Pacific Lutheran University
M e m o r a n d u m

Date: November 27, 1995

To: Paul Menzel, David Yagow, Keith Cooper

From: Douglas E. Oakman

Subject: Asymetrix Multimedia ToolBook Evaluation (Part I)

This is the initial installment of my report on Multimedia ToolBook 3.0/CBT Edition (hereafter MMT/CBT). I intend to submit a concluding installment in late-spring or early-summer 1996, focusing on the goals set forth below. I approach this software primarily with the perspective of the humanities in mind.

Introduction

It would be helpful to begin with some definitions and explanations. Multimedia computer applications enable the linking of computer, audio, and video media. Future personal computing workstations will have CD-players, speakers, and perhaps television video connections as integral components.

Asymetrix's MMT/CBT is one of the most highly rated multimedia authoring environments available for the IBM PC world. It is similar to Hypercard on the Macintosh, though I believe MMT/CBT has more extensive capabilities. The consultant who visited PLU during discussions for the language lab indicated that translations between MMT and Hypercard are possible. SGML formatting (see below) might provide a viable translation medium.

The complexity of MMT/CBT is indicated in the fact that the programs and ancillary files come on a CD-ROM disk; fully installed, MMT/CBT can take up to 250 megabytes of hard disk space. The instruction manuals for the program run into the hundreds of pages, and are clearly written. MMT/CBT requires a fast CPU (486 and above preferred, though the programs will run on 386 machines), lots of RAM (at least 8 MB), a large and fast hard disk, sound card and speakers, and video interface. For the purposes of preliminary testing, I installed a basic core of the program files on my 386 machine without sound or video. MMT/CBT can be used in this way without all of the bells and whistles.

What does MMT/CBT do? MMT is a powerful, general-purpose authoring environment that allows the ordinary computer user, as well as the more experienced programmer/developer, to design multimedia applications for the IBM PC/Microsoft Windows world. The CBT Edition extends MMT to enhance its utility as a Computer Based Training environment.

The claim of Asymetrix to have simplified the Windows application design process through MMT/CBT has validity; many complex programming processes are available in "canned" graphics operations. It isn't difficult to implement a simple application. However, the complex possibilities of the program and the strenuous work of implementing a good multimedia design must qualify this claim if a refined and effective product is desired.

The Microsoft Windows Environment

In preparation for this report, I needed to upgrade my own machine to support the use of Microsoft Windows as well as MMT/CBT. A few comments about Windows seem appropriate, especially since many in the Humanities Division will need to become better acquainted with this environment (along with Microsoft Office) in the future. (I hesitate to mention Windows 95!!)

Microsoft Windows 3 extends the DOS operating system in important ways from the user's point of view. Most importantly, Windows provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and a virtual machine, object-oriented computing environment. While software for Windows like MMT is pushed as "user friendly," presenting a uniform application look and providing the ability to move data fairly easily between applications, Windows itself does not provide a simple environment for the novice user to work in.

Despite thirteen years of experience working with microcomputers, including the Atari ST (similar to the Macintosh), I am fully prepared to say that Windows can be daunting, confusing, even perplexing. It is easy to run a number of programs at once in Windows, with genuine multitasking, and to switch back and forth between programs. Moreover, object-oriented programs make linking and embedding processes and data quite feasible. In Microsoft Word or WordPerfect for Windows, graphics can be drawn while in the word processor, graphs can be linked to be continually updated by changes in a database, and so on. Understandably, then, when things go wrong, the complexity can make tracing problems a challenge.

Getting Acquainted With MMT/CBT

MMT/CBT is easy to install, as are most complex programs today. A preliminary installation routine allows full or custom installations. A CD-ROM reader is needed to load the program onto the computer hard disk.

MMT/CBT makes full use of the object-oriented capabilities of Windows. Its central metaphor is the "book," with "pages" incorporating different kinds of objects (text, graphics, even computer subprograms written in MMT's OpenScript language). User-definable links between objects or between pages make it possible to move quickly from texts or images to calculations or control routines. For the remainder of this report, we will refer to MMT books as TBKs (ToolBooks). MMT comes with samples, including a calendar that keeps track of appointments, a calculator, and various tutorials. These samples clearly demonstrate the capabilities of MMT.

The MMT/CBT edition provides elaborate resources for designing educational TBKs. A CBT tutorial, for instance, takes the reader through important features of the program. Pages and scripts can be examined so that the user can translate concepts to his or her own projects. The program's CD-ROM disk stores numerous graphical images and "widgets," predefined tasks that can be useful in the design of personal or educational books. A sample education TBK tests the user over information supplied and tabulates right and wrong answers in a self-test. MMT/CBT comes with a complete Course Management System, which can be placed on a Local Area Network to provide student access to course TBKs and provides facilities to organize student information, track test results, print grade reports, tabulate student statistics, etc.

