14. Telelearning: The Multimedia Revolution in Education

In a complex world of constant change, where knowledge becomes obsolete every few years, education can no longer be something that one acquires during youth to serve for an entire lifetime. Rather, education must focus on instilling the ability to continue learning throughout life. Fortunately, the information-technology revolution is creating a new form of electronic, interactive education that should blossom into a lifelong learning system that allows almost anyone to learn almost anything from anywhere at anytime.

The key technology in future education is interactive multimedia—a powerful combination of earlier technologies that constitutes an extraordinary advance in the capability of machines to assist the educational process. Interactive multimedia combines computer hardware, software, and peripheral equipment to provide a rich mixture of text, graphics, sound, animation, full-motion video, data, and other information. Although multimedia has been technically feasible for many years, only recently has it become a major focus for commercial development.

Interactive multimedia systems can serve a variety of purposes, but their great power resides in highly sophisticated software that employs scientifically based educational methods to guide the student through a path of instruction individually tailored to suit the special needs of each person. As instruction progresses and intelligent systems are used, the system learns about the student's strengths and weaknesses and then uses this knowledge to make the learning experience fit the needs of that particular student. Interactive multimedia has several key advantages:

• Students receive training when and where they need it. An instructor does not have to be present, so students can select the time best suited to their personal schedules.
• Students can adjourn training at any point in the lesson and return to it later.
• The training is highly effective because it is based on the most powerful principles of individualized learning. Students find the program interesting, so they stick with it. Retention of the material learned is excellent.
• The same videodisc equipment can be used to support a variety of training paths.
• Both the training and the testing are objectively and efficiently measured and tracked.

Educational systems of this type, offered by IBM under the product label Ultimedia, engage students in an interactive learning experience that mixes color movies, bold graphics, music, voice narration, and text; for instance, the program Columbus allows students to relive the great navigator's voyages and explore the New World as it looked when Columbus first saw it. The ability to control the learning experience makes the student an active rather than passive learner.

A similar revolution is under way in training aimed at upgrading employee skills for more complex, changing jobs. Literally millions of people are being trained quickly, effectively, and inexpensively using multimedia systems at companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Chrysler, Shell, Xerox, and Ford, as well as the U.S. government. "Multimedia is the preferred method of training," says Nancy Kenworthy at the International Training Company. Today these systems can often be accessed by employees through their own PCs, and they should eventually be constantly available from anywhere when an individual or group feels the need for some type of knowledge, instruction, and other form of help. The concept has been called "just-in-time learning."

Studies of these programs show that learning time is shortened by 50%, retention is increased by 80%, and costs are cut in half. Hewlett-Packard has used this approach to eliminate 90% of its former classroom training and Apple Computer has reduced its classroom training by 75%. The corresponding savings are so vast that most corporations should soon follow suit. "We aim to get (classroom instruction) down to zero as soon as the technology is ready," says Lucy Carter, a training director at Apple.

Classroom training will always be needed for some things, of course, but interactive multimedia training should become the common method for teaching employees how to use an organization's systems, acquire the skills needed to handle a new job, and brush up on the latest management methods.

Information networks will undoubtedly be built to provide multimedia instruction for schools and colleges around the world. Of course, these developments will require resolving difficult issues of bandwidth, cost feasibility, establishing common standards, and other complex issues. For example, compression and decompression techniques and standards for full-motion video still need to be developed. But the wholesale movement of America's largest corporations into this breach is a clear signal that multimedia is destined to find its way into society before the year 2001, and education will be a prime application.