Instead of asking, "Where can we buy packaged instruction?" we should be rinding out how we can make instructional films appropriate to our own needs.

It is indeed an optimist who rends the new articles about videotaped in­struction and secs himself sitting hack and relaxing while some specialist, in another University .•. puts all his wonderful theories on live tapes.

'\Ve educationists ore remiss and behind a big fat eight ball! We have with us mass instruction ... we are growing . . . at the college level . . . ns well ns at all other levels •.. far out of proportion lo the population growth. It so over· whelms us that none of the usual for· mulns in teaching seem to work nny· more.

Herc nt the University of Hawaii, ns elsewhere, we have multi-section

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Operation Retread or How to Teach Multi-Section Courses Using Videotape

Thelma A. Mcintosh

courses which process from 400 stu· dents per st>mcstcr to 1200 or more t•ach term. My particular courses in Educational Psychology p r o cc s s from :-\OO to 400 prospective teachers per semester. Some fall semesters we ha\•e had several lecturers to tench us many as eight sections, but seldom hnvc those run fewer thnn 45-60 ... or even occasionally se\enty per section. At other times, we arc charged with the responsibility of leaching multi-section courses with whomever is free lo take a section.

We hove been, for several semesters, on the fence about what we should do! Heaven only knows what we slrould do! Most of us ex­prcss our preference for small sec­tions . . . not over thirty to thirty­five, so we can hold discussions, with perhaps twenty per cent of the most verbal or the most oral (I think we should mnke some differentiation

hen•) doing the enrichment for the \1 holL• class. In the meantime, we arc :<omt•whal disgruntled, at having fifty to sixty students in a class and having to "11ull eye teeth" to get any qucstions or discussion al all after the lcclure. Our students are so ex· peclant of being coddled and spoon­fed ! They each expect the small class, with their own personal Ice· lurer, while, at the same time for· getting thnt there is no anonymity in the small class. And they expect the personal lecturer to go on pour­ing in information which they will process and give back on essay tests, full of the usual tripe and generali­zations. Or, some of us resort to tak­ing up controversial issues in order to stimulate ... well, something, al least . . . so that some action takes pince on the part of the student. To take up rngue and theoretical ap· proachcs in avoidance of the prin-

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

cipal content of the course is, of course, "swallowing the camel."

One of the most meaningful re· marks I had recently, showing which way the wind was blowing at the time .•. and by a most brilliant and verbal student, at that, was, "Dr. Mac, arc you going to MAKE US PARTICIPATE this seemster?"

It took forbearance to keep from exploding! Arter all, let us put the blame and the responsibility where it belongs! If my part of the course were interesting enough, I would not have to make anyone participate. The individual would be curious, in· tercsted, and cager •.• just chock full of questions. At least, that is what I was taught when I was an eager beaver, set on teaching as a profession. I envisioned students hanging on my every word! However, rather than exploding at the time, I took a good long look at what was really behind the remark. We are so insistent that students participate or take part in the discussion, yet we do not set up our controls or situations so that they are able to do so. And we are so fearful lest our students find us boring or autocratic that it never occurs to us that one has to guarantee a situation that will make the students want to participate before the debates and controversies actually start! We get so wound up in the same old retread· ed lecture, inspired, of course, that we pause exactly ten seconds, take a deep breath, and ask, "Are there any questions?" ... then jump right in again lecturing without even a pause for station identification or an oc· casional commercial. Our IMAGE is slipping somewhere, but 1 cannot decide in which particular direction!

We in the Foundations Courses are seeking some solutions. One of our solutions is Videotaping the m· formation-giving aspects of the

MARCH 1958

Educational Psychology course, so that, regardless of how many or what level of instructors we are fortunate to find available to teach the course, we can guarantee some consistency in what our future teachers will gel out of this "LEARNING COURSE". Yes, this is a learning course, undergraduate, and required of nil teachers for certification.

One of the most frequently sug­gested solutions for instructing an ever expanding student body is to purchase films! Most of the films available deal with Classical Condi­tioning. Perception, or Animal Ex­perimenlation. They are. good, for the fraction of the time which we would ordinarily devote to them, but they arc not quality films for our particular purposes. And, in addi­tion, our students evaluate them as, "Too many pigeons!" Also, they are not always appropriate for our pur· poses in leaching prospective teach­ers!

Another solution which is often suggested is, "Bringing the classroom right into the lecture hall!" This is even a more remote possibility, but help is in sight. AIICROTEACillNG may alleviate this situation in the near future. We arc immediately concerned with what we can do

NOW . , . this semester. We arc looking for three things:

(1) Malcrials which supplement the textbooks which our future teachers have difficulty in reading, (2) Materials which show theories of learning in practice, and (3) materials which emphasize the educational objectives of learning principles, individual di/ f erences, and child development approaches. Evidently, no appropriate materials are available; or if they have been prepared any where, some of the more innovative universities are keeping them under lock and key un·

til they have proven their worth and have been field tested by whatever process is thought to be necessary for their purposes.

