Effectively, the basis of the innovation in the use of computers in education has been to serve two separate purposes: computers provide new opportunities as learning aids; but, computers are also used to assist in distance education, whose existence long predated their advent. One of the earliest attempts took place between the early eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, where courses in short hand were offered by correspondence (Börje, 2005; Moore & Kearsley, 2005). The University of London was the first university to offer distance learning degrees in 1858 (Sheldon, et al., 1998).
However, a crucial limitation persisted, being dependent on mail correspondence, which was slow and expensive. The advent of film in the 1920s and radio in the 1930s, provided unique opportunities to bridge the gap, leading to attempts to adopt their use for distance education (Cuban, 1986; Stuart, 2017). In 1948, when the University of Louisville teamed up with NBC to use radio as a medium for distance education, the chairman of the FCC endorsed the project and predicted that the “college-by-radio” would put “American education 25 years ahead” (Dwayne & Morison, 2000). In the late 1950s, Physicist Daniel Q. Posin pioneered a televised course through DePaul University (Vyse, 2017).
Fundamentally, these were forms of one-way communication. The phone would provide an opportunity for instantaneous vocal communication. But, it was the Internet that finally answered the missing factors, by not only providing instantaneous feedback, but also the ability to share visual and auditory material at a distance.
References
Cox, Dwayne D., & Morison, William J., (2000). The University of Louisville. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Holmberg, Börje (2005). The evolution, principles and practices of distance education. Bibliotheks-und Informationssystem der Universitat Oldenburg.
Larry Cuban. (1986). Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920. New York: Teachers College Press.
Moore, Michael G.; Greg Kearsley (2005). Distance Education: A Systems View (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Rothblatt, Sheldon; Muller, Detlef K.; Ringer, Fritz; Simon, Brian; Bryant, Margaret; Roach, John; Harte, Negley; Smith, Barbara; Symonds, Richard (1988). Supply and Demand: The “Two Histories” of English Education”. History of Education Quarterly, 28(4): 627–44. doi:10.2307/368852.
Vyse, Stuart (2017, November/December). Before Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, There Was Dan Q. Posin. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, 41(6), n.p.
Very informative post David.
Your post led me to question if the telegraph was ever used in the distance education process in the past and how effective it might have been for learners and educators?
Cheers!
Phyz
Very interesting question Phyz!
The question around impact is interesting. As you’ve all seen, there’s a never-ending array of technologies that have been used in the service of teaching and learning. What has been their lasting impact? And, to give a nod to your earlier blog post David, what interests do they serve?
It’s possible to consider the recent innovations as the advent of two different tools: computers and the Internet, which represent different affordances.
Simply put, it’s the computer that has allowed us to create novel learning aids as software (LMS, interactive presentations, etc), but it is the Internet that has allowed us to deliver these tools remotely.
The printing press and the abacus offer interesting analogies.
There’s a difference between the printing press and the product, which is books. The printing press allowed literature to be made more widely available. The learning is not in the press, it is in the literature.
The abacus is a learning aid. So by analogy, a computer is not a learning aid. Rather, it is a tool for hosting learning aids (software).
The real breakthrough is software, being probably the greatest innovation since the printing press, or even books and film themselves, because it allows us to transform material by making it interactive.
So the real value is not in the computer itself, but in the software, and the added value afforded by the Internet, which is not only that it allows access to software programs remotely, but also that it connects learners and content creators with each other.
David, you briefly brought up the phone in your post, and I was interested in knowing if you found a lot of research about the telephone being used for educational purposes. Bates (2016) briefly touched upon this in his book Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning, and I found it interested that the phone was not used more often for teaching and learning purposes.
References
Bates, T. (2016). Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. British Columbia: SFU Document Solutions.
That’s a great question Brandon. I assume that at the time, because of long-distance phone charges, it the use of phones for long-distance education was just not feasible. I found this article that might be helpful:
Hashim, Y., & Jaafar, I. (1999). Systematic Use of Teleconferencing in Distance Education. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47(2), 117–124.