Designing Educational Software the Information Age: Dilemmas and Paradoxes *

for

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Beverly H U N T E R Targeted Learning Corporation, Route 1, Box 190, Amissville, VA 22002, U.S.A.

Design considerations of the developer of educational software are predominantly concerned with economic and organizational arrangements for disseminating educational materials to schools. As a consequence, design considerations concerning educational needs, pedagogical research or techno- logical opportunities have relatively little impact on software design.

This paper identifies considerations concerning: - interaction among learners, teachers, software and learning

environments; - learning processes; - teachers" rrles; - effects of knowledge representation on learning and under-

standing; - collaborative learning; - evaluation methods; - curriculum reform; - research on cognitive processes; - technological capabilities.

Keywords: Educational software, Economic and organizational design constraints, Learning environments, Interac- tion, Learning processes, Teachers' rfle, Knowledge representation, Collaborative learning, Evaluation methods, Curriculum reform, Cognitive processes, Technological capabilities.

Beverly llunter created award-win- ning classroom learning materials for teachers and students, using computer data bases in science, social studies and language arts. Since 1965, she has conducted and directed research, de- velopment and teacher training activi- ties to advance the state of the art in educational computing, computer-ori- ented curricula and information literacy. She is Editor for the Ameri- cas of this journal. She is a visiting faculty member at the University of

San Francisco, School of Education, where she teaches graduate courses on educational technology and artificial intelligence applications in education. Dr. Hunter is Associate Program Director for Research on Teaching and Learning at the U.S. National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

* A bibliography for this paper is available from the author.

Education & Computing 5 ( 1 9 8 9 ) 1 1 1 - 1 1 7

Elsevier

In t roduct ion

In this paper , I ident i fy design cons ide ra t ions which have inf luenced the design of sof tware , and cons idera t ions which should affect design if we want to gain ma jo r educa t iona l improvement s . The observa t ions and in te rp re ta t ions in this p a p e r are based on the au thor ' s exper ience as bo th de- veloper o f pub l i shed cu r r i cu lum sof tware and di- rector of educa t iona l research projects , involving sof tware design and deve lopment . The deve loper of educa t iona l sof tware faces d i l emmas der iv ing f rom the economic and o rgan iza t iona l a r range- ments for d i s semina t ing educa t iona l mate r ia l s to schools. As a consequence, design cons ide ra t ions der iv ing f rom educa t iona l needs, pedagog ica l re- search, o r technological oppor tun i t i e s have rela- t ively l i t t le impac t on sof tware design.

The Na ture of the Educat ional Sof tware Industry in the U.S.A.

Schools in the U.S.A. ob ta in educa t iona l soft- ware by pu rchas ing ind iv idua l sof tware packages f rom commerc ia l publ ishers . M o r e than 10000 sof tware p roduc t s , in tended for ins t ruc t iona l or educa t iona l use with compu te r s in schools and at home, can be found on the U.S.A. marke t . The educa t iona l sof tware indus t ry is abou t a decade old and includes abou t 900 suppl iers , the vast ma jo r i ty of which are qui te small . To ta l annua l sales are in the ne ighborhood of 200 mi l l ion dol- lars [23, p. 22]. Mos t p roduc t s are ind iv idua l p ro - grams on f loppy disk, which m a y or m a y not come in a pack with teacher guides and p r in ted mater i - als for s tudents . A second type of p roduc t is the ' i n t eg ra t ed learn ing sys tem' which inc ludes cur- r iculum sof tware for mul t ip le g rade levels and mul t ip le subject areas, ins t ruc t iona l m a n a g e m e n t software, and a ne tworked set of compute r s , usu- al ly ins ta l led in one room. To ta l sales of in-

112 B. Hunter/Designing Educational Software for Information Age

tegrated learning systems were in the neighbor- hood of 100 million dollars in 1987; most of the systems were installed in elementary schools.

Publisher Design Considerations

As in the case of any private enterprise, the criterion of 'success' for a software product is return on investment. Thus, investment in sales, marketing, production and development for any single product must be carefully calibrated to the expected revenues. Purchase decisions for individ- ual software products (not 'integrated learning systems') are made by individual teachers (of which there are about 2630 000) and departments in indi- vidual schools (of which there are about 110000). The price of an individual product must not ex- ceed the authorized budget of these individual decision makers and is usually less than $100 per product. It must be possible to inform the poten- tial purchasers about the product with minimal investment in marketing, either through short de- scriptions in a catalog or brief demonstrations by sales persons, who represent hundreds of products and therefore cannot be very knowledgeable about any one product.

