Author: Diane Baird

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT)

Keywords: Teaching, technology, humanism, academic development units, ASCILITE, standards, University of Massachusetts, LaTrobe University, innovation, Internet, learning, mass education, understanding, time, World Wide Web, CAUT, curriculum.

Article style and source: Interview. Original ultiBASE publication.

Contents

• Introduction
• Interview

Introduction Dr. Carol MacKnight is an instructional technologist in the Office of Information Technologies at the University of Massachusetts, U.S.A. She is founder and editor of the Journal of Computing in Higher Education. Her research interests include instructional theory and design, hypermedia systems, and Internet applications. Dr. MacKnight visited Australia in December, 1996 as a keynote speaker at the ASCILITE '96 conference. Dr. Carmel McNaught is a Senior Lecturer in the Academic Development Unit at LaTrobe University. Her research interests are on evaluation of computer-based learning materials. She authored or co-authored three papers at the ASCILITE conference. Both Carmel McNaught (left) and Carol MacKnight (right) share similar professional interests, but have different perspectives. They took time during the ASCILITE conference to talk with ultiBASE about their ideas related to teaching, learning and use of technology. This interview provided the opportunity `to make conversation available in the hope that it stimulates thought.'

Interview

Do you agree that innovation in teaching and learning has become synonymous with the use of technology?

CARMEL: I think that is happening and I think that's a shame. I think it's very difficult...to have people come in and say `I want to make a CD-ROM.' As an academic developer I say, `What is it you want to achieve? What do you want the students to learn?' And there are these parallel dialogues about technology and about learning. It is bringing the two together that's going to be the real innovation. That's not happening, at least not in Australia - yet.

CAROL: I think what I've seen at many conferences is a bolting on of old instructional models to a new delivery system. That certainly doesn't work. The problem with even putting up your syllabus on the Internet - it's a very good idea - but during high pressure times, exam periods for example, not all students have access at our institution to the Internet. Furthermore, course notes and syllabi are simply enhancements to a course, they have little effect on reforming instruction.

We don't really know, or haven't come up with an instructional model that will indeed work well on this delivery system. The Internet functions very nicely for communication and for small communities. It's been wonderful. I think it has been exciting for our Faculty to be able communicate with their colleagues all over the world and to collaborate with them.

There are also wonderful databases on the Internet, for example, the Institute for Molecular Virology has a virus visualization database. Virologists throughout the world are encouraged to submit virus visualizations increasing the value of the database. This is exciting because it makes it a living database that keeps growing and can continue to serve both students and researchers. From this point of view, I think the Internet has been fabulous.

CARMEL: I think the issue is that with the bolting on of [new] technology, I think part of the difficulty is assessment. The fact that we are still having often quite interactive methodologies coming into teaching, like open learning or on campus, but then we still have to set our exams. I'm not necessarily saying that all exams should go, but we're looking more at teaching methodology. Certainly...most of the projects that I get involved with are about the classroom, wherever the classroom might be, rather than the link between objectives and assessment, a whole curriculum analysis.

So people are really doing more 'reformatting' rather than reforming what they do, otherwise the reforms would follow right through to assessment as well...

CARMEL: I found that fascinating, the bit that Steven Brown [keynote speaker at ASCILITE conference] put up, really saying that all the new media was looking at the things which probably weren't too bad anyway, which were the tutorials and labs, and a lot of the private study and lectures were not changing. I found that really interesting. It's sort of tinkering around the edges. And that's my impression at the moment, because many CAUT [Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching] grants, while CAUT has been a tremendous innovation in the system, it's still been little pockets of $50,000 that have produced a few hours of multimedia that's used in one or two institutions. It hasn't really addressed the curriculum problem. That's why I'm hoping that this new time of turmoil will actually perhaps bring out a bit of innovative thinking.

Do you think new technology is really making people ask different questions about teaching and learning?

CAROL: I think what we heard at this conference [ASCILITE, 1996] today and certainly yesterday is that we are using technology to enhance teaching, rather than using it in the way that I find exciting which is to give me the ability to ask questions that I couldn't ask before. It has been, from what I've seen, an instructional enhancement primarily.

CARMEL: I think that there aren't enough really good examples of exciting use of technology. When you get a lot of dialogue about what learning is, then I feel comfortable; I feel that we're getting on the right track. There are projects like that around... it's just that they are such a small proportion.

Why do you think that is?

