TU4022--Telecommunications, Distance Learning, and Collaborative Interchange (3)

Teachers College, Columbia University
Summer B Term 1996

The impact of telecommunications on education

Introduction

Telecommunications is bringing sharp changes to the educational world by electronically bringing into immediate contact many of those in education who were formerly isolated from each other by sheer geographical separation. Using telephones, fax machines, teleconferencing, or computer-based telecommunications, students, teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, publishers and software producers can now enjoy working contact with each other under what would previously have been impossible circumstances.

For example, students can now regularly communicate electronically with other students, other teachers, and even various experts, all in far away places, enlarging their interpretation of both their studies and the world at large by a far broader set of perspectives on both than traditional classroom alone could ever provide. Teachers can now communicate with colleagues in schools around the country or even the world, soliciting help and sharing insights on vital topics in which none of their physically immediate fellow teachers are either interested or expert. Teacher educators can now communicate with distant colleagues about problems of teacher education around the world, discovering common ground in both problems and solutions. And curriculum developers can instantly transmit anything from preliminary ideas to finished products, back and forth to those most expert on them, regardless of how geographically dispersed the experts may be.

This paper reflects on how, from primary school through university, people at different levels of education are using telecommunications in various collaborative activities, forcing changes in concept formation, classroom activity, curriculum content and structure, and research on education. Moreover, it seems likely that such changes have only begun. Broadcast television, interactive teleconferencing, telephony and faxing, and computer networks of all kinds will be discussed, as vehicles for delivering educational material and concepts or facilitating exchanges between physically isolated colleagues.

Broadcast television

Attempts to use television as an educational vehicle have been made almost from the beginning of television. Because television has been fairly widely available in the U.S. and a number of other countries for more than 40 years, given a meaningful vision and reasonable creative freedom and an adequate budget to follow that vision, a good TV design and production team can usually produce a fairly effective piece of broadcast educational television. However, though the maturity of television has been accompanied by realiztion of the ability to use it successfully, that very maturity has also made increasingly clear to educators the limits to what can be done with standard broadcast television, regardless of how well it is produced and when it is scheduled. While television was just developing, the horizon of possiblities seemed limitless. Now that broadcast television has matured, it is clear for which educational activities and learning experience broadcast television alone offers little. Fortunately, the simultaneous birth and development of other telecommunications devices and carriers during the last few decades now offers ways to overcome some of the limits of standard broadcast television as an educational tool.

What broadcast television can do well in education


Many television directors realize what broadcast television is best able to communicate. Such directors, supported by an appropriate team, can create television broadcasts that capitalize well on such understanding. For example, they understand how: (1) to most effectively apply various cinema techniques in shooting and editing television, (2) to best capitalize on the small screen intimatacy of television, (3) to most effectively use the informality and spontaneity that television can capture and project, and (4) to deal with broadcast scheduling and program segment length limitations.

All this is demonstrated by many effective programs, from many different countries, covering a wide range of subjects, including: language learning, current affairs, history, geography, economics, philosophy, science, mathematics, music, and religion. Their merits are immediately apparent. For example, the viewer is enriched by a range of things, which, taken together, would probably never be replicated in any ordinary educational context: (1) expert presenters, (2) exact locales, (3) abundant and perfect examples, (4) live presence, and (5) ideal perspectives.

Expert presenters.

Excellent material substance and appropriate topical focus is often enhanced through presentation by a world-class expert, incorporating insights and presentational gifts rarely encountered by most students, even in the best of schools. For example, on U.S. television, viewers have had the opportunity to be instructed in mythology by Joseph Campbell, astronomy by Carl Sagan, archeology by Lewis Leakey, music by Leonard Bernstein, and so on.

Absolutely suitable locales.

Aside from the presenter's expertise, excellent educational programs can transport the viewer to the exactly the locale most illustrative of a particular topic, whether it be a distant part of the world or even the universe, the inside of a of a particular human heart, a specific desert like the Mojave or particular wetland like the Nile delta, the reverberating remains of a war-torn contemporary city like Beruit or Sarejevo, or any of countless other locales normally beyond viewer access. There have been scores of good programs, for example, on outer space and under the sea, showing how vehicles maneuver in these media, and showing previously unseeable views of the world and and its neighbors, totally outside everyday experience. There have been spectacular presentations of many ecologically troubled areas of the earth such as the Amazon rain forests or the gorilla sanctuaries of Rwanda and Zaire, and graphic, unforgettable demonstrations of what sorts of problems exist for our world because of human action in such places.

Abundant, precisely appropriate examples.

