3.548 computer-assisted instruction, cont. (33)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Fri, 6 Oct 89 20:11:50 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 548. Friday, 6 Oct 1989.
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 89 13:40:51 EDT
From: MTRILEY@CALSTATE (Mark Timothy Riley)
Subject: RE: 3.540 computer-assisted instruction (80)
I certainly am delighted to hear about all the universities with
infinite computer resources. I presume you all who talk about the
value of CAI have students who possess computers, teach at campuses
with many available available terminals, and don't mind putting
students who own no computers to a lot of trouble. We've had
PLATO here for almost 20 years--and there is great stuff on PLATO,
even for Latin! So, I can assign my classes work on PLATO: let's
see, 10 terminals for a school of 25,000 and Latin classes of 50+
total. Maybe they'll have to wait in line only an hour or so.
Of course everyone knows a 10,000 dollar terminal is much better
than a 10 dollar notebook which every student can own for himself.
(That comment is sarcastic.)
In short, CAI is great in theory, but useless in reality, at least in
the reality of large public institutions. Until computers are
as commonly owned (better--until the same brand of computer is commonly
owned) as typewriters, I'll not even try to make computer assignments.
God knows the engineers have trouble enough and they *must* use
computers.
Mark Riley, Classics, CSU Sacramento