Adult Education And The Adult Educator
Of The Future
Roger Hiemstra Professor of Adult Education, Syracuse
University
A Presentation for the Golden Anniversary Conference
on Graduate Study
October 17-18, 1986
The Ohio State University Columbus, OH
A version of this was displayed in the Proceedings for
that conference [now out of print]
Twenty-first Century Challenges
David L. Boggs, Editor
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Introduction
(NOTE: The presentation began
with a simulation of how a future adult educator might begin his or her day.)
This is the year 1996, the
place is Syracuse, NY, in the university office of Dr. Roger Hiemstra, doctor
of facilitation and the place could also be Roger’s office in his home, but
today he is leading an on-campus seminar for doctoral students making their
annual trek to campus to comply with the remaining elements of the antiquated
residency requirement. Yesterday he taught a course on planning from his home
via 3D, two-way interactive video. Roger is just entering the office to start
the day and let's turn on the room size holographic monitor to peek in on Roger
for awhile.
(NOTE: Roger then placed a
call to the Syracuse University campus computer and demonstrated how electronic
mail and an interactive search of library resources can be carried out.)
I see my task to talk about
what the future might be like and that future is here right now for me to be
able to do the sort of thing I just simulated. An interesting thing about this
equipment is that you noted a modem I carry around with me and a phone just in
case one is not available that fits the cradle modem, this 64K lap computer,
and the little thermo printer which is very light weight. Thus, they are all
portable and
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battery operated. One year
ago I had a semester's leave and spent an amount of time in the National
Archives. I was able to bring all of this equipment in. The National Archives
has people doing this all the time. The only thing they would not let me do is
to hook it up to an electrical outlet.
I do not have a disk drive
for this but I do have a microcassette recorder and I save all my files on
tape. With 64K I can type five to six hours then simply dump a file onto
cassette tape and run off a hard copy with this printer, clean out my memory,
and then go back and operate the rest of the day. All of this equipment even
fits into one carrying case. I also have a rechargeable battery to operate the
whole system. Although this sounds futuristic in some respects, it is not. I hope
you will appreciate a little of this current reality to focus your attention on
my remaining comments about the future.
The Kellogg Project
You are the very first group
to which I am pleased to make an announcement about a futuristic project we have
received funding for at Syracuse University. We are the latest recipient in a
number of grants the Kellogg Foundation has been making in the field of adult
education. We have received 3.7 million dollars over the next four years. We
received an additional million and a half dollars from my university and we are
going to raise another 2.2 million dollars over the next few years through our
University's capital campaign to provide a continuation for this project after
the initial four years. So it is quite an investment.
Let me say a little about
optical scanning, the technological heart of this project. There are three
techniques in the optical scanning game. One is video disk--this one we will
not be utilizing. It has a lot of
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potential for the future in
terms of getting motion transcribed electronically. The second one you may be
more familiar with is the Kurzweil optical scanner.
It is digital based scanning. This form uses a laser light that scans a sheet
of paper lying on a glass plate; the laser light moves across the lines,
converts the information into a digital code, and stores it on some medium. The
ERIC system is converting all of this material into CD ROMs (Compact discs read
only memory) using similar technology. The machine we have on campus converts
the material to a floppy disk: we then take the floppy disk information and
transfer it to the mainframe in terms of data files. The third technique is
known as Optical Image Scanning; this technology involves placing information
on larger disks with the same kind of principle only the scanning is much more
sophisticated in that exact images of what is on a page are stored. I will talk
about this in greater detail later.
We will use this latter
technology primarily and will purchase a scanner with at least three work
stations. You scan the material [archival material related to adult education]
and put it into a temporary storage format. Then someone trained with an
archival or information transfer background looks at it with a high resolution
monitor. Then they can do coding, correcting, or adding to depending on the
procedures and policies we establish. We plan to start the scanning in January
or February. Right now we are in the process of determining our policy and
procedures on how we are going to identify material for later retrieval. From
the coding stage it is transferred to optical disk storage. Once it is in the
optical disk storage, the larger disk, it goes into either an on-line disk
drive or a "Juke box." It gets its name because it operates like a
juke box in that a series of optical disks are lined up in the box or machine
(up to forty optical disks). Each disk eventually will be able to hold more
than 100,000 pages. So we can have
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more than four million pages
in this juke box. Then when we want to retrieve the information, a mechanical
or robotic arm picks up a disk and puts it on 1ine in less than 20 seconds.
On-line drives take up more room, but the retrieval time is much quicker, less
than two seconds.
We have the equivalent of
three football field lengths worth of materia1 (about 950 linear feet). Whether
or not all of this will get in the system depends upon the right people
analyzing all the material to determine its value to the field because no one
has done that. We think there is some duplication, although we have so much
room that we can afford to be sloppier about this than with some other type of
technology. It is much easier to scan it, look at it later on, and then find
out if you don't want it rather than make all the decisions ahead of time.