Beginning a personal TBK is fairly easy for the novice. The program uses template books to step the user through a preliminary design process. Templates can then be customized to the user's liking. Widgets can be pasted in, providing predesigned controls and scripts for a variety of applications. The user's imagination is to some extent the limit on what can be done with the "pieces" MMT/CBT supplies.

Pedagogical Implications

The following reflections are preliminary, but incorporate ideas from my Prism essay of two years ago. I worked on these ideas further in two presentations given last year at Highline Community College and at the Regional AAR/SBL meeting respectively. They frame a discussion of the potential uses of MMT/CBT in the humanities classroom. I would also like to contrast the pedagogical value of MMT/CBT with the potential of the Internet.

To begin with, it is important to stress that the computer and any MMT/CBT product are potential tools, in distinction from the abstract goals and aims of liberal arts education. Whatever is done with these tools needs to be commensurate, as far as possible, with our goals and aims. In humanities educational contexts, computers and high-tech applications (as with videos) may be as much a distraction as an aid to what we want to achieve.

Information technology cannot merely be viewed as a replacement for older educational technologies and pedagogical strategies. Claims are being made for Computer Aided Instruction, frequently in computer-industry supported organs like Educom Review, that bring misplaced machine-metaphors into discussions of educational philosophy. In other words, these discussions confuse means and ends, obscuring a higher education interested in humane goals (values).

For instance, the goal of a liberal education is usually not simply the transfer of information, which can therefore be done more efficiently and cheaply with computers (see Attachment 1: Financial Times). Liberal education has traditionally examined powerful symbolic perspectives and human character in light of those perspectives. The liberal arts focus on the human being, not on the tool.

Basic media in this study have been the book (text) and the conversation. Books used in the liberal arts often require sustained deliberation and hard effort to get through. Such books often need to be set aside and returned to later with a greater reservoir of experience (as with "classics" or "sacred scriptures"). The traditional text is more than the paper-and-print medium conveying it. Indeed, the text is a "technology" (if that's the right word) that has encouraged "book-length" thought and discussion about the human situation.

In the age-old search for truth, goodness, and beauty, highly developed conceptual frameworks of enduring human importance have emerged. The liberal arts at their best lead students to appreciate the value of those frameworks and prepare them for participating in further discussions. Having "tons" of information at one's fingertips through computer technologies does not ensure that the aims of liberal education will be achieved (but neither do libraries and books!). The dangers of an isolating "information voyeurism" loom large with multimedia glitz or the Internet. Public conversations within a group dedicated to critical evaluation of perspectives would not seem well served by increasing the strategic educational importance of computer media. Information technologies conveying mere technical knowledge or offering entertainment-distractions in the classroom are not central to our cause.

It seems important to stress at the outset, then, that the ends of liberal education must be revisited continually in any evaluation of technology or educational technique. Otherwise, an uncritical embrace of computer technologies and machine-like educational visions will corrupt discussions about teaching and learning and erode the learning environment of higher education in ways that undermine what the liberal arts have wanted to achieve (see Attachment 2: 27 November TNT).

So, what might be accomplished with MMT/CBT? Let me contrast a worse and a better possibility. Taking the CBT label at face value, it would be disastrous to encourage the development of computer-based "training" in humanities courses. The notion that we are primarily about the transferring of information, tested in multiple choice exams (which are extremely easy to implement in MMT/CBT), should not be the major emphasis. Not only does such a model perpetuate the idea that some "expert," whether human or computer, has black-and-white answers, but the MMT/CBT design process is left entirely in the hands of the faculty person. Active and creative learning on the student's part is thereby discouraged. Furthermore, computer training sessions or tutorials reinforce the notion that information transfer is "private," between the user and the information expert. Social and collaborative dimensions of learning are discouraged. The advantage of a computer-tutorial approach is that it is time-efficient, since largely in the hands of the faculty person.

A better possibility lies in letting the students use MMT/CBT to focus part of their own course-related learning and present their results to the larger group. Creative and collaborative dimensions of student education would be encouraged. Such presentations might look like this: major student "essays" in a Shakespeare class are presented in part through the computer medium, complete with archaeological studies of Stratford-on-Avon, social commentary related to specific plays, sound clips of Elizabethan music, etc. Or, an American church history class requires student projects focusing on social factors in the Great Awakening. Student synthesis can include maps and graphs illustrating American social progress due to commercial and land development, musical materials showing the origins of evangelical hymnody, primary text selections illustrating the progress of science in relation to religious events, and so on.

