The Resource Magazine For Apple, Atari, and Commodore ...

1O COMPUTE! September/October, 198O. Issue 6
Computers
And Society
David D. Thornburg and Betty J. Burr
Innovision
P.O. Box 1317
Los Altos, CA 94O22
This month we want to bring you up to date on two
shows we attended. One of us (BB) attended the
American Society for Training and Development na
tional convention in Anaheim, and the other (DT)
attended the summer International Consumer Elec
tronics Show (CES) in Chicago. Both of these shows
had many small computer systems on display. By
looking at these products at trade shows and conven
tions, we get to see developments before they become
available at the corner computer store. We were suf
ficiently excited by what we saw to want to share our
perspectives with you.
The following report presents Betty's view of the
ASTD convention:
Does anyone remember CAI? The darling child of
the late 60's and early 70's, computer assisted in
struction has been struggling for its life for the past
decade. Suffering from high costs as school budgets
became increasingly tight, CAI never quite justified
its existence or fulfilled the promises of early
dreamers. In the latter part of the 70's the big guns
in CAI turned to the adult education market and
aimed at big business and industrial training. (Train
ing is that skills-increasing activity engaged upon by
people within a business or industry. Adult education
may cover some of the same subjects, but it is con
ducted in a school or university.) Control Data Cor
poration took its successful Plato-for-schools and
created Plato-for-industry. Boeing's Computer Ser
vices division offered training in all computer related
subjects.
The applications still seemed limited. The CAI
offered by these companies required either that the
learner go to a centrally-located learning center to
use a time-sharing terminal, or install such a ter
minal at company facilities. In my opinion, CAI,
with all its promises, was just limping along.
A few months ago, I found out that CAI is in
deed alive and well, and living in the personal com
puter industry. General applications in industrial
training may be as close as tomorrow.
At the end of April I attended the national con
vention of the American Society for Training and
Development, held in Anaheim, California. Among
the more than 700 vendors of training hardware and
software were several who displayed very exciting
uses of personal computers in training for business
and
industry.
I am excited about what I saw because I wear at
least two hats in this world. I am a computer en
thusiast who has spent over three years in a research
center watching people playing with CAI and playing
with it myself. I am also a training director who is
concerned with helping people learn and retain
knowledge in the most efficient way. Until my April
trip, I did not believe that the computer was efficient
or cost effective. I may now be wrong.
What follows in this column is a brief descrip
tion of what I saw and some caveats. I should point
out that what I saw is not all that is available in the
world for CAI for industry. Some vendors may not
have attended this convention. I may have walked
right by others. To all left out, my apologies. Write
to me at Innovision and I'll be glad to take a look at
your product and include it in a later column.
Let's start with a look at some of the hardware,
because there was more of that than software. (One
of the major problems I see with the use of com
puters in business training is that canned programs
are not widely available.)
One of the exciting applications of the
microprocessor was created by Videodetics
(Anaheim, California). They have harnessed the
technology by marrying it to videotape to create pro
grammable video tape. Providing automatic searchout
and playback of specific sections of tape, the
controller-indexor system creates an interactive learn
ing situation. The lesson creator programs in a series
of questions, the answers to which lead the learner
down various videotape paths. The learner is either
praised or corrected (or both), as the lesson pro
gresses. The unit makes possible such activities as
reciprocating multiple-choice tests, reinforcement of
correct responses, and remediation of incorrect
choices.
With this product trainers can upgrade video
tape equipment (if compatible) to allow learner con
trol for a very low cost (between $550 and $700).
The company is currently polishing a random access
version of the controller, which should lend even
greater flexibility to the system. The developers point
out that the unit has also been used very successfully
in point-of-purchase sales presentations, so it may
serve a dual function in some businesses. In addi
tion, the videotape visual display has the advantage
of interest and color over the standard monochrome
CRT normally associated with the CAI environment.
Recognizing the value of the videotape medium
when compared to CRT only, Comco Creative In
dustries has interfaced an Apple (obtained from Bell
and Howell) with a 3/4 inch video cassette to present
an answer to the problem of boredom without loss of
the advantages of conventional CAI. The box which
accomplishes the jumping and linking of tape and
computer units will cost, I am told, something
around $1000.