With optical scanning each
image is actually broken down into 200-400 dots per square inch. That is the
density you can get with this technology. A newspaper, for example, is around
120 dots per square inch. So optical scanning produces true image-based
storage. That is the most interesting part of this technology, especially for
an historian who is interested in original documents; you can almost have the
original document in a reproduced copy or on the screen--handwriting, figures,
photographs--with that kind of resolution you can do so much with it.
Here are some of the
advantages of this technology. An image or picture can be stored so that
original documents with handwriting in the margin which might be the most
important thing now becomes very possible. In four to five years we are hoping
that technology will allow scholars anywhere to access such data through an
electronic network and, if you, as a scholar have a high-resolution monitor or
printer, it is as if you had the original piece in front of you. No one knows
how long its storage life is, but we do know there is very little wear on these
disks with
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frequent use, plus we will
make back-up copies. Insurance companies and banks have been using optical
disks fairly extensively for record keeping purposes. The Smithsonian and the
Library of Congress have begun to experiment with this in terms of information
retrieval. We believe we are the first university to utilize this technology in
the way I am going to be describing to you.
Another advantage is the fact
that there is no limitation to the number of retrieval codes that can be used.
Either a scholar doing the initial assessment can write in these codes or you
as the researcher looking at the piece can write your own codes and build up
your own data base and coding system. Of course the thing our library is
excited about is that it goes a long way to eliminate archival storage
problems. Right now about one-third of our material is housed in the main
library. About two-thirds is housed in another storage building because of lack
of space. If you want something in the storage location you might have to wait
up to two days before it is available in the main library.
As I said, earlier, another
advantage is that millions of pages can be searched for retrieval purposes in a
very short period of time. The most intriguing thing for me is that the work
stations have split screen and interactive capability built into an examination
of such information. You can use the CRT to look at this material and split it
into several windows; thus, you can put on the screen a document that has
writing on both sides and look at it all at the same time. It is also
interactive in that you can take any one of these windows and work with them in
terms of word processing. The only limit being the software you have to do
this. The disks can be delivered and used anywhere. This is one of the things
we also are going to be studying: how to make the material most accessible to
people away from Syracuse. Some of the access will be done
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electronically as noted
above, and some information will be made available like ERIC has done within CD
ROMs. We also will be able to interface this optical scanning technology with
our mainframe computer. This will allow for sophisticated data analysis with
other types of software.
A major focus of the project
is to have a two-track research effort taking place. We are searching now for
two new professors. One professor will focus on historical research for adult
education and the other one will focus research in the area of adult education
resources and technology. We believe having these two people on our adult
education staff will allow us to promote lots of new research. My own view is
that both of those areas are badly in need of research for the sake of our
field. That is why we picked out these two particular areas; however, they seem
to go hand-in-hand with what we are trying to do with this project. We hope to
do our job well over the next few years so that you will see some brand new
research emphases being stimulated.
Now to our project
objectives. There are three major components. I've covered one component, the
dissemination of resources in terms of historical and technological research.
We also have a fair amount of money in the budget for new acquisitions, to
bolster both areas. We know that once we get into an analysis of what we have
we are going to find some gaps, so we will make an acquisition effort over the
next four years to find materials and fill in such gaps. We have fairly
complete collect ions for severa1 organizations that are no longer in
existence--AAAE, CSLEA, AEA, etc. We also have begun to receive papers from
leaders in the field or the promise that we will have these materials,
including such people as Malcolm Knowles and Cyril Houle. We think that once we
start to receive these materials it will help to fill in the gaps. The other
activity related to this component that may be
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interesting to many of you is
our visiting scholars program. We are going to be awarding postdoctoral awards,
some doctoral dissertation awards on a competition basis, and some short term
grants for those who have a period of time and they want to come to Syracuse
University and study.
Another component has to do
with an interactive research capability. We are going to have a series of
on-campus user stations. At least three that we know of now where people coming
on campus can have access to the optically stored material. Another thing we
are going to do which has much potential is to develop some sophisticated
interactive software. We have a group of scholars on campus who are specialists
in the fifth generation of computers notion. For example, one of the developers
of LOGLISP was J. R. Robinson at Syracuse University. Two of his colleagues, E.
Sibert and A. Shelly, utilized LOGLISP, a symbolic
interaction software programming language and developed a brand new qualitative
analysis tool called QUALOG. QUALOG allows for the use of the mainframe
computer to do data analysis on extensive amounts of qualitative data. Using that
same kind of technology, Sibert and Shelly for the
next three years will help us develop new software to analyze large amounts of
data. This, in essence, will be a document analysis program. So if you can
visualize 950 linear feet of material to be scanned and put into our system, a
researcher coming in and using our interactive software, at least
theoretically, will be able to examin the entire
collection and, for example, look for every instance in which the term
"adult literacy" was. Now that term may be so broad that it would
have to be refined. But, the researcher will be able to look through all of the
optical disks very, very quickly. When you begin to think about what that does
for information retrieval, it boggles the mind. Especially when you think
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that several linear square
feet of material on an optical disk can be carried in my hands easily.
