Yesterday's digest provided entertaining and faintly disturbing reading. As a flaming moderate, I cannot resist interjecting my comments into the debate. First, a little disclosure. I studied under Lloyd about ten years ago and attended Dr. Merrill's Summer Institute this past year. I make my living designing computer-based education systems. Specifically, I'm part of the design team taking PLATO into the 21st century.
I believe that there is such a thing as absolute Truth, bleary dorm-room conversations about, "but is the color we both call red really red?" to the contrary. I believe, however that the Author of Truth is someone other than Merrill or Gagne or Piaget or Socrates. While I believe that there is a Right and a Wrong about a great many things, instructional systems design is not in that set.
With Steve Tripp [20 Feb 96], I do not see ISD as a science. It is a discipline. We "practice" it and make incremental changes based on empirical feedback. Now, I admit a bias. I was trained as an engineer. I tend to view the world in terms of systems. In my humble opinion, theories (as Lloyd may remember from my papers in his class) are "at best" merely a convenient framework for the construction of models. If the models work, good. If not, iterate or scrap them. (Even Dr. Merrill modified CDT when it proved unwieldy in practice.) But the models and theories are not truth. They merely allow us to describe the world in terms that can be manipulated.
Let's acknowledge that there are different kinds of learning; different kinds of knowledge. A cookie-cutter drill may be an uninspired way to teach multiplication, but it is effective. That same technique is clearly unsuitable for teaching complex problem-solving.
I believe that here in the gray middle there is room for ideas from both ends of the philosophic spectrum. In fact, I'd argue that the middle is the only place for these ideas, as the extremes are so clearly extreme. I do not see how anyone could "construct" the names of the phyla any more than USU will grant Ph.D.'s based on an objective multiple-choice exam. Different problems, different kinds of knowledge require different tools. I have a favorite saying, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Extremists on both sides are pounding away when it seems to me that we should be looking to expand our toolbox. Use the thing that works where it works and don't criticize it for not working where it doesn't (and don't claim that it WILL work where it won't). Call me an empiricist, but I get paid for results.
As an aside, the argument over whether the computer is a teacher or a tool is moot. It is in fact both. To the learner, the tutorial program is a teacher delivering content and providing guided practice. To the administrator, the machine is a tool delivering students with certifiable skills.
What of using the computer as a content repository, say with a multimedia database? I'd argue that it MIGHT be a tool, provided the learner knew what to do with it. Many so-called "educational" programs contain a lot of content, but the learner is given no guidance through or to the content. A fancy tool is useless in the hands of someone who does not have the foggiest idea of how to employ it.