Computer-Aided Instruction on the World Wide Web: The Third Generation

Computer-aided instruction (CAI) moved from mainframe computing in the 1960s and 1970s, to microcomputing in the 1980s, to the threshold of network computing in the late 1990s. Previous generations of CAI have met with limited but increasing success and acceptance. Economic educators were generally disappointed with mainframe CAI and questioned its cost effectiveness and value added. Siegfried and Fels (1979, 942) summarized this view: "CAI in [undergraduate] economics do[es] not appear to be the route to nirvana [it was] once expected to be. CAI appears to generate no more (or no less) cognitive achievement but probably costs more than conventional methods." Nevertheless, economic educators expected microcomputers to reduce development costs and to overcome CAI's earlier limitations. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, evaluations of introductoryand intermediate-level CAI programs ranged from the damning-"Economics software engages the student at 'the lowest level of computer use' (drill) and little intellectual development is likely at this level" (Reclam and Sexton 1994, 368, quoting from Yoho and Walstad 1990)-to the enthusiastic-"The microcomputer has become a major pedagogical instrument of demonstrated value" (Smith and Smith 1989, 73). In spite of the promises and disappointments of earlier generations of CAI, I argue that the World Wide Web represents an even greater change in the cost structure of developing, distributing, and using CAI software than the movement from mainframe to microcomputer. The Web can sustain a level of experimentation, innovation, and collaboration necessary to produce significant advances in CAI. The Web fundamentally alters the cost structure of instruction and learning by changing the costs of authoring, publishing, distributing, modifying, updating, applying, and using economic course materials. However, realizing the potential benefits of Web-based instruction requires that course materials be redesigned to reflect the expanded possibilities for interactivity, adaptability, rapid distribution, and integration of text, audio, video, graphics, animation, spreadsheets, and programming within a common package. Instructional software should not remain merely supplementary to a traditional textbook as has been previously argued (e.g., Walbert 1989).