feedback, it will provide exactly the kind of educational experiences most needed today in our universities.

Even if technology could not enhance the learning process, we can be reasonably sure that the graduates of most professional schools will need to work with computers--or at least understand their uses and limitations--in order to practice their calling in later life. With the waves of technical information that are engulfing medical practice, most physicians will have to use these machines to summon up the data they need and manipulate it to aid in reaching clinical decisions. Corporate executives already call on sophisticated computer analysis in reaching many business decisions. Even lawyers have come to rely on computers to do their research and may look to expert systems for help in making certain kinds of professional judgements. As the use of these machines continues to expand, therefore, it is the responsibility of most professional schools to familiarize their students with the technology and make them reasonable proficient in its use. Many of the computer applications we have discussed will have precisely this effect.

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As more people be in to use technology for educational purposes, they are bound to think more carefully about the best ways to help students absorb new knowledge and master new intellectual skills. One simply cannot produce good software for teaching without paying close attention to the details of how best to present the material to enhance learning and sustain student interest. This is not characteristic of traditional instruction. For most professors, lecturing requires much knowledge and a fair amount of organization but other wise proceeds intuitively with little conscious thought about how students actually learn. The same is even true of many seminars and tutorials. The task of designing educational software, however, cannot go forward in this manner. Every step of the process must proceed with a careful eye to its effect on the student of the program will not work.

This is the critical difference the probably accounts for most of the gains in speed and effectiveness of learning often attributed to computer-assisted learning. It is not necessarily the machines that produce these gains. More likely, the improvements occur because of the increased time and thought that enter into creating the program. Either way students stand to benefit from the result.

Despite these bright prospects, success is not assured and will probably not occur without the active help of those in positions of academic leadership. For all the experiments and publicity, we still have little first-rate software. Most of the programs available today are basic drill-and-practice routines that resemble expensive electronic work books rather than the more imaginative examples described in this report. Small wonder, since good programs often require more than 200 hours of preparation for a single hour of instruction. To surmount this barrier, university administrators will have to do much more than shower their campuses, with expensive equipment. A more important step will be to persuade some of the best teachers on the faculty to take an active interest in the new technology and give them the funds and technical help they need to develop imaginative applications. As in all human enterprise, choosing the right participants will be crucial. By and large, the best teachers have thought most about how students learn and will attract the widest interest and command the greatest respect for the work they do in using technology in their courses. The greatest challenge for educators will be to find ways of persuading such teachers to develop a keen interest in lending their talents to this task.

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Conclusion

In the end, therefore, with all the exaggerated claims and the media hype, we can still look upon the new technology with cautious enthusiasm. At the very least, universities should manage to use technology to engage students in a more active process of thinking and problem solving that will help them learn more effectively. At best, the new machines may also be a catalyst to hasten the development of new insights into human cognition and new ways of helping students learn.

In many ways, this last possibility is the most is the most intriguing. It is embarrassing that professors, who spend so much time evaluating and criticizing other institutions, devote so little effort to finding ways to improve their own methods of instruction. The task is surely complex and results may be long in coming--but that is no more true of educational research than it is of many other fields of inquiry to which faculty members devote their energies. In view of the billions spent on higher education and its growing importance to modern society, there is an evident need to work systematically at its improvement. It technology can help in encouraging such an effort, that is reason enough to welcome its appearance.