Computing in Education

The advocates of every project described in this narrative hoped to have a major impact on education. Dartmouth Basic was designed for students; Athena at MIT and Andrew at Carnegie Mellon were inspired by the goals of better education; when companies such as IBM and Apple gave personal computers to universities they expected to create educational breakthroughs. Meanwhile, every university has its own programs to support innovative courses, and organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have well-funded initiatives. During the dot.com boom several universities created web starts-up companies. I was a director of eCornell at Cornell.

The talent and energy behind these efforts has been remarkable, but overall the impact has been disappointing. A Carnegie Mellon survey in 1989 found that 44 percent of the faculty used computing in their courses but only 9 percent used programs that had been written for instruction. The real success of computing in higher education comes from faculty offering students the same computing tools that they use for their own research. In addition, we must not ignore the increased productivity provided by simple tools such as word processing, graphics, email, course web sites, and bulletin boards, and the value of online access to the library and other sources of information.

With all the disappointments it is rash to be too optimistic, but there are signs that times are changing. The first sign is financial. Our universities are becoming unaffordable. Partly this is because of inefficiencies, but the underlying cause is more fundamental. Economists call it the cost disease of service industries. An organization that depends on large numbers of well-paid professionals cannot increase its productively unless it changes its mode of work. As a result it becomes steadily more expensive relative to the overall cost of living. Higher education in the United States is under relentless financial pressure and people are becoming increasingly willing to look for alternatives.

A second sign is that web-based distance education courses are being offered by a wide variety of organizations. Some are of dubious academic merit, but some are excellent. Cornell gives full academic credit for courses offered through the summer school program and there is increasing willingness to consider other courses that are partially or fully online. We are slowly building an understanding of what works in our culture.

The past few years have seen the introduction of massive open online courses (MOOCs). As usual the hyperbole and enthusiasm have run ahead of the actual achievements, but these course have some impressive features. Most importantly their advocates are leading faculty from some of our top universities. They include experts in those branches of artificial intelligence that are used to construct courses that need minimal human intervention.

My own thinking is strongly influenced by the years that I spent at the British Open University in the 1970s. The Open University does not follow the traditional format of residential education. It was founded to serve adult students, living at home, usually with regular jobs. In the United States this huge group of students is served by a mixed bag of community colleges and for-profit schools. Only too often the result is little education and large debts.

Although the Open University always has had the latest technology available, it is cautious in its use of technology. When I was there, forty years ago, we had a dedicated BBC television studio, but the most effective technology that we had was printed course materials, backed up by human tutors. Nowadays, distance education has few technical barriers. We can assume that our students and faculty have good computers and network connections, and that they are skilled users of them. The technical tools that faculty need to create educational materials are at our fingertips.

Some time in the future these threads are going to come together and we will see high-quality degree programs based on educational technology. Nobody can tell whether they will be developed by existing universities or by new organizations. The most obvious opportunity is to provide high quality education for part-time, non-residential students. The developments of academic computing have been led by the elite residential universities, but the greatest benefits may be to people who have never been able to attend those universities.