CARMEL: I don't know. I've been an academic developer now for five years and I still reckon if we reach ten percent of our staff we're doing really well. I expect we do, and then if we engage with one or two percent, then, that's the way it is. But that was true fifteen years ago in teacher education and that was the same. So there is something about change: we can't expect this tremendous revolution to suddenly take the hearts and minds of people.

CAROL: Technology has to get out into the culture; I quite agree...In the talk I just heard [ASCILITE, 1996], the speaker spoke about the success of the overhead projector. We've learned to use it skillfully. It's because the overhead projector got out into the culture; it was ubiquitous. It was used first in all the bowling alleys, and because it was out there, then it became something that we all knew about; it had perceived value.

There is an element of uncertainty about the direction of both technology and education. Is there a link?

CARMEL: I don't think it's technology that's making the uncertainty about education, it's the wider society. It's the combination of availability of jobs, political environment and governments, world crises in health and environment. Those are the sorts of things that drive my concerns about what it is that we should be enabling young people to think about and what schools are meant to require. I think sometimes technology is used as a scapegoat because there are huge issues facing our society and I don't think it's technology. I think we do sort of know where technology is going for the next few years. It doesn't just happen overnight, although it might seem that way to some people. I think this is just a very complex time in higher education. Mass higher education is very new. It is the phenomena in higher education that we had in schools post-war, post Second World War, where suddenly it went from being elitist to being a mass system. All of the same sorts of questions are being asked about what is the purpose of education...[these] are now being transferred into higher education sectors.

CAROL: Well, I totally agree...It's an unstable world at the moment. The dollar keeps going up and down and the opportunities to send our children to higher education is limited. The cost of a university education is more than most families can afford. It is equal to the price of my first home to send one child to university for four years. And, after they have spent four years in school, they may be unemployed. It's a very frightening thing. This is the first time it's ever happened. Education has always been the key to a satisfying life. And if it isn't key, what is it we need to teach people which will lead to a satisfying life?

What is it - that something for their mind, their body and their spirit. We come back to the issue of the whole person [Bronson Alcott]. For some reason we, in America at least in the sixties, thought our children knew more than their parents, and we let them sort of run things. We never got back to saying, `well you know, you really have to be careful what you read. You really should do your homework...' and all the rest. We lost our sense of standards and responsiblity. It isn't just us [parents], our leadership hasn't had a vision either.

From the Second World War on, universities have dropped standards in all disciplines. There was a study done [1995] in America of fifty of the leading universities, absolutely the top universities. Although we talk a lot in America about multiculturalism, not one of the fifty leading universities studied has a language requirement. Maths used to be taught in all the leading universities; now it is required by only 24% of the 50 universities studied. There are fewer course requirements today and a general lowering of standards. Our chancellors and administration...talk about where technology is going; but where are they going?

CARMEL: On good days, I think that it's a good thing that my children don't automatically accept my standards and my ideas, that they want to explore and decide for themselves. On other days, I look at my kids and I think they are disrespectful, unfocussed, and there's a tension here as I think there is in most places, a tension between allowing A, the society and B, the individual in society, to drift. The responsibility of governments and those in charge of educational institutions and indeed people with experience and knowledge themselves, is to try and help focus the debate about where that direction should be. Often I'm unsure myself. When I look back at my own degree, I'm not sure how much of that advanced mathematics I'm actually going to use. But did it indeed help with whatever skills I have in problem solving...What is it about all that process of education that's enabled me to do some of the things I can do? I actually don't know on a personal level, and it's sometimes very difficult then to make decisions about what it is that we should do with our young people in order to assist them. It's incredibly changing and complex rules. It's not the technology that's making this complex.

Does a lack of standards contribute to the complexity?

CARMEL: How do we define what the standards should be now? What's worrying me, and I think it's back almost to your first question, is that the technology is being used as both the scapegoat and the answer. It's a panacea one day; it's a scapegoat the next. That actually cycles debate. What I want to see is more active debate, whether it's about what learning is or whether it's about where society should go, or whether it's the responsibility of communities and individuals. It's that lack of debate! People say to me quite comfortably `Well, teaching is about putting this content', whether I put it on a page or on the Web, it doesn't matter, it's about listing content, and there's no questioning. It seems to me anyone who is settled, sure and confident at this particular stage is probably not very outward-looking.

Or reflective. Is it similar in the U.S.?

