Purdue News
Purdue News
For centuries, education hadn't changed a lot.
All fields of study advanced, of course, but the delivery of ideas -- professors lecturing and assigning texts and students taking notes and reading -- had stayed pretty much the same.
Oh, there have been the opaque, overhead, filmstrip and movie and those marker boards that seemed so modern compared with dusty old chalkboards. Those were advances, but instructors readily could adopt the new technology and incorporate it into teaching.
But then came the computer and the array of tools that accompany it. Among them: the Internet and all its uses, courseware and presentation software, videoconferencing, CD-ROM, computer animation.
The technology offers new ways to teach in all disciplines. From interactive videoconferencing that links distant experts with classrooms to projecting images from the World Wide Web on classroom screens, the emerging technologies offer limitless new ways of teaching. But the technology isn't just a book to flip open and read from.
This fall the new Multimedia Instructional Development Center will open. A division of the Center for Instructional Services, the center will coordinate instruction in the use of multimedia as well as offer faculty a range of services to help them incorporate the latest technology into teaching.
"We'll be able to help with curriculum design or train faculty in how to do it," says Richard Forsythe, CIS director.
Eventually, the multimedia center will operate a network-based library, or server, that will allow faculty to store video, audio, images and instructional software at the center and access them from remote locations, including classrooms.
The server project, still in the development stage, is a joint effort between CIS and the Purdue University Computing Center.
John Steele, Computing Center director, says the new telecommunications system being installed on the West Lafayette Campus, at a cost of $45 million, is a vital piece of the puzzle to make the server project work.
"The multimedia center and the telecommunications network are in place, but what remains is how to make this available in individual classrooms," Steele says.
The fragmented computer market poses a challenge for Purdue planners trying to make this computer-assisted teaching available in the classroom through the use of a network.
Some faculty members use PCs, some use Macintosh computers, and still others are accustomed to a workstation environment that uses the UNIX operating system.
"We can't justify spending the money to equip each classroom with all three different workstations," Steele says. "But we have to come up with a way faculty can use computers in the classroom."
Faculty members now can bring in laptop computers, hook them into the classroom projection equipment and display files stored on the laptop.
But the goal is to make it so an instructor can walk into the classroom, log into a computer workstation, and easily access remote files or the World Wide Web and display it on the screen in the classroom.
"By fall, a substantial number of classrooms will have connections to the campus network," Steele says. "Many now have projection equipment.
"Now we're trying to fill in the middle."
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu
