A TRAVELER'S NOTES

The emperor's baths outside Xi'an.

A tour of six universit ies left our correspondent impressed with China's commi tment to n e w technology.

By Jerome Johnston

~ OW LONG WILL IT BE before computers start to replace teachers in the U.S .?" asked the graduate stu- dent at South China Normal Univer- sity. I had just finished a lecture on

the state of educational computing in the U.S., stressing that although many computers now pop- ulate our schools, they were not supplanting teachers. If anything, their presence in classrooms was making the task of teaching more difficult.

My message was received with some increduli- ty. China has very few computers and very little software, but for several years, the Chinese have heard stories about the computer age in the U.S. They know computers are being used extensively to increase efficiency in business and industry, and many have come to believe that the U.S. is on the way to realizing similar efficiencies in edu- cation.

Recently, I visited six Chinese universities in

Jerome Johnston teaches and conducts research on learning from the media at the Institute for So- cial Research at the University o f Michigan in Ann Arbor.

five cities with two colleagues from the University of Michigan: Cho-Yee To, a Chinese scholar with the distinction of being professor of educational philosophy at both the University of Michigan and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Fred Goodman, an educational philosopher and an ex- pert in game-based learning. This year Cho-Yee received invitations from a number of Chinese universities to organize a series of lectures on edu- cational technology and educational research. The observations in this article stem from our visit.

Education in the New China

By American standards, China is a poor coun- try. Eighty percent of the population lives in rural areas and depends on small-scale agriculture for sustenance. Since the end of the Cultural Revolu- tion in the mid 1970s, the political leadership has been committed to a rapid expansion of the coun- try's economy. This means more industrialization and a greater orientation to world economies. These goals require a more educated populace; in a country of one billion people, this is not a sim- ple task. Not surprisingly, the Chinese are most

FEBRUARY-MARCH 1986 19

AECT President Bob Hale speaks to audiovisual professionals at Xi'an Jiaotong University

(below), and Executive Director Lyn Gubser and his wife, Diane, examine a lab at South China

Normal University.

interested in the potential of new technology to help in this effort.

Historically, the Chinese are deeply committed to education; teachers are among the most es- teemed people in the culture. Educators in the universities believe audiovisual methods are im- portant to accomplishing many instructional goals. All of the teacher-training institutions---called "normal" universities have large audiovisual de- partments. Here teachers are trained to use the standard audiovisual devices, such as movie pro- jectors, overheads, and slide projectors. They are taught to critique instructional films and to plan ways to build lessons around the films.

Educational television

All of the normal universities we visited have television-production equipment to create instruc- tional videotapes for use in the schools. The prev- alent model of instructional television is the one that dominated in the U.S. in the 1960s. The em- phasis is on videotaping good lecturers in their natural environment: standing behind a podium imparting knowledge verbally.

During one of my lectures, I described the for- mula for educational television that emerged in the U.S. in the 1970s. The audience was intrigued by several ideas. One was the formula for educational

television pioneered by the Children's Television Workshop that combines entertainment with in- struction to capture and hold the attention of the audience. Another idea was to use a team of sev- eral people with distinct expertise in the areas of film production, instructional design, and instruc- tional content to produce instructional products.

In Chinese practice, it is common for a single individual to be responsible for all aspects of an instructional product. Coupled with their tradition- al respect for age and authority, it is assumed that one person's expertise will be sufficient to pro- duce the best product. Not surprisingly, then, they were equally intrigued with the idea of using formative evaluation throughout the development process to refine the product in response to teach- er and student reactions to the evolving product.

China has a television university similar to the Open University in Great Britain, although Chi- na's is much younger. During the early evening hours, lecture courses in mathematics, science, and foreign language are broadcast, and students can take such courses for credit. But studying by television is difficult for many students, because there are relatively few television sets in China. In some of the major cities, as many as 70 percent of the households have televisions, but in the rural areas, where 80 percent of the population lives, there might be only one or two sets for the entire town.

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In China, it is common pract ice for an individual to be responsible for al l aspects of an instructional product.

Educational computing

Elementary and secondary In elementary and sec- ondary schools, China appears to be about where the U.S. was in 1981: widespread enthusiasm and a few exemplary programs, but few schools with articulated programs in computer literacy and very few teachers with adequate skills or access to mi- crocomputers. Few schools have computers right now, but Chinese officials hope to change this in a short period of time.

Progress in educational computing is tied to a two-tiered educational system in China. A small number of schools have been identified as "key" schools. Extra resources have been allocated to these schools, and only the best students attend.

Some key schools already have a computer room with 10-20 computers. The most common machine is the Apple II+; occasionally, there is the less expensive (and less useful) COMX--a computer that looks like the Timex Sinclair with built-in ROMs for BASIC. In these schools, an ar- ticulated computer-literacy program has just been established. Typically, the program is implement- ed in eighth and tenth grade. Most of these pro- grams appear to have been established in the fall of 1984.

As in the U.S., variation exists among comput- er-literacy curriculums from school to school. In one southern province (a province is equivalent to a state in the U.S.), the goal is to give students as much training as possible in BASIC. One key school currently provides two semesters of pro- gramming in grades 7-9, and officials there hope to expand this. They want students to be intro- duced to BASIC in an earlier grade and to com- plete several years of introductory and advanced programming before being graduated from second- ary school.

