These two pieces of dialogue are obviously different: in the first a student is talking with a computer as

he would with a tutor, being led through a sequence of ideas by a series of questions and statements. This
form of CAL, which employs the ability of the computer to recognise and categorise data, was within the
NDPCAL usually called tutorial dialogue. Another term for it, Computer Assisted Instruction (cAI), is
common but within the NDPCAL it acquired pejorative overtones and became less used. In the second
piece of dialogue, two students and a tutor are talking about what happens after an instruction has been
typed into a computer. Here a computer is being used to investigate a particular application of theory
using its well-known ability to calculate; it is said to be producing a computer simulation. Incidentally, if
as is often the case it is not practicable for a tutor to be present, the promptings and questionings are
often provided by a printed guide. Two examples have been given, by way of introduction, to emphasise
that contrary to popular belief tutorial dialogue is not the only form of CAL. However, it is equally
misleading to think that CAL must dichotomise into the two forms exemplified. Categorisation is necessary
to make an untidy field such as CAL comprehensible; it is the subject of much of the rest of this section.
However, it must never be applied too rigidly. The debate about what was CAL and what was not began
early in the NDPCAL and continued throughout its life, although emphasis shifted fairly rapidly inwards to
a categorisation of and a terminology for the range of items considered to be CAL. The outcomes of the
early stages of the debate had an obvious practical importance: what was considered CAL could hope to
be funded by the NDPCAL, what was not was left out in the cold. In fact two categories qualified for
warmth: in additon to CAL, there was CML, Computer Managed Learning. Originally considered part of
CAL, CML had by the end of the NDPCAL developed a fully independent existence.

A start to defining CAL and CML can be made by listing what they are not. Excluded from funding was the
use of computers for scientific research and engineering design, for administrative purposes such as
student records and teachers' pay and for information retrieval. The reasons for excluding forms of
computer science were less obvious but learning about computers is obviously different from learning
about something else through them; in any case other suns had shone on computer science and were
continuing to do so, albeit less brightly than previously, obscured by the clouds of financial stringency.
The distinctive function of Computer Managed Learning is the routing of students through a course, each
being advised on the strength of his aims, interests and, most importantly, of his past performance what
the next appropriate step is. Its subsidiary functions include: the banking of test items, test marking and
the analysis of test data; the storage of data on groups of students, the updating of this data as further
items become available and the provision to teachers of information on the whole group or on individuals.
The CML 3 sponsored by the NDPCAL was not in the area of engineering, mathematics and the sciences
at tertiary level and so there will be little reference to it in this book. Before the two forms of CAL
exemplified by the introductory dialogues are explored further, a further reference must be made to the
difficulty of defining CAL. The use of computers for scientific research is obviously not CAL but, if the same
research programs, or simplified version of them, are used to teach students advanced theory by giving
them a facility with which they can manipulate the theory and explore its results, the use becomes CAL.
But of course, at the same time as students are learning theory, they are learning an important research
technique and learning to use a computer for research purposes is not generally thought to be CAL! Much
the same problem exists in the education of engineers with Computer Aided Design. Again many students
of engineering, mathematics or a science follow courses to learn how to use the computer as a calculator
for research and design; this is not CAL. However, the NDPCAL readily funded a project4 to set up
computer calculation facilities for service mathematics courses. The intention was to develop the abilities
of students to see the overall structure of a mathematical problem and to apply mathematics undistracted
by calculation difficulties. A difference between this project and most 'Computing for Engineering' courses
was that the facilities were available on simple commands: no programming was required. However, many
agree that programming itself is an aid to the understanding of mathematics and so a form of CAL: this is
because before a problem is programmed, it has to be stated algorithmically and this demands a very
clear understanding of it. All this shows that the CAL: not CAL demarcation is difficult and, because the
versatility of the computer means that further uses for it in education will continually emP.rge, it will
continue to be debated; in any case the very nature of education makes boundaries difficult to place.
However, because the debate clarifies what CAL is about, it will be taken further in chapter 8.

