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The following projects, organizations and participants were the focus of this study:
Project: ESCAPE (HyperCard and HyperNews) Organizations: Educational Research and Information Systems (ERIS, Purdue) Participants: Hopper, Lawler, LeBold, Putnam, Rehwinkel, Tillotson, Ward Project: TODOR (BLOX) & Mechanics 2.01 (cT, Athena) Organizations: Athena and Academic Computing (AC, MIT) Participants: Bucciarelli, Daly, Jackson, Lavin, Schmidt Project: Physical Geology Tutor (AthenaMuse) Organizations: Center for Educational Computing Initiatives (CECI, MIT) Participants: Davis, Kinnicutt, Lerman, Schlusselberg Project: Context32 (Intermedia, StorySpace) Organizations: Institute for Research and Information Scholarship (IRIS, Brown) Participants: Kahn, Landow, Yankelovich [See the Switchboard for further information.] |
Interviews with 19 key participants and the text of key documents concerning the
projects were content analyzed. This analysis revealed that in complex computing
environments, instructional software needed to continuously evolve in order to be
used over a significant period of time. Successful instructional software projects
developed different types of organizational structures to obtain and manage the
required continuous supply of informational, technical, human and financial resources.
The nature of the support structures that developed depended upon the project
manager's formal relationship to the more traditional academic and computing
organizations in the university. The three different types of organizational
support structures that were identified resulted in distinctly different patterns
of challenges and opportunities in resource acquisition. Each structure was
uniquely able to provide a few types of resources, while being inherently limited
in others. The only structure which accommodated each type of resource,
without limiting another, was the learner constructed mode of operation.
In the future, instructional software authors and project managers need to
carefully consider the strengths and weaknesses of the organizational structures
they adopt to support their rich and complex computational learning environments.
They should undertake a planning process designed to preemptively compensate
for the particular weaknesses in resource acquisition that are associated with
their particular type of organizational structure. The organizational structures
identified during this study provide a foundation upon which to base this process.
To improve the chances of success of future instructional software initiatives,
it is also important to further establish the operations, strengths and limitations
of different types of organizational structures which are adopted to support
instructional software in advanced academic computing environments.
References
(Einstein, 1991) Einstein, H. (1991) Engineering Geology Educator from Windows on II Introduction. In C. Avril (Ed.), Windows on Athena: Vol. 2: Project Athena's Curriculum Development Projects...And Beyond. (pp. 2-1 - 2-4). Cambridge, MA: MIT.
(Landow, 1989) Landow, G. P. (1989). Course Assignments Using Hypertext: The Example of Intermedia. Journal of Research on Computing in Education. pp. 349-365.
(LeBold, Hopper & Feghali, 1991) LeBold, W.K., Hopper, M.E., Feghali, A.A. (1991). A Hypermedia Solution to a Hyper Problem: Personalized Computer Engineering Career System. 1991 ASEE-IEEE Conference Proceedings, p. 482-488.
(Stewart, 1989) Stewart, J. (1989). How to Manage Educational Computing Initiatives-Lessons from the First Five Years of Project Athena at MIT. In E. Barrett (Ed.). The Society of Text: Hypertext, Hypermedia and the Social Construction of Information (pp. 284-321). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.