Formative Experiments on the Coevolution of Technology and the Educational Environment

Abstract

When new educational technology is put into actual use, new ways of using the technology and new ways of organizing instruction can emerge. This may create problems for standard evaluation techniques but at the same time it may present interesting opportunities for the designers. Levin & Kareev [9] report a delightful case in which two young boys appropriated the computer-running-a-space-game into their fantasy play, pretending it was the console of their space ship and they were space explorers who would investigate a planet (room of the house) then return to the console to transport them to another planet. Goals are not built into technology. They are things that people or groups of people have. How a new piece of educational technology gets used in a particular environment cannot always be anticipated ahead of time. It can be argued that what the environment does with the technology provides critical information to guide the design process.

Over a period of years there is a coevolution of technology and the environment that includes teachers and students, materials and topics, as well as the technologies. The environment changes as technology is introduced and technology can change to take fuller advantage of the new environment. Of course, this is not a natural process as the term “evolution” may imply. It all happens within an artificial system [18] designed for some purpose. But the fact that both the technology and the environment are human artefacts does not mean that the process of change is mechanical. Design of the technology and educational environment is goal-directed but is also very much a problem-solving task [15] which is ill structured and open-ended. An educational environment is inherently open-ended because new goals can enter the system. For example, goals associated with the workplace can enter the educational environment as the organization of instruction begins to resemble an apprenticeship. Consequently, it is not always possible to specify the objectives of a piece of educational technology and expect them to remain the same once the technology enters the educational environment. If the system falls into disuse or is used for an entirely different purpose, i.e., our system becomes extinct, we know radical redesign is needed. But, more likely, the system finds a niche serving possibly multiple purposes that need to be understood in future iterations of design.

This paper describes a set of examples illustrating the ways that the environment changes, sometimes unexpectedly, as a result of a piece of technology being used. I will start by outlining the method called a formative experiment and the theoretical approach on which it is based. The examples include a LAN environment designed for collaborative school work and intelligent instructional systems for use in training specific technical tasks.