In this province, the people with whom we talked do not have a rationale for this heavy em- phasis on programming. Some seem to think the only way they can "catch up" with the West is to provide students with intensive training in a com- puter language. They have a similar approach to training students in foreign languages, such as En- glish. Like many in the U.S., those who are plan-

ning for computer training equate literacy with the ability to program machines.

Another province embraces a different ap- proach. The key school in Shanghai began its computer-literacy program last fall. In the eighth grade, students are introduced to computers with a semester-long course in Logo. They are given many opportunities to write Logo programs that generate interesting geometric patterns, although it is difficult to ascertain how much freedom the stu- dents are given to implement their own ideas, as Seymour Papert would encourage. I tried through my interpreter to ask this of one teacher. He told me he encourages his students to think of ways to reduce lengthy lists of instructions to more effi- cient procedures that accomplish the same goals.

In general, though, it appeared that the Logo curriculum was fairly structured (just like in the U.S.). But it was interesting to find that some teachers believe that instruction in Logo is the ap- propriate way to introduce children to computers. In the Shanghai school, the computer is intro- duced again in tenth grade when the students are given one semester of training in BASIC. In con- trast to the other province, it was this teacher's feeling thatmfor precollege students--two semes- ters of programming provided an adequate intro- duction to computers.

Training programs such as this are only one year old, and they are restricted to a few key schools. But throughout China, officials intend to spread computer literacy throughout the schools as fast as possible. In one province, the goal is to have computer-literacy programs in every key school by 1987. For China's other schools, the goal is to have those schools find their own re- sources to acquire computers and train their teachers. The key schools will receive consider- able resources to make their computer-literacy plans a reality; schools not designated as key schools must mobilize their own resources.

The nature of the programs the schools now are implementing depend to a large extent on the nor- mal universities in each province. The approach taken in Shanghai was clearly the result of the phi- losophy of staff members at East China Normal University. They had written a Chinese version of Logo in their own laboratory, and last fall, Papert

FEBRUARY-MARCH 1986 21

Amer ican educators must reach out to their Chinese counterparts by taking the init iat ive to go to China.

spoke to them about the uses of Logo in educa- tion.

The university also provides computing courses for teachers. Most teachers trained during the Cul- tural Revolution (which ended only a few years ago) are having to take additional courses for cer- tification, so there is ample opportunity to provide inservice training at the universities. Computers in college As in the U.S., few liberal arts or teacher-training colleges offer courses about computers for the general student body. But again, the exception: Beijing University recently installed a Honeywell mainframe computer with 40 terminals. All of the terminals were in use when we were there. (Interestingly, they follow "clean room" procedures in this computer instal- lation. In the computer areas, all users and visi- tors must remove their shoes and put on slip- pers---even to gain access to the terminal rooms.)

Computer department staff members were dis- appointed with their new computer, however. U.S. export restrictions had limited the manufac- turer to sending a four megabyte processor--hard- ly large enough to support multitask processing. We did not visit any of the technical universities; they might have much better equipment. Computers for language instruction A major task in Chinese education is teaching foreign languages. At present, there is a shortage of teachers, espe- cially teachers of English. Several universities that specialize in language instruction are experiment- ing with the use of computers for this purpose.

Recently, teachers interested in developing computer-based strategies for language training formed a network to promote their common inter- ests. Members come from 13 universities and in- stitutes of technology. At their first annual meet- ing last spring, they shared a wide variety of soft- ware, including computer-selected test items and the use of a database-management program as the core of a drill-and-practice routine.

Little commercial software exists in China. Computers are quite new, and the market for soft- ware has been nonexistent. Those interested in exploiting the computer have had to write their own programs in BASIC or FORTRAN. At one

leading university, a research assistant was writing a program to calculate elementary descriptive sta- tistics for use in analyzing educational data.

The market for Western technology

China presents a particular challenge to outsid- ers with commercial interests in computing. With a population of one billion and a widespread inter- est in technology, China appears to be a market with great potential. But at present, their economy is so weak the Chinese cannot afford to buy hard- ware or software at fair market prices.

Instead, many people depend on copies. IBM estimates that 150,000 imitation IBM PCs are in use in China; these knockoffs are made in Taiwan and elsewhere in the Pacific basin. Apple faces the same problem. In Hong Kong, an imitation Apple II+ sells for $200. In the same city, copies of all of the most popular U.S. software products are available. This might change. China recently has adopted a patent law, and it is about to pass a copyright law. Such laws have existed for some time in Hong Kong; but they are not strictly en- forced.

The market for Western educational ideas is more certain. Throughout China, we found great interest among university faculty members in de- veloping collaborative arrangements with the West. This was true in traditional areas of scholar- ship, but also in educational technology, where audiovisual departments would like to share ideas about teaching with technology.

Officials at one university hoped to find an American university with which they could ex- change instructional-television programs to help them teach English. Officials at another institution were looking to develop joint ventures in book publishing.

China clearly will have a strong world presence in the 21 st century. American educators have an opportunity to play a role in this development, but they must reach out to their Chinese counterparts. At present, there is too little money in China to send their people abroad; Americans must take the initiative and go to China. �9

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