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Educational
Technology: Defining
the subject
An address by Eric
Heckscher, Ph.D.
Educational
Technology embraces instruction
and training as well as education, inasmuch as any behavioral
modification involves sytematic acquisition of specific behaviors as well as
that of conceptual learning. Pragmatically, training design sets specific
behavioral objectives, whereas education aims at developing the total
processes of human ability and behavior.
Behaviorists
were the rage
Not so long ago,
behaviorists were the rage in industrial and business training (and, in fact,
much of academe). Not only blue-collar workers but managers were brain-washed to
meet "behavioral objectives." Eventually, it became
apparent that behavioral objectives did not necessarily meet the enterprise's
goals, for the simple reason that goals are fixed neither in time nor in
economic realities -- or, at least, should not be, if survival and success are
the prime motivations. Business schools have had to change their own objectives
from instruction to education. Instruction is now seen as an instrument within
the educational process -- it is not an end in itself.
Global
Apprehension
Today, given the globalization
of social and economic activities, a manager -- and all the more, an executive
-- has to be a Renaissance Man or Woman. He or she must be familiar not
only with a computer's architecture, articulation and applications, but with the
computer as an intellectual, social, and environmental system of global
apprehension of new and evolving realities -- of understanding the roles of
tools in a world under construction, a world of various cultures, thought
processes, behavioral patterns, social needs, history, languages, religion, and
politics. Today, managers and executives may be asked to have a solid grasp of
literature, demography, psychology, history, religion, politics, international
relations, in addition to computer literacy, financial wizardry, economic
theories, and the vagaries of the stock exchanges. They may be asked to prove
competence in writing a report in effective language -- and this without
stylistic, grammatical, or spelling mistakes (a Herculean task for many).
(continued on next page)
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