Next-generation educational software: why we need it & a research agenda for getting it

  • Authors:
  • Andries van Dam;Sascha Becker;Rosemary Michelle Simpson

  • Affiliations:
  • Brown University;Brown University;Brown University

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 courses
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The dream of universal access to high-quality, personalized educational content that is available both synchronously and asynchronously remains unrealized. For more than four decades, it has been said that information technology would be a key enabling technology for making this dream a reality by providing the ability to produce compelling and individualized content, the means for delivering it, and effective feedback and assessment mechanisms. Although IT has certainly had some impact, it has become a cliché to note that education is the last field to take systematic advantage of IT. There have been some notable successes of innovative software (e.g., the graphing calculator, the Geometer's Sketchpad, and the World Wide Web as an information-storage and -delivery vehicle), but we continue to teach-and students continue to learn-in ways that are virtually unchanged since the invention of the blackboard.