Down Under its winter, when we have Christmas in July, bright clear skies and semester break--all of which means "conference time." Having just visited Europe for EdMedia'95 and Perth, Australia, for two other conferences, I thought it might be valuable to share some observations from the last month.
EdMedia'95 was held in the beautiful city of Gratz, in the Styrian region of Austria. The city was very calm and relaxed, with sidewalk cafes, restaurants and trams. The networking was, as usual, exciting and the social program gave delegates the chance to eat and drink in some absolutely magnificent buildings--especially the Palace where the main dinner was held. The Australian and New Zealand contingent were certainly party-animals!!
But enough of the fun side--what about multimedia? The conference hosted a series of pre-conference workshops which were extremely well attended, and generally well received. For the conference itself, delegates had access to the usual range of parallel sessions and keynote addresses. From the papers I saw, it continued to appear that there is not a lot of significantly NEW work being undertaken--just better examples of what we have been doing for a number of years. Perhaps this is good, as it might reflect a new level of adoption of technology within education and training. In a recent work published by the Scottish Council of Education Technology (SCET) it was suggested that we should be doing DIFFERENT things with the technology which, when carefully considered, is quite different from any other teaching or learning tool. From the theoretical perspective, the word "constructivist" (and variations) must have dominated discussions, and it was good to see some of Dave Jonassen's work in this area. There was also a hearty discussion of instructional design issues, on which Mike Spector may wish to comment. Unknown to most of the audience was that ISD had been sentenced to ten years Drill and Practice in a well-publicized trial during the 1992 ADCIS conference in Norfolk, Virginia.
Perhaps what was missing was the focus on teaching and learning, which is critical if technology is ever to be successful. There were a number of papers which were presenting research results based on technology comparisons--and which failed to demonstrate the true effectiveness of technology as tool. In fact, and no doubt inspired by Tom Reeves' recent comments, it occurred that these comparison papers are like a goldfish experiment--you take three fish bowls and place a healthy goldfish in each one; you then apply a rigorous methodology whereby Bowl One receives a daily dose of fish food; Bowl Two receives a weekly dose and Bowl Three no doses. And, lo and behold, the results will show the fish in Bowl One survived, the fish in Bowl Two could not survive on small quantities of food and eventually died. And the fish on Bowl Three just died. We should not be conducting research into teaching and learning where we compare interventions which are less than we would normally provide to each and every student.
But on the positive side, the final presentation received a standing ovation (the first I can ever remember at such a conference), not so much for the technological wizardry but for a multimedia-emotional experience. The Pontinari project is cataloguing the entire works of Brazilian artist Pontinari--and the skills required to do this include fourier tranforms on brush strokes to check for forgery! The finale was simply music and images of the artists' work--and it was stunning.
Returning from Graz, I was off from Sydney to Perth where a small group of staff from Curtin University and local/overseas specialists gathered to share ideas on multimedia in higher education. In this setting, 30 or so academics spent three days discussing a range of issues--without the distractions normally associated with conferences such as parallel sessions or networking. Perhaps the major outcome from this miniconference was the emphasis on teaching, learning, and evaluation, rather than technology displays. Empowerment, it seems, is in our hands, not the capabilities of a technology which is always perceived as being not quite up to scratch.
So what does that mean, if anything, for the IT specialist? In simple terms, I think we have to look more closely at the work we do in terms of enhancing the learning process, the role technology might play in this process, and whether the technology is more a tool for the learner rather than the teacher.
Finally, I attended the Australian Computer Education Conference (ACEC95 and also in Perth) where a panel session titled "Multimedia in Education--the Best Is Yet to Come" felt that things will get better, but in what way was unclear. Will it be in an environment which suits the teacher who has grown up in a linear world, or will it be an environment which is modeled and modified by the interactive learner?
I would welcome any discussion on this.