Utilizing Computer Assisted Instruction in Training School Administrators

Abstract

The preparation of school administrators has ad vanced progressively over the years, and yet shares a common fault with training programs in other fields. The fault lies in the discrepancy between laboratory experience and the actual demands of the job. Prac titioners often find that their training does not provide them with the realistic tools necessary to function effec tively. The training, especially if happens to be at the university level, often is later discovered to have been inconsistent with the actualities of current job require ments. Training programs in school administration have in many instances failed to keep pace with technological advances. The belief that the administrator works with people, not with technology, and that only his skills in human engineering are significant to job performance, is too limited for today's world. The preparation of educational administrators must, in some manner, en compass the development of two distinct skills : ( 1 ) the ability to direct the educational program in a social setting, and (2) the ability to direct the educational pro gram in a technological setting. This paper, while recog nizing the importance of the first of these abilities, is comcerned primarily with the second. Bruner sets the stage for the administrator in train ing when he states that we are increasingly concerned with the nature of the educational process, with educa tional goals, with the impact of change, and with the available techniques and devices for improving the edu cational enterprise. To the outside observer, he says, it must seem as if we were preparing to embark upon a permanent revolution in education.1 The school administrator is caught in this revolu tion whether he likes or not. The student in training faces an administrative career in which the throes of revolutionary ideas and decisions involving technology are to be his daily routine. During the period since 1955 several significant types of material and methodology have been designed to strengthen the training programs of administrators. The direction taken was intended t? include a greater degree of reality in the programs developed. The initial major use of simulated materials in educational administration is credited by some to Sargent and Belisle. Their book developed for the Harvard Administrative Career Program first demonstrated the case method to teaching school administrators.2 The Madison In basket materials,3 prepared eight years later for the Uni versity Council for Educational Administration and now used by many training programs, appear to be a second reference point. Bunderson and Bessent at the Universiy of Texas have devised a computerized in-basket exercise4 that is based on the information retrieval capability of the computer. The Negotiations Game developed by Horvat5 as an aid in learning the negotiation process recently demonstrated a new approach to materials de signed to introduce new elements of realism into in structional practice. These few examples seem to indi cate a trend toward supplementing printed textbook material with increased use of games, devices, and tech nology in an effort to obtain an increased level of reality in the instructional process. The writers, with experience in the method approach and with a strong conviction that computers are making a major impact on education, determined in May of 1968 to supplement an existing program for training school administrators by developing a demon stration computer-based exercise for students of school administration. The rationale for this project, conducted under a local grant from Texas A&M University, was: 1) School systems are moving rapidly into the use of computers for the handling of administrative data. 2) Computer equipment is becoming increasingly avail able to public school administrators. 3) Instruction by computer is being introduced in simpli fied form in many school systems. 4) Administrators need to know more about the capa bilities and the limitations of this media of instruc tion. 5) The best method of enabling school administrators to know something about computer assisted instruction is to provide personal experience at the computer terminal.