Computer Applications: Pedagogy

Abstract

university PLATO sites, among them Illinois, Indiana, Delaware, Arizona, and Hawaii. During the late 1970s, PLATO was commercialized by Control Data Corporation, and some universities, among them the University of Delaware and Florida State University, acquired their own PLATO systems and became active developers of CAI in music and in other areas. Following the lead of PLATO, other CAI developments in music ensued, such as the ear-training systems at North Texas State University (using a Hewlett-Packard computer system) and at Ohio State University (using an Amdahl computer system). The advent of the microcomputer in the late 1970s, especially the Apple II, spurred more intense development of CAI in music. As more schools began to acquire computing equipment, more instructional software, often called courseware, began to emerge. With some exceptions, most of the early music courseware enjoyed relatively limited success. In industry jargon, we were at the beginning of our learning curve, and the curve was steep. Further, development at that time, and much development even now, can be characterized in much the same way as a Digital Equipment Corporation employee once described his company before its reorganization a few years ago: 1500 individual garages under one roof. That is, there was relatively little communication among developers, and this led to considerable duplication of efforts.