CAROL: Certainly. We don't have a debate about important issues, about what should be taught. There is no discussion about this at all. We continue to create courses that seem to be of interest to the people who are creating them. Whether they are doing anything for anybody else, I don't know. That's an interesting point.

CARMEL: And when you have students who actively try and engage in terms of creating their own courses, there's been elements of that through the eighties, I think, but one of the problems with all the current cuts is that all the small marginal courses which could be used in order to tailor your degree in certain ways, they're going to disappear...

Carol, I found it very encouraging to hear you say that what the Internet does best is create a sense of community and communication. Some people do not want to get too involved with using the Internet in education because they feel that the interpersonal aspects would close off. What would you say to that?

CAROL: M.I.T. [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] has a multimedia group on the Web. To belong to it you have to be engaged in the development of courseware. I think this community and the possibilities that it offers for continuous professional development and support are interesting. What happens here at conferences like this one is often the discontinuation of important discussions. I've met two or three people, many more actually, with whom I would like to continue our talks. But now I will go home, and while I have their cards, as soon as I unpack I, most likely, will have lost their cards. They are gone.

In the MIT Multimedia MOO, we have opportunities, as in a conference setting, to meet other people and stay in touch and find a niche within the community. I think this is very, very exciting. Many of us cannot go to conferences regularly, so this serves another need. It's about professional development and it's very important to broaden one's perspectives on a topic. The Moo also encourages participants to build things...get facility in using multimedia tools 'by doing'.

Do you think it works for students as well?

CAROL: I think it does. [See Moose Crossing, Writer's Corner or CSILE.]

CARMEL: I think there's no question it does. If we even look through ASCILITE papers for the last three to four years, there's been every year at least a couple of papers reporting on email in teaching. And all of them have actually conveyed that sense of community: better contact, particularly with certain groups of students. Sure, problems; but by and large I don't think I've heard one paper where the person has said 'I'll go back to what I was doing before.' I suspect that staff who say that they feel that using technology reduces face-to-face contact with students are probably not wishing to use technology. I had a wonderful quote from a student in a computer laboratory recently in Melbourne saying `I really liked doing the CAL material in lab because it was more human than a lecture.` What's human about 300 students in a lecture theatre?

CAROL: I have a friend who teaches an intermediate German course. She's at Mt. Holyoke, which is a famous women's college...She connects up with some other school every time the course runs. Once, for example, she collaborated with our Air Force Academy. The Air Force Academy students were learning German and covering the same literature as were her students. The idea behind it all was to give her girls a male point of view in studying a literary work. I think there are some wonderful examples of sharing knowledge and others' perspectives that we can do like this one. Her women students not only got a male point of view, but they said that they would never marry someone from the Air Force Academy!

How would each of you define excellence in tertiary teaching/learning?

CARMEL: I think it is the difference between students learning and students understanding. It is somewhere in that realm. We talk about teaching as enabling students to learn. I think excellent teaching enables students to understand. Understand [meaning]...a more coherent framework where there are more links, perhaps, to other disciplines, to other practices, and so on. To me, the word understanding has a more holistic aspect to it.

So we should all be good constructivist teachers?

CARMEL: That word is going on my no-no list... A couple of things have happened in just the last few weeks that have taken me back to Schon's theories of the difference between espoused theory and theory-in-practice. I guess it's because I have now heard so many 'I am the constructivist' and then a demonstration and the page turning pieces of multimedia, that I'm beginning to see that it's the theory-in- practice that I'm interested in, and what I want is this genuine constructivism, not espoused constructivism. But I think it's in understanding; it's somewhere in that element: that students can understand.

CAROL: I think it is about how able students are to use the knowledge; what can they do with it afterwards? It's not just enough to cover some subject area; a consideration has to be how well students understand it-can you build on this understanding.

CARMEL: And that means we communicate excellence in teaching, in terms of students' learning, not just in presentation skills.

I wish we had one word in English that meant the teaching/learning process... That communicates the process of interaction.

CAROL: That is why I was so excited about Bronson Alcott [creative teacher who began his career in 1823]. There he was, a self-made man and teacher [influenced by Pestolozzi as was true of Piaget]. He didn't graduate from any university. As a teacher, he was a collaborator in the learning process. [See McCuskey, D. (1940), Bronson Alcott, Teacher.]

CARMEL: I think the problem is with the word `teacher' because most good teachers, when you talk to them, talk about how much they are learning from their students, and how much they are learning about their own subject matter by that sort of collaborative engagement. The images we have of the teacher is the original expert who conveys knowledge. I think it is those images that are a bit problematic. Images of the learner are a bit more up to date.

CAROL: We see that very well, especially in science in our undergraduate schools. My husband is a polymer scientist, and his work is certainly a collaborative process. He gives his students ideas to get them started- what they might think about. They don't necessarily have to follow them. But, they are always sharing, going back and talking a whole lot about it, reflecting on what has happened, looking at what they have done. All the things we talk about [as excellence] are being done.

CARMEL: I'm sure there are good examples. It seems to me that one of the problems, certainly in Australian universities at the undergraduate level in many Faculties, is just the incredibly overcrowded curriculum. Students are maybe timetabled at first year level for twenty-seven hours. Now this doesn't give them an awful lot of time for reflective engagement! Often, less...teaching can result in better learning.

CAROL: That's what Oxford and Cambridge were always about. You'd have a big lecture hall and a Don would come in who was really prepared and was really stimulating; then it was back to small groups, over tea or coffee in a small seminar setting.

CARMEL: One of the things that was nice about your talk this morning was that (and it came through in other talks too) it's not as though we are talking about new ideas in education. We are simply talking about almost looking at the entire suite of things that have been tried, and adding a few more maybe technology-related ones, but the actual teaching and learning idea is not different in a MOO or listserve or whatever. It's now that we are able to have it distributed, so that geographical place isn't so essential and it gives us more opportunities and flexibilities. It's still about engaging.

Is reflection on education one of the positive outcomes of new possibilities for technology?

CARMEL: We need to make conversation available in the hope that it stimulates thought. Again it comes back to where we were before, that probably the future, whatever the future is, will be okay if people recognise that the space and time spent in discussion and analysis is needed and can be purposeful. If we just keep rabbiting along, then I think we've got some problems. There is a real need for institutions, for departments, to create that sort of sensible reflective...training. Then the technology gives us some really exciting tools to work with. But it's that planning about purpose and direction that I think we need more of.

CAROL: There are some wonderful authors out there who have made thinking about what it is we do, or should be doing, of some interest. James Bailey [author of After Thought], for example, says a computer can now do algebra, and it can also do calculus; so why are we teaching them? These are some of the interesting ideas we need to consider for the future.

But I still think we need the humanism business emphasised somewhere, at some place in all of this, and we have to find the time to do it. It's really the person and not the subject that's important.

Anything else either of you would like to add?

CARMEL: One of the things that hasn't been discussed I guess is that four-letter word time. We've mentioned using technology to learn things in less time. My own sense of higher education is that we never seem to have quite the time that I seem to remember having in the past. Now, I don't know why my life has got so complicated. Having technology should save us time, but is it not indeed just making us do more work?

CAROL: I think I answer hundreds of email messages a day that I never expected to do. That takes a lot of time. The larger the classes are, the more time I have to give in responding to individuals. I never realized the amount of time electronic communication could take. It isn't like correcting papers and handing them back; it's a constant barrage with students requiring help in some form. Their questions may take about a minute to ask and about a half hour or longer to answer completely.

CARMEL: I'm well aware...about putting projects on the Web...but it's not just obvious how to really do well-designed materials. I'm a bit concerned about expecting academic staff to actually become really good technologists. I mean, when it comes to using email and conference technology then that's okay, but when it comes to add multimedia or to do web design, it seems to me that we need to look at some ways to assist people to actually have shortcuts...

CAROL: I'm not sure that Faculty should be developing course materials to a large extent. What I see is enormous duplication of effort among institutions, and I'm not sure that one product is better than any other. It's very, very expensive to have faculty and staff engaged in this activity. Our university has added at least twenty new people to support Faculty. It doesn't make sense to me. I'm not sure that's where the time should be spent, since I believe book companies or national /international organizations will be the real developers of electronic instructional materials, and professors will serve as consultants to them.

Both Carol MacKnight and Carmel McNaught would agree with Bronson Alcott's aim of education: 'the production and original exercise of thought.' It is the implementation of this aim that will keep an emphasis on humanism in teaching and on technology as a tool in learning.

Interview recorded on 3 December 1996.

About the author

Dr Diane Baird
Research Officer/Editor
ultiBASE
RMIT
Email: mailto:diane@rmit.edu.au