Broadcast television has demonstrated the power of being able to present a rich tapestry of suitable examples to illustrate any topic, whether it be a range of human life styles in widely differing cultural situations, art works physically housed in museums and private collections across the globe, animal or plant life a precise periods in the year or precise points in the species life cycle, or any of a host of singular items which alone, because of its uniqueness, may be the only appropriate illustration on earth for the topic at hand. For example, broadcast viewers have been treated to extremely insightful programs explaining various aspects of human behavior by presenting an extraordinary range of dramatic human social interactions and conversations. There have been excellent series on human sexuality, for example, demonstrating a spectrum of relationships whose scope easily exceeded the experience available to all but professional specialists in human behavior. Or various programs on the development of aviation have shown unique images of historic flight and historic aircraft, showing the actual machines regardless of who owns them or where these singular remaining craft are currently housed.

Live presence.

And of course broadcast television has given use unforgettable live coverage of global affairs such as the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. and South Africa, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and world communism, and, most recently, the view of instants from the Persian Gulf War. A list of truly memorable examples of such live coverage would be almost endless.

Ideal perspectives.

With all the camera technology now available, it is also possible to shoot actions or views from almost any point of view imaginable, including many that it would be difficulty, dangerous, expensive or even impossible for an ordinary observer to realize personally. Views of earth from outer space, views of the ocean depths from unmanned submarines, views of the inside of a living body, and so forth are all examples of what can be provided. The possibilities are even greater if other variables are included such as stop action, split screen, and slow motion. Actions can be observed "frozen" (a moving projectile at its appogee or an elastic body at the instant of its greatest distortion), in comparison with some other example (two divers executing the same dive, side by side), or at a pace which, for the first time, makes them truly "observable" (a fish eagle diving on its prey).

What one can conclude from all this is that standard television can graphically present the viewer with a picture of events, places, and people that can greatly broaden the viewer's insight by supplementing and clarifying the viewer's normal experience. The crucial word, though, is present. Presenting certain kinds of information, particularly if it is enhanced by graphic representation, is certainly something educational that standard broadcast television performs well.

What broadcast television can not do well in education

While broadcast television has been maturing, its viewers, technical experts, production people, and critics have also learned which kinds of things television does not do well and which kinds of problems interfere with using it well. Four things broadcast television can not do are: (1) schedule broadcasts to suit everyone, (2) provide segment length and content sequencing control to the viewer, (3) locate displayable content for every topic, and (4) interact significantly with user. They have spring from specific limits, identified with: (1) broadcast scheduling, (2) sequential structure, (3) content displayability, and (4) non-interactivity.

Limitations inherent in broadcast scheduling.

The time when a particular segment of television is broadcast may not coincide with the best time for the appropriate viewers to watch it. If the programming is commercially sponsored, the marketing producers' desire to reach a large audience may dictate a broadcast hour that would rule out certain audience segments for whom the content would be particularly educational. Regardless of the sponsorship, geographically varied time zones automatically dictate that the best viewing time to one segment of the nation or world may be the worst for another. Thus the broadcast schedule chosen may seriously limit the the impact.

Limitations inherent in sequential structure.

Since television is a sequential medium, information that does not lend itself to sequential presentation may be hard to depict comprehensibly on television. Some information may need to be viewed several times and in different order if viewers are to truly understand it, but broadcasting must fix a given order and can only aim at the best compromise in terms of: (1) including any segment more than once, and (2) the final order for broadcasting the segments. Thus a viewer who needs to refer back to something no longer on screen is not able to do so unless the predetermined sequence happens to coincide with that particular viewers need. So the sequential structure of broadcast television inherently limits its educational utility.

Content displayability limitations.

Similarly, since television is a display medium, a medium particular strong at showing, information that deals significantly with matters difficult to illustrate or with nothing dramatic to show may be difficult to program with interest. While interior thinking can be simulated in broadcasting some historical information, utilizing something akin to Shakespearean solliloquies, this is often awkward to do well, and sometimes altogether impossible. Morevoer, when the absorption of a brilliant idea which may be displayable but only in a form which requires the viewer to ponder it for some extended time in order to comprehend it, the broadcaster's dilemma is evident. What typically happens is that displayable content dominates a broadcast, regardless of the importance of closely related non-displayable content. Moreover, the pace at which cuts (or dissolves) are used to move the viewer on to the next item or scene is often either too fast, or the choice of topics based too strongly on the speed with which they can be absorbed. Hence content displayability is an important factor in creating an engaging program.

Limitations stemming from lack of interactivity.

Finally, programming whose substance depends for clarity on having the viewer question the presenter and the presenter respond is very problematic on broadcast television. Standard broadcast television is non-interactive, and provides no way to elicit or respond to such questions. To eliminate the need for question answering, one understandable tendency of a broadcaster may be to make the presentation such that no questions are needed. This however runs the danger of simplifying or otherwise changing the content so that some of the original purpose for showing it is eliminated, along with the ambiguity which the questions and answers would be an attempt to resolve.

Delivered at the First Greek National Conference in Computing and Education November 1991