The scope and budget for the development effort is automatically constrained by these char- acteristics of a marketable product. Within these constraints, the product must be designed to ap- peal to the largest possible share of involved sub- ject teachers. To appeal to the largest possible market, the product must: - run on the largest installed base of machine

configurations, - be tied to the most commonly taught topics in

the most commonly taken subjects, - require little or no teacher preparation or train-

ing, - involve minimal change from the present way

of teaching the subject, - be either explicitly related to commonly used

textbooks or have obvious and immediate util- ity to teachers (for example, word processing, Print Shop). The United States Congress Office of Technol-

ogy Assessment " . . . finds that software manufac- turers tend to play it safe. They produce what teachers will buy, and teachers usually buy prod- ucts that are familiar" [23, p. 22].

There are many further constraints placed on design and production of software, due to the economic and organizational structure of the in- dustry. But, even from this brief sketch it should be clear that there are many "built-in" design constraints. These constraints are effective even before a designer begins to think about designing software which is to improve education, learning or teaching. Design discussions at publishing houses revolve around such topics as copyright protection schemes, pricing, packaging, titles, and the continual re-assessment of the base of equipment configurations installed in schools. That some of the products do indeed contribute sub- stantially to improvement of learning is a tribute to the creativity and dedication of the thousands of developers and teachers involved in the produc- tion.

Design Considerations Aimed at Improving E d u c a t i o n

Not all educational software is produced com- mercially. Some software is developed, and some- times disseminated to schools, through research and development grants and contracts provided by Federal agencies or private foundations. In a study of the history of Federal support for educa- tional technology research and development [3], my colleagues and I found that the amount of investment has been small compared to Federal support for research in other fields, and that it has fluctuated widely over the past twenty years. Nev- ertheless, the work supported has been extremely valuable in advancing the state of the art. In 1988, the National Science Foundation provided an estimated 16 million dollars support for research and development projects involving computer- based instructional materials, advanced applica- tions of technology, and teacher enhancement. In 1988, the Department of Education provided sup- port of over 10 million dollars for technology-re- lated projects; the amount fluctuates depending on the categories of support which are included.

When software is developed under a research or development grant, the design conversations are quite different from those in a commercial pub- lishing environment. In research and development projects, we are attempting to improve education

B. Hunter / Designing Educational Software for Information Age 113

in some significant way with the help of technol- ogy, or to advance our understanding of how to do this. The following sections identify some of the variables that need to be taken into account in software design aimed at educational improve- ment.

Considering Interaction of Learning, Learners, and Learning Environments

Current educational improvement projects seek deeper understanding of the complex interaction of learners, teachers, software tools, and learning environments. Earlier software projects typically asked questions like: "Does the computer make a difference in learning X?". Current projects seek to be more sensitive to the multi-dimensional na- ture of learning processes, learning outcomes, and learning environments. It is becoming more com- monly understood that technology is not an inde- pendent variable. The ways in which a given soft- ware tool or instructional program is used, depend on cognitive, affective and social skills of learners and teachers, as well as the social environment of the classroom, the school, and educational institu- tions.

Thus, we think not of 'software design', per se, but of the design of overall learning environments and activities, which may involve: - interaction of parents, teachers, other commun-

ity members, and students; - a variety of learning materials in various media

- - o f which materials, computer software is just one component; and

- in many cases, a real-world problem context for learning. An outstanding example of software applica-

tion in the design of overall learning environments is a project called "Kids Network", supported by the National Geographic Society. In this project, students are working as scientists on such real problems as acid rain. They gather data in their local communities and homes with involvement of community members and parents, organize their data, sharing them with students in other com- munities through the telecommunications net- work. They collaborate with working scientists in the field and analyze the aggregated data assem- bled from all the schools. At present, there are

over 600 schools participating, in the United States and several other countries.

Considering Teachers' Rrles

High technology learning environments, in which students are working creatively and col- laboratively on complex problems, using powerful tools and large amounts of data, are diverse places which no single model of ' the teacher's rr le ' will fit. Teachers are inventing and creating new rrles for themselves as they introduce new tools and processes into their classrooms. For example: - more coaching and less lecturing; - using simulations on a large screen for teacher-

led large group discussion. Attention is focussing on the rrles of teachers in our attempts to design software in the context of overall learning environments. A variety of ap- proaches needs to be tried, and teachers must be empowered to take a lead rr le in creating and assessing these approaches. Many different mod- els of classroom environment and teacher rrles need to be experimented with, and observed by, teacher educators, teachers and novice teachers. Collaborative work among teachers within a school can be encouraged. For example, library and media specialists can work closely with a history teacher to plan and conduct learning activities, in which students use online databases as part of their research projects [18].

Considering Collaborative Learning

Relationships among learners are of increasing interest to researchers, as ,dell as teachers. Col- laboration among students in small groups has been demonstrated to be a more effective mode of learning than either competitive or individualistic modes (see, for example, [19]). Local area net- works and telecommunication networks can pro- vide the hardware base for collaboration, but we have to invent more software support for col- laboration among students, teachers and ' the out- side world'. Defining different learner r61es within each student team facilitates collaboration. The software can advise students on how to perform the different rrles in their teams.

114 B. Hunter / Designing Educational Software for Information Age

C o n s i d e r i n g E v a l u a t i o n Methods

In the United States, students, teachers, school administrators and school districts are now evaluated on the basis of student scores on stan- dardized tests. Given the influence of these test scores on school curricula, textbooks, classroom activities, teacher evaluation, student placement, and the like, we must ask whether the tasks which students are asked to perform on these tests are representative of the kinds of tasks, skills and attitudes needed in the information age. Com- puters enable students to address more complex problems or concepts than they could without computer-based tools, and to focus on learning processes in new ways. A major concern then is how to assess these new processes, when existing tests and other assessment instruments were not designed for the educational purposes at hand. Alternative methods and instruments need to be explored and tried out. Work has been done on so-called adaptive interactive testing, but these are mostly traditional paper and pencil tests adminis- tered online. Other models may be possible. For example, will it be possible to build mechanisms into the software which will assist learners in assessing their own progress, or the teacher in assessing learners' needs? Can computer-based as- sessment tools provide the learner with a set of p rob lems- -a long with problem solving tools and data to man ipu la t e - - and observe the learner's processes of solution? Layman and Kirkpatrick devised laboratory exercises to test students ' mi- crocomputer-based laboratory skills [22].

C o n s i d e r i n g C u r r i c u l u m R e f o r m

Designers of educational software face a seem- ingly unbreakable cycle of dilemmas. The software must support the existing curriculum and textbook if teachers are to adopt innovation. But the exist- ing curriculum and textbook were designed to meet the goals and needs of a paper-and-pencil, print-oriented world. Hawkins and Sheingold [13] report on teachers' experiences in at tempting to use general-purpose data management programs in science and social studies:

"Curricular issues were prominent in these two pro- grams of research because we chose to study uses of the

technology that had the promise of supporting skills of problem solving and critical inquiry. As such, the soft- ware did not have an obvious fit with the traditional curriculum. The curriculum had to be stretched or mod- ified in some way to accommodate the technological functions .... We were interested in how such stretch- ing of the standard curricular vision, in the direction of higher-order problem solving skills that will likely be prominent in an information age, would be accommod- ated by today's classrooms."

Software will have limited benefits unless cur- ricula are re-assessed and modified, both in goals and in classroom practice. What skills, knowledge and values are needed in the information age, both within and across disciplines? Some efforts are being made in this direction, but much more needs to be done. The state of California, for example, has integrated critical thinking skills into each grade level curriculum in social studies. James Fey, at the University of Maryland, has been examining the implications of numeric, symbolic and graphic information processing capabilities on what students can and should learn in school mathematics. Expert study groups in all disci- plines have for years been calling for increased curriculum emphasis on processes such as: - formulating problems; - locating, evaluating, analyzing, interpreting and

synthesizing information; - estimating reasonableness of solutions; - iterating and refining; and - c o m m u n i c a t i n g problems, methods, findings

and interpretations to others. Yet, in practice, the curriculum is still highly

content-oriented with oversimplified problems, lower-level skills required of students, perfor- mance of rote procedures and little room for creativity or individuality. Other school con- straints, such as 45-minute class periods, mitigate against work on solving problems of meaningful complexity.

C o n s i d e r i n g P r o c e s s e s a s W e l l a s O u t c o m e s

Many of the improvements now called for in education are in the areas of process-oriented learning, including inquiry, writing, problem-solv- ing, decision-making, and other applications of higher-order thinking skills. Thus, design of learn-

B. llunter / Designing Educational Software for Information Age 115

ing materials must be more sensitive to process learning (see, for example, [5,12]) and metacogni- tive development [7]. For example, many studies on the rrle, design and function of word processors in the writing process focus on the interaction between word processing tool and nature of the writing process [8]. Similarly, the impact of soft- ware tools on inquiry processes in science [2] and social studies [14,16] has been studied. Researchers are seeking deeper understanding and better theo- ries about how people think and learn in complex problem-solving situations, especially with the aid of computer-based tools [17]. Many teachers and researchers working on software design are more interested in cognitive processes than in behav- ioral outcomes (see, for example, [9,12,21]). By building on this work, we may get insights into various aspects of design, such as: - How much ambiguity in problem specification

is useful, at what stage, in a learner's develop- ment?

- What prerequisite skills are needed before the learner can productively take advantage of cer- tain tools?

- What misconceptions are introduced or rein- forced by the design of the tool or its interface?

- What characteristics of the learning experience inhibit or enhance a learner's ability to transfer the skills to new situations?

- What instructional methods are effective in helping students effect the transfer and applica- tion of skills to new problem areas?

C o n s i d e r i n g E f f e c t s o f K n o w l e d g e R e p r e s e n t a t i o n on Learn ing and U n d e r s t a n d i n g

Advances in technology are making it easier to represent knowledge in a variety of modes, such as visual, motion, sound, text and graphs. Thus, we must consider interactions between learning and the representation of knowledge presented by the software. The question now is not simply "Is this tool effective in learning X?", but, more subtly, "How does this particular characteristic of knowl- edge representation help or hinder the learning process?". For example, many studies are now being made of children's use and understanding of graphs in microcomputer-based laboratories [4,20]. What are the effects of different knowledge repre- sentations on the learner's understanding? How

do different software interface features affect children with different learning styles? In what ways does the ability to manipulate information in the form of pictures, graphs, sound and motion, as well as text, affect the learner's ability to form conceptions of a given subject area? What miscon- ceptions are introduced by the specific knowledge representation employed? What characteristics of the software constrain or inhibit children's cogni- tive, social or affective development? At what learning stage, in learning a skill or a subject, is a particular tool or knowledge representation most helpful?

C o n s i d e r i n g T e c h n o l o g i c a l Capabi l i t i e s

In this time of rapid technological advances, there is always a discrepancy between the capabil- ities of the machines already installed in schools and the capabilities of the machines available in the general economy. Educational software devel- opers and publishers who depend on school purchases of their products are forced by the economic system to confine their development efforts to the installed base of machine capabil- ities in the schools. If new technology applications for elementary and secondary education are to be ready by the time they are needed and wanted by the schools, some software development must take advantage of newer machines. Today, nearly all the advanced technology work in instruction in the United States is funded by, and for, the mili- tary. The National Science Foundation Science Education Directorate has a small, approximately 5 million dollars budget for the Advanced Tech- nology program. This program funds a small num- ber of innovative and risky projects, which are expected to have a five to ten year time frame before any payoff. Multi-year funding is a critical component in the program. The program focuses on educational application of emerging technol- ogies, such as laser disc and computer-generated imagery, in four strategic areas:

(a) knowledge-based systems and intelligent tu- tors;

(b) computational tools and symbolic manipu- lation systems;

(c) authoring systems; and (d) programming and problem solving.

116 B. Hunter / Designing Educational Software for Information Age

These projects are not to be constrained by the installed base of equipment in the schools, but are to take advantage of the most advanced technol- ogy needed to try out the ideas.

One area we are beginning to explore is the creation of interactive coaches or advisors, that operate in conjunction with a tool [1,6,24]. These could assist students in planning, problem defini- tion, critical thinking, reflecting on their strategies, and other skills which are difficult for the teacher to assist with at all times. For example, the author and her colleagues are developing and testing a program called "Scientists at Work", in which students design and execute their own studies of animals, using a hyper media database. An inter- active advisor assists them with information hand- ling, inquiry skills and concepts, if they ask for this assistance. Such an approach combines the expertise of those involved in research on intelli- gent tutoring systems, cognitive task analysis, mental modelling and tool-building. Another promising area is concerned with large multimedia databases. Much experimentation needs to be done with such systems in the areas of interface, pedagogy, browsing and retrieval capabilities, classroom management, curriculum integration, relationship to textbooks and other traditional information sources. Work especially needs to be done in the area of knowledge representation and appropriate learner interface with different knowl- edge domains. This becomes more critical as large scale databases on optical media become more affordable. Development tools such as hypertext software are becoming more readily available for use with large databases, and open new opportuni- ties for design of appropriate systems for students.

Applications of telecommunications in schools are beginning to excite many teachers and devel- opers. It is becoming more and more feasible to incorporate networking into the design of learning experiences, as has been done in the Kids Net- work and with online databases. Another prom- ising technology is the use of object-oriented lan- g u a g e s - s u c h as Smal lTa lk- -and logic-oriented languages--such as Pro log- -as tools of the learner to create and experiment with their own micro- worlds (see, for example, [10,1I]).

Summary

The developer of educational software faces paradoxes and dilemmas, and must be clear as to the goals and purposes of a project, in order to steer a course through the constraints and possibil- ities. For commercial success, design considera- tions derive from the economic and organizational structure of the educational system. For success in improving education, considerations deriving from educational needs, pedagogical research, or tech- nological opportunities should have more impact on software design. These considerations include: - interaction among learners, teachers, software

and learning environments; - learning processes; - teachers' rrles; - effects of knowledge representation on learning

and understanding; - collaborative learning; - evaluation methods; - curriculum reform; - research on cognitive processes; - technological capabilities.

R e f e r e n c e s

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