I approached this book, frankly, with some trepidation. IT-happy instructors can come across as a group of enthusiasts with staring eyes who have seen the future and cannot understand how anybody else would want to go on teaching in a classroom with carbon-based faculty and students interacting in the old-fashioned way. David Brown has been very visible as a spokesman for the wired campus since becoming provost at Wake Forest in 1990. Those of us whose institutions do not have the option of raising tuition $3000 per year to fund ubiquitous computing can feel a bit vexed when we read about the things other people are able to undertake. And then there is the nagging worry that we are being left behind and the corresponding tendency to believe, or claim, that rather than late adopters or Luddites we are actually the defenders of real academic values.
Every foreboding I may have felt is put to rest in Interactive Learning. It is a book every teaching center should possess and any faculty member can put to good use.
Brown begins with three useful chapters on Educational Beliefs, Technology Tools and Techniques, and Assessment of Technology's Impact on Learning; there follow 93 "vignettes," or case studies, of how faculty members have used computer techniques to change and improve their courses: these include a wide range of disciplines, from engineering to English literature and art history. And, making the volume very easy to use, there are five indexes, permitting a reader to access the vignettes by author, college or university, computer tools and techniques, discipline, or educational belief.
The most stimulating chapter may be the first. In it Brown argues very powerfully for computer-based instruction not as the new thing, or a catchy trend, but as a full embodiment of some of the deepest values of learning: interactive learning, collaborative learning, learning by doing, role-playing, and integrating theory and practice. Other beliefs operationalized in these vignettes are frequent dialogue, prompt feedback, repetition and time on task, and adaptability to diverse learning styles. (It is probably no accident that these echo the widely-publicized seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education.)
The chapter on assessment will not satisfy some inquirers, being based mostly on surveys and "soft measures" of student satisfaction and learning, though there are some findings showing higher student grades in IT courses. There is a useful section on Lessons Learned which new adopters should read before undertaking any ambitious upgrade. I appreciated this advice:
Most class time is best spent person-to-person, without the intervention of the computer. Between classes, however, the computer provides a means of continuing in the interactive mode. Discussions begun interactively before class can be completed in class. Projects begun interactively while in class can be completed, still in the interactive mode, after class. Although the computer can also increase interactive learning when face-to-face, the biggest gains are when face-to-face communication isn't feasible.
The ninety-three vignettes illustrate a large variety of techniques, software, and applications. Each provides a background, a solution, some sort of assessment, lessons learned (often very frank about mistakes), and a summary, along with contact information for the instructor. Some of these are quite specific&emdash;a large physics course for engineering students, for instance; others are of broader application. "Science Education for Hostile Nonscience Majors" ought to have a wide appeal.
Since few readers will want to peruse each of the vignettes, the index gives a convenient summary of their approaches. The most common tools and techniques seem to be asynchronous discussion groups; uses of email; many uses of the world wide web for exercises, student publishing, links to related materials, putting lecture notes online, and publishing syllabi and course materials; and multimedia classroom presentations.
John Emerson of Middlebury College, a statistics instructor, provides the best set of lessons learned:
Clearly several of these lessons are not specific to multimedia classrooms but apply to good classrooms of any sort, and this reminder of the continuity of teaching and learning is salutary. Interactive Learning has enough good ideas and explanations of technique to help faculty add computer teaching and learning features to any sort of class; it has enough acknowledgement of the constraints (the main one being enormous demands on the instructor's time) to make sure they do it with their eyes open.
Merritt Moseley,
UNC Asheville