This week’s prompt is an interesting one for sure, in which we are supposed to think of a technology tool that would not work for an express purpose of teaching people a particular skill. I spent some time thinking in this reverse fashion, and figured that if I could come up with an example of an electronic teaching tool equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine, I would be well on my way. I think I came close. If someone was trying to teach others about counseling and conflict resolution, and they made a CD ROM, even complete with rich pictures and text, I do not think it would be the most effective tool use for the stated problem. I think this teaching tool would fail in several fundamental ways, particularly in cost-effectiveness and training usefulness. Concerning the use of CD-ROMs as teaching tools, Mason (2003) had this to say:

“…the cost of developing stimulating, interactive multimedia materials was very great (in fact, it still is), and much of the material produced was not very stimulating and interactive beyond learners pressing the “Next” button at the bottom of the screen. Furthermore, once the CD-ROMs had been produced they were difficult to change or update” (p. 158).

In addition to the unjustifiably high cost, the CD-ROM would likely lack the high degree of interactivity necessary to teach someone all of the variables in conflict resolution. Even if the CD was highly interactive, the program would have a very hard time mimicking the nearly limitless responses a person would make. Simply clicking “Next” would not do the trick. The best way to teach this would be to run face-to-face role playing between students, and between students and actual people in conflict who have willingly volunteered. If doing this in person were not possible, one might try video conferencing because it is a synchronous form of communications in which you can read the body language of another person. Without this, someone may acquire a good theoretical sense of the material, but not get chance to see how the theoretical applies to reality and solving actual conflicts.  As Hodgins (2003) stated in determining how industry standards should be adopted, it is important that educational tools are testing to see what works and what does not. I suspect that this kind of teaching tool would be a lead dirigible, or an electronic Rube Goldberg.

References

Hodgins, W. H. (2003). Learning technology standards. Encyclopedia of distributed learning.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Mason, R. (2003). Evolving technologies. Encyclopedia of distributed learning. Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage Publications, Inc.