This second option would be less time-efficient, since students would have to learn the program and faculty (or computer center) time and energy would be diverted into teaching students how. If such practices became widespread in the learning culture of PLU, the university might well have computer proseminars for students that would efficiently introduce them to technologies used in their classwork.

These two models, and the use of MMT/CBT generally, might profitably be contrasted with another option already widely available at PLU. The Internet is a major feature on the Information Revolution landscape. Graphical, video, sonic, and textual materials are available in abundance: students can easily acquire maps, sounds, or texts to include in any multimedia presentation. For instance, many elements of Harvard's Perseus database of the ancient Greek world are accessible via the Internet. (PLU has a less readily accessible CD-ROM version for the Macintosh in the Media Center.)

Furthermore, the World Wide Web and its emerging Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, a subset of SGML=Standardized Generalized Markup Language) conveniently allows the linking and displaying of such information "on-line." A serious alternative to MMT/CBT and microcomputer presentations lies in distributed computing resources already in place. Students and faculty can now very easily establish their own WWW pages, incorporating text and graphics, as well as links to other resources. While my own PLU page is fairly simple at the moment, it illustrates some possibilities. You can peruse it on VAX Pepper via Lynx, under the faculty pages (or http://www.plu.edu/~oakmande). My page may also be serving as an information node for The Context Group, so the possibilities for in-house course or departmental information sharing are also illustrated.

There is an important efficiency differential between MMT/CBT development and tapping the Internet: Mark Reiman has indicated to me that he has invested hundreds of hours in a TBK that instructs students on basic economics concepts. He has a very impressive working version. My web page, by contrast, took only a couple of hours to set up and nurture through several revisions. Students might need to acquire word processing capabilities to produce HTML documents, but both Word and WordPerfect for Windows provide extensions to accomplish this (otherwise, tools are easily acquired from the Internet). Distributed computing resources are readily available to all PLU faculty and students (higher use might require network enhancements); comparatively simple tools and fewer hours can be used to establish a personal web page (accessible by all class members) and assemble text and graphics from around the world. Wouldn't it make more sense to employ what is already there, rather than to incur sizeable expense to outfit local networks with MMT/CBT?

Several important questions emerge from these reflections:

Are we sufficiently clear about our pedagogical and educational goals before we embrace computer technology? Conversely, how does such clarity provide criteria for evaluating computer technology in the classroom?

What are the most efficient computer means to the ends we want to achieve? What strategic computer decisions do we need to be making in the very near future?

Do multimedia computer capabilities do anything more for the humanities classroom than what is already available through the Media Center (i.e., older audio and video technologies)?

What can local multimedia programs do that Internet tools and resources cannot?

Goals for the Next Report

The final installment of my report will include at least the following components:

Further thoughts on questions raised in this report

An exploration and assessment of TBKs available through the Internet; an attempt to ascertain what humanities people elsewhere are doing with MMT

A description of the process of designing a TBK to teach about ancient calendars, and provision of a working demonstration (I have begun preliminary development of this program, but things are not well enough along yet to provide a demonstration)

Pedagogical recommendations, with particular interest in refining critical principles that can inform decisions about the technological commitments and directions at PLU

Attachment 1 (from the Internet):

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 9, No. 310.

Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)

http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: Pamela Cohen <pac@eden.rutgers.edu>

Subject: academics--endangered species?

Financial Times, November 20, 1995

Endangered species. Modern electronic technology could mean

that the days of academics at higher-education institutions

are numbered.

People pay enormous sums for higher degrees, not because

they cannot obtain the knowledge elsewhere, but to give

themselves an edge in hyper-competitive labour markets.

Higher degrees serve a function akin to that of the

exotic plumage of birds: they are primarily a means of

attracting attention, of signalling that you deserve

special attention.

[snip...]

[Editorial interjection: consider what online instructional materials

could do to the monopoly we have had on the distribution of culturally

valued information. Would the role of the university be reduced to

certification alone? --Willard McCarthy]

___________________________________________________________________

Pamela Cohen / Doctoral Candidate, Art History / Rutgers University

pac@eden.rutgers.edu

Attachment 2 (27 November TNT)

Comments: Distance education is a praiseworthy capability for those who are "placebound." Cooperation among institutions of higher education is certainly desirable. However, the TNT editorial sounds many of the notes that I am skeptical about: Students are envisioned as isolated extensions of computer terminals, education seems more like "information transfer" or "training" than higher education, and "efficiency" concerns make diffusion of a certain kind of educational environment and vision seem like some kind of extravagance. When the efficiency arguments and the "bottom line" become too dominant, machine-based education will win (as in machine-based industry). This is surely a ludicrous place to reach in an age so aware of the environmentally devastating impact of machines: An education concerned about human and humane ends, centered in "inefficient" human conversation, could become a casualty of a societal failure to draw critical distinctions.