Faced with this problem, we have bel'n trying out ways of producing, for ourselves, some inexpensive vid'\.otapcs, which would take care of the core of the instructional material for this basic course in learning. The cheapest which we have come up with is some 570.00 per one·hour tape, plus production, technical assistance, graphics assistance plus student help with mimeographed and programmed materials.

The top range for making a series of tapes runs S350.00 per hour·unit of taping; conservative estimates for the low-cost tapes, $1200.00 for the series; intermediate cost, $3800.00 for two-inch videotapes; desirable production, color film for the series, $4800.00. The cost of the production of the tapes is ahout equal to the rclcasl'd time of one professor for a semester .. . if potential videotape "artists" were even available!

If we really study the short range projections . .. the time and money eventually saved would be put back into the pot within one year ... this might take up some of the slack in our "position count" and staffing problems.

We have not solved our problem! We arc still fighting the battle of the budget. But we are beginning to produce some of the less expensive tape units. This spring, we will com­plete twelve one-hour tapes dealing with the " core" of the instructional materials appropriate for several of the leading textbooks with which we have hel"'n experimenting for three years. I say "experimenting" because we have been comparing results compiled from student performance with three leading text­books, ancl with their accompanying

21

workbooks and test-item materials ... to ascertain which materials our students can handle most in­dependently. Our approach has not been to re-interpret the textbooks! If we have to do that, we may well choose not to adopt a text book at all, but simply give up and assign miscellaneous readings wher­ever they may be available. We have been trying to identify the ma· jor concepts which any course for future teachers should include, and we have been testing to what extent the materials available have helped us to meet certain course objectives.

Our tentative plan for this spring semester is lo use approximately for. ty per cent of programmed materials and videotaped lectures, to present these to large groups, then to put the time and effort saved back into the course in the form of development of inquiry and discussion techniques, in blocks of time separable from the lecture itself, so that our future teachers may be better prepared to do the same thing for their students m this multi-media and mass-in­struction era in which we find ourselves.

What can we offer that will be helpful to other people who are trying lo keep these multi-section courses running to meet students' needs? First, we must retread some of the professors! It requires departure from custom to get an ex­perienced lecturer to go into the multi-media arena to present his lec· tures. He feels naked out there before the cameras, without his glasses and his script! He feels limited by the necessity of "dressing up" his presentations so that visuals will reinforce the words he uses. He also feels hnndicnpped by the necessity of programming his materials so tightly that he has no "dead air" in which to ramble on and reminisce about his experiences.

22

We find no particular objection to his introducing at least one new joke per program, providing he does not give a commercial! In fact, if you begin to work with these ETV peo· pie, they will insist that you limber up, show some action and animation, and at least insinuate some humor into the lecture.

I hold that these are not limitn· tions, but advantages, even to one of us tired retreads. With this year's experience of being prodded into animation by the communications peoplt>, nnd with eight years of in· ten•st behind me in the multi-media field, I am excited about how much I can pack into n thirty·minule presentation . . . when I really try . . . or nm forced to by my pro· gram director. Some of my favorite lectures have been condensed, for the fifth or sixth time, into little packages, which sometimes do ac· tually resemble the original product, but have lost much of their redun· <lancy, thank goodness! Some of the tight scripts have been re-written for the five or six times necessary lo package the lectures into length and form appropriate for either videotap­ing or closed-circuit TV, whichever might be clesignnted for the course. And then, as 11 final insult, they tell me to throw the script away and talk into the camera ... actually com· municatc directly with my audience of one!

But the net result ..• the im­mediate result ... is a presentation that the students can understand and respond to in a minimum of time. An immedinte operationnl definition for new terminology accompanies the use of new and technical language. An appropriate illustrnlion follows n principle or generalization. If it doesn't, you may find some fresh young programmer telling you what to do ... and maybe he hasn't ever lectured to an Ed. Psyc. class!

But . . . he can tel I you where your ideas are going over and where they art' missing the point and going stale ... and that is a definite sign of "teaching an old dog new tricks!"

We hope, at the end of the sl'mester, to have forty to fifty per cent of the factual information on videotapes so that we may give con· sislent and uniform instruction to our students, no matter what devt•lops in the discussion and participation aspects of the course. The major concepts, as such, must be covered in the presentation materials. The consequent development of crit­ical thinking, challenging creativity , .. with its application ... among our students, will, conceivably, for the first time, have an equitable amount of time for that specific pur­pose.

Preliminary evaluations by students in the trials and tribulations of videotaping before a group of 200 students . . . in w h i c h the mechanical aspects of setting up the presentation took v 11 I u n b l e minutes . . . taught us several im­portant things about videotaping. We need videotaping facilities in several spots on the campus ..• so that any department . . . and any pro­f cssor ambitious enough to try the process, can go in for a couple of mornings a week ... We need lo keep communications people so busy that they will have to triple their facilities to produce for us and with us. This fall semester, we took four student helpers and one rookie professor (retread, I admit) and came through with some tapes which made a more attractive presen­tation . . . and a better organized one . . . than the real thing! This didn't make professionals out of any of us in that length of time, but nm\, if we snowball this operation, we can begin to get both quantity and quali­ty out of our productions.

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVES