Computers role in education

Computer’s role in education
Computer technology has had a deep impact on the education sector. Computer in education field is the ability of a data base machine to reproduce answer when a instruction is been typed in and the ability to answer the question correctly and effectively.. The advantages of computers in education include an efficient storage and rendition of information, quick information processing and very importantly the saving of paper. Computer teaching plays a key role in the modern systems of education. Students find it easier to refer to the Internet than searching for information in fat reference books. The process of learning has gone beyond learning from prescribed textbooks. Today, aspirers can satiate their thirst for knowledge by means of the Internet. It is easier to store information on computers than maintaining hand-written notes. Computers facilitate an efficient storage and effective presentation of information.s other articles in this issue make abundantly clear, both the
- processing and the uses of information are undergoing an unprecedented technological revolution. Not only are machines now able to deal with many kinds of information at high speed and in large quantities but also it is possible to manipulate these quantities of information so as to benefit from them in entirely novel mays. This is perhaps nowhere truer than in the field of education. One can predict that in a few more years millions of schoolchildren will have access to what Philip of hlacedon’s son Alexander enjoyed as a royal prerogative: the personal services of a tutor as well-informed and responsive as Aristotle.
The basis for this seemingly extravagant prediction is not apparent in many examinations of the computer’s role in education today. In themselves, howel’er, such examinations provide impressive evidence of the importance of computers on the educational scene, As an example, a recent report of the National
Academy of Sciences states that by mid-
1965 more than 800 computers were in service on the campuses of various
American universities and that these institutions spent $175 nillion for computers that year. The report goes on to forecast that by 1968 the universities’ annual budget for computer operations will reach $300 million and that their by Patrick Suppes total investment in computing facilities will pass $500 million.
A similar example is represented by the fact that most colleges of engineering and even many high schools now use computers to train students in computer programming. Perhaps just as important as the imposition of formal course requirements at the college level is the increasingly widespread attitude among college students that a knomledge of computers is a “must” if their engineering or scientific training is to be up to date. Undergraduates of my generation who majored in engineering, for instance, considered a slide rule the symbol of their developing technical prowess. Today being able to program a computer in a standard language such as FORTRA4N or ALGOL is much more likely to be the appropriate symbol.
At the graduate level students in the social sciences and in business administration are already making use of computers in a variety of ways, ranging from the large-scale analysis of data to the simulation of an industry. The time is rapidly approaching when a high percentage of all university graduates will have had some systematic training in the use of computers; a significant percentage of them Will have had quite sophisticated training. An indication of the growth of student interest in computers is the increase in student units of computer-science instruction we have had at Stanford University over the past four years. Although total enrollment at
Stanford increased only slightly during that period; the number of student units rose from 2,572 in 1962-1963 to 5,642 in 1965-1966.
The fact that time-sharing programs are rapidly becoming operational in many university computation centers justifies the forecast of another increase in the impact of computers on the universities
[ see “Time-sharing on Computers,” by R. M . Fano and F. J. Corbató, page 1281. Under time-sharing regimes a much larger number of students can be given direct “on line’’ experience, which in itself is psychologically attractive and, from the practical viewpoint, facilitates deeper study of the use of computers. There is still another far from trivial way in which the computer serves the interests of education: The large school system that does not depend on computers for many administrative and service functions is today the exception rather than the rule.
The truly revolutionary function of computers in education, however, lies in the novel area of computer-assisted instruction. This role of the computer is scarcely implemented as yet but, assuming the continuation of the present pace of technological development, it cannot fail to have profound effects in the near future. In this article I shall describe some experiments in computer-assisted instruction that are currently being conducted at levels ranging from the comparatively simple to the quite complex
COMPUTER-$SSISTED ISSTRUCTION in elementary arithmetic is illustrated in the pho- and then examine unsuspected tographs on the opposite page. A first.grade pupil, receiving “readiness” work preparatory to instruction in addition, is shown tw-o possible answers to a question implicit in the sym. problems that these experiments have bols occupying the top line of a cathode-ray-tube display. As he watches (top photograph), revealed. First, however, the reader dehis earphones carry a verbal message asking him to select from the symbolic statements of an Of ‘%’ ‘Omputerunion shown in the second and third lines of the display the one that is identical with the assisted instruction is desirequation shown in the top line, The pupil signals his cho(ibcoet tom photograph)b y pointing able at all.