How Teaching Should be Conducted in an IT Era: Back to the Future

Abstract

In May 2000, at the 4th University Surgeons of Asia Congress, I was asked to explain to an audience of prominent surgeons how teaching would be affected by the recent and future developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs). This was not an exercise in consulting the “Crystal Ball” or a futuristic vision of “2001: a Cyber-Space e-Education Odyssey,” but an overview of sound pedagogical principles that must be imbedded within the prevailing techno-tools, bells and whistles. It is interesting to note the everexpanding evolution of the personal computer and its metamorphosis into an indispensable provider of information, enabling greater social collaboration opportunities than any previous technology. In a recent issue of “The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing”, we are reminded of how far we have come on the technology evolutionary scale.1 In 1977, the popular Digital VAX11/780 minicomputer was five feet tall, cost around US $150,000, weighed hundreds of pounds, contained less than one megabyte of memory, consumed six kilowatts of power, and often needed special air conditioning and a raised floor. It cranked out at one million instructions per second (1 MIPS). Twentythree years later, we find the Compaq iPAQ H3600 handheld computer: five inches tall, weighing about six ounces (including its battery) and costing about US $500. It has 32 megabytes of random access memory (RAM), 16 megabytes of read only memory (ROM), and delivers in the palm of your hand 142-times the computing power of the Digital VAX. Now for the “reality check”: during these last 23 years of escalating computer use in all faculties, its impact on university teaching is still largely a promise.2 Although widespread computer use has brought about the development of interesting applications of computer technologies, such as the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment (IVLE) at National University of Singapore (NUS) and other e-learning environments, computerassisted pedagogy is not commonplace.3 The integration of ICTs into the university environment has been largely based on the inherent attributes of the technology rather than its role in contributing towards meeting specific learning objectives. During this same period of time, major corporations and government agencies around the world have embraced computer-based training (CBT) as a cost-effective and efficient tool to achieve particular staff training objectives. They also came to recognise the value of using the systematic approach to creating support materials for training: Instructional Systems Design (ISD). ISD proposes instructional models that make use of various instructional strategy components to produce a course of instruction.4 Throughout the years, classical CBT and computer-based learning (CBL) has been designed with reference to learning theories developed by David Ausubel, Albert Bandura and Robert Gagne. Much of today’s pedagogy still adheres to Gagne’s five categories of learning, i.e., intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, verbal information, motor skills and attitudes; and the vast majority of CBT/CBL produced have been based on his behaviouristic approach. Although most CBT/CBL designs address some or all of Gagne’s nine general instructional events,5 Web-based Learning (WBL) is providing an added social communication aspect not previously available. Gagne’s events of instruction include gaining attention, informing learners of the objective, stimulating recall of prior learning, presenting the new material (stimulus), providing learning guidance, eliciting performance, providing feedback, assessing performance and enhancing retention and transfer. As you can deduce, some of these events are best handled through social interaction in a classroom setting rather than being preconceived and programmed to appear on screen when triggered by the user. In most CBT/CBL, Address reprint requests to Mr. J.A. Gilles Doiron, Principal Educational Technologist, Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260. E-mail: doiron@nus.edu.sg Date of acceptance: 15th February 2001 Asian Journal of Surgery