I thought Tom Reeves' comments about the Holy Grail were very interesting and I totally agree that ITForum is a wonderful tool for our profession.
Tom's comments hit on a topic that I have been struggling with. I think we would all agree that, in a perfect world, open-ended, constructivistic learning environments are more valuable and useful. However, given the imperfect nature of this world, instructivistic, tutorial programs are the more practical. I think we are fooling ourselves if we think that there is a large market out there, in either K-12 or industry, that is begging for us to create open-ended learning environments.
Tom said that tutorial-style applications have not been widely-used and that is true. But then he implied that the key to increased utilization is to create these more constructivistic applications. I think he is wrong on that one. His Army missile program is a good example--that was an instructivist program that was used and that was found to be helpful by the users.
So, in a nutshell, I think the answer to increased utilization is to develop better tutorials not to declare defeat and take up the ivory tower notion that constructivistic open ended learning tools are the key. Instruction is a purposeful activity and will always demand a certain, in my opinion, a large, degree of structure and purpose.
As I said, this is an issue I am struggling with. I don't claim to have all the answers or even to know all the questions, but it's been nagging at me for some time. I'm not a zealot one way or the other and, like most other issues, the answer probably is somewhere in the middle.