1.2 CATEGORIES OF CAL It will, however, clarify the intervening chapters if more is said about the two
forms of CAL exemplified by the introductory dialogues. Tutorial dialogue, Computer Assisted Instruction,
is a direct descendant of programmed instruction in the tribe of educational technology and responsible
for CAL's popular stereotype as computerised programmed instruction. Its rationale comes from outside
the subject taught through the dialogue, from the work of behavioural psychologists such as Skinner and
Crowder: the student must be taught individually in small steps and provided with immediate feedback
on his responses. If he is successful, he must be rewarded ('Good!'); if not, his error must be diagnosed
and he must be led back to the correct answer. Tutorial dialogue often claims to be teaching the same
ideas as are traditionally taught but in a different, better way; thus it invites a comparison with traditional
teaching methods-the lecture, the book, the programmed text-to be made with experimental and control
groups and pre- and post-tests. CAL also invites comparisons of costs and there is no doubt that at the
present time it is expensive compared with the use of books, programmed texts or even a lecturer.(see
chapter 11). Comparison of tutorial dialogue with a tutorial conducted by a real tutor raises a number of
doubts. Despite the liberal sound of the individualised learning label, it is all too apparent from a detailed
examination of the material and its frequent justification as an efficient means of achieving precise,
predetermined goals that tutorial dialogue, in common with its predecessor, programmed instruction,
offers students few real options. The simple behaviourism of early programmed learning is now
discredited but in its place is no theory ofleaming adequate to guide the computer; even if there were, it
is doubtful whether the present state of computer technology could cope with it. Thus responses to the
student tend to be stereotyped. However, if the quality of computer-generated dialogue did become
better, it would continue to raise doubts, albeit different ones: the closer it approximated to what a tutor
could offer, the more the critical attack would be pressed home as lecturers defended their roles in a
labour intensive industry at a time of economic difficulties. However, there is no doubt that some
computer-generated tutorial dialogue produced during the NDPCAL has met a need: one of the projects
which developed tutorial dialogue programs has been almost overwhelmed by the interest shown in these
by teachers outside the project. A programmed book might do it more cheaply but it is doubtful if students
would be motivated to use it. A tutor might do it better but he is either not available or not willing to
conduct a detailed step-by-step dialogue which he would find tedious and the student find embarrassing.
A fault in the discussion above is the assumption that computer-generated tutorial dialogue is being used
to replace dialogue by a tutor; NDPCAL proponents of it regard it more as a complement to traditional
tutorials, an addition to existing learning activities. During the National
Programme there were very few instances indeed in which CAL was used to reduce staff-student contact
time (see chapter 11); although CAL may appear to serve the same function as a tutor, examination shows
that it is providing something essentially different. 5 When using a computer simulation, a student talks
to a tutor or to another student or just thinks about what the computer is doing; he does not talk to it.
This needs to be qualified for, if all is going well, the computer is selfeffacing and what the student thinks
he is studying is the behaviour of some application of theory in response to his manipulation of the
parameters. It is not the computer which responds to a command of the student (typing in 50 volts) but
the wave function of a charged particle in a potential well! Oettinger's5 analogy of the computer as an
actor is apt. In a simulation, it is acting out an application of a theory in order that the student's
understanding of the theory and the application may be deepened. To press the analogy further, the
relationship between a student's studies of a theory represented in print and by a computer simulation is
parallelled by studies of the text of a play and of its stage performance. Where the analogy breaks down
is that a student can affect a simulation much more than a spectator can a play. He is expected to input
parameters of his own choice and observe the effect. It is up to him whether he inputs one or a whole
series; although usually guided by a set of notes, he can explore until he understands. To this extent
computer simulations provide individualised learning. With some programs, a student is able to model,
that is change the theory being simulated, perhaps until it matches experimental data. To return briefly
to the analogy, he can vary the text. The justification for computer modelling and simulation in
engineering and the sciences comes from teachers of these subjects, who ask no support from educational
theorists. Nevertheless, the claims put forward recall the ideas of Bruner and Piaget with their emphasis
on 1ea•ning by doing, on forming concepts through experience. 'Developing a feel for ... ',' ... to
complement a rational understanding with intuition ... ' are examples of the phrases used. Another
starting point for the justification of simulations is the teaching laboratory: computer simulations are
substitutes for experiments which are nearer to real-life applications than the constraints of the
laboratory allow and for experiments which would be too dangerous or too expensive. With this emphasis
on providing additional experience, on enriching the austere exercises of the experimental laboratory and
on broadening understanding based on an analytical study of theory, computer simulations sound very
liberal and liberating. Additional experience is offered, not a substitute for existing experience. They are
providing something different. The questions they invite are concerned with their purpose-what exactly
is 'developing a feel'? What is the value in simulating a real-life application and how can achievement be
monitored? Both questions are discussed below, particularly, in chapters 8 and 12. Here we should note
that the claim of computer simulations to provide something different is sufficiently credible for them to
escape any charge of being used to replace teachers. At the end of this section it is worth reiterating that
it is misleading to press too hard the categorisation of CAL into tutorial dialogue or simulation and
modelling; this is for two reasons. First, there are other forms of CAL, some described at the end of the
previous section. Secondl); CAL exercises exist which embody both forms; the computer is sufficiently
versatile to provide in one program a simulation and a tutorial dialogue to guide a student studying it.