Editorial

Is there a way?
I am currently a member of a working party set up in my own university to look into a
range of IT matters, including learning technology, with the aim of producing a medium-
term institutional plan. At many of the meetings I attend, I hear about the urgency of
focusing our CAL effort, but the conviction around the table is often tempered by
lecturers' complaints that the off-the-shelf courseware they have tried either does not
work well, or does not fit their particular needs, or both. So a suggestion is made: we
should move in the direction of developing our own high-quality educational software
tailored to our individual requirements. And since these requirements are very diverse
over the whole campus, we should establish a Centre for Educational Technology, a
Courseware Resources and Advice Unit, a Virtual Learning Development Laboratory, an
Institute for Computer-Based Academic Practice . . . call it what you will. It should be
staffed by experts who can advise departments and produce for them, or help them to
produce, the exact software they require. It should be supported by a battalion of
technicians, and should not only be equipped with white-hot multimedia but also backed
by sufficient financial resources to ensure continuous upgrades so as to remain in a
permanent state of state-of-the-art. The bank balance is not as healthy as it might be
(whose is?), but the university management must nevertheless somehow be convinced of
the necessity of spending money on the project.

I wonder how many ALT members recognize the scenario. I know some who certainly will
be familiar with at least parts of it. Most HE institutions utter noises about the need to
make as much use as possible of computer technology in teaching, but in a significant
number of them the decision-makers are still unwilling to commit money while they are
being given contradictory messages. They are informed on the one hand that the future
success of the institution may depend on a large-scale implementation of learning

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ALT-J Volume 4 Number 3

technology, and on the other that comparatively little educational software is being used
within curricula because what is available is so often defective or otherwise unsuitable. In
their minds, the two arguments do not converge on an expensive, wide-ranging
programme of courseware development.

Part of the thinking behind the TLTP initiative was that it would address this problem:
that is, that it would bring together expertise, thus avoiding duplication of effort, and that
the targeted software produced would be made available to appropriate departments in
institutions nation-wide. But TLTP has had less success than was hoped for in seeing the
resulting products actually used, let alone relied upon as indispensable teaching resources.
I do not believe that this situation is primarily due to a xenophobic not-invented-here
syndrome, but rather to the fact that most TLTP products genuinely fail to measure up
precisely to course requirements and standards, for whatever reasons.

I have dealt with essentially the same issue from a different angle in an editorial in this
journal more than three years ago, and am no further on than I was then in being able to
propose a practicable solution to what is, for ALT, a major strategic problem. By the time
this editorial appears, we shall have had ALT-C 96, where we shall doubtless have heard
paper after paper enthusing directly or indirectly about the benefits of learning
technology. But the authors of those papers will be preaching to the converted and the
ready-to-be-converted. What should we do to convince Doubting Thomas?

Gabriel Jacobs

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