INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY AND THE BIFURCATION OF THE UNIVERSITY

摘要

Arguments over instructional technology in the university generally obscure more than they reveal. Hidden are vastly different assumptions about the definition of knowledge; hidden are different notions of the role of the university in an information-oriented society; and hidden is the fact that the difference between supplementary media and comprehensive, planned instruction is not a matter of degree of efficiency but of kind of learning. Looking beneath the controversy, it appears that the stalemate over the implementation of planned instruction has not arisen because instructional technologists and traditional professors are on opposite sides of a barricade, but because they are, in many cases, fighting different battles. Just as traditional teaching methods are inadequate in the face of mass demands for information, so is packaged mass instruction incompatible with the role of the traditional university. This analysis suggests that the issue of planned instruction cannot end in compromise nor remain static, but will result in the bifurcation of the university.