Another aspect of this second
component that I am most excited about for us, is the development of a network
for adult educators--AEDNET, an Adult Education Electronic Network. We have
already hired the computer specia1ist who is going to be putting that into
place. We will be announcing information about it over the next few months.
About a year from now we hope to have AEDNET up and running so that any adult
educator in North America and eventually beyond can utilize it. We don't have
the whole thing designed yet and don't know what the costs are going to be, but
we will try to keep the user rates low. AEDNET will be for adult educators to use
if they want to do so as a gateway for networking, for electronic mail, for
electronic conferencing and even for electronic publishing. Right now we can go
through our mainframe computer directly into our printing service where they
typeset material and print it out. We hope that service will be available. The
last use of AEDNET, and perhaps the most important one, is to have electronic
access to the optically scanned materials. We don't know if all of the
objectives will be achieved exactly as we have originally planned, and we don't
know how long it's going to take us, but our best guess is that within four
years we are going to have most of the electronic system in place. Thus,
someone at The Ohio State University can go through the network to Syracuse University
and get hold of these materials or use us as a gateway to go elsewhere. We hope
this can be possible anywhere in the world.
Another thing we believe is
possible through existing networks, and we hope to make this available through
AEDNET, is written text exchange. So if you have written a report that you want
to share with colleagues in California, you send it to them. Of if you are
co-authoring a chapter or
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article with someone in
another location, you exchange these materials.
We also are going to develop
a quarterly newsletter. We will start out disseminating it through the U. S.
postal service but eventually it will be disseminated through AEDNET. We know
this is possible. I am editor of the Adult
Education Quarterly and already we are receiving some of our reviews
electronically. It is cutting down the review process by 2-3 weeks. We hope
next year to be able to receive articles electronically and put them into the
scanning network so we can do our own editing on-line rather than doing our
editing by pencil. These are some of the futuristic dreams that are possible.
We believe they are going to happen and Kellogg believes they are going to
happen.
Our third component has to do
with a series of educational activities. For example, we are going to have one
international conference and two symposia over the next four years; some of you
may want to attend. We are going to be developing an independent study master's
degree program that combines adult education and information technology into
one degree. We also will be developing training and orientation programs
related to the other two components.
What about a future beyond
the four years. One feature I am most intrigued about is portable downloading
capability for Third World users. We are not that far away from having the
ability to go to a Third World country and at a relatively reasonable cost,
less than two thousand dollars, install a read station, a small satellite dish,
a television monitor, and a key board, all operated by batteries. Think about
the infrastructure problems in many countries today--poor roads, undependable
telephones, etc. We think we can leap across such limitations with this
technology. That's very exciting to me.
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Another future that is very
intriguing to me is a language translation board. Now this blows your mind.
Right now we are working only with English language material. In a few short
years language translation problems will be a moot issue because you can take
English material, send it out electronically, download it through a translator
card, and read it in whatever language you speak. The reverse of that is true,
too.
Another future innovation is
the development of an expert system that would manage all of our activities
automatically. Now there are obviously inherent dangers with that. Taking the
people out of a system creates new policy issues, but we think it's going to be
possible to automate a lot of our activities with expert systems that in fact
learn as they are going.
The other thing I think we
are going to do after the four years is to begin to organize or look for new
archival stuff in specialized ways. For example, literacy, special education
for adults, and gerontology are some of the areas of specialization we could
develop.
Future Roles for Adult Educators
These are some of the new
roles I see emerging for adult educators. One is an information counseling role
in terms of helping others utilize information. For example, the project is
going to make so much information available to people and it is going to be so
much easier to access such information that there will be a real need to
counsel and work with people on how to make the best use of such knowledge.
Another role is simply facilitating the use of such electronic material. I am
talking about an overload or future shock of information, including information
that will change quickly, and adult educators will have to help learners change
behaviors just to keep up. I think we are going to have a lot more
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individual learning because
of this technology and someone is going to have to help people adapt to that.
Another future role has to do
with the development of new administrative techniques in adult education. One
of the things we are going to attempt to do in our project, for example, is to
model the very best in the use of computers to run our project. So we are going
to build some expert systems into our project that will allow us to demonstrate
to others how we are doing it. We also are creating an electronic local area
network to assist in our administration and our communication. A local area
network is an internal network so that all of our people will be connected
electronically. The printers, computers, the disk drives, also are all connected.
Thus, it becomes relatively easy to communicate with each other either in or
out of the building.
I want to say a little about
the future of graduate study in adult education. At Syracuse University we are
enrolling increasingly younger graduate students including some that come
straight out of undergraduate programs. This will no doubt happen throughout
the country. The growth in adult education also is likely to continue. At
Syracuse University in six years we have gone from 25 students to 125 students
in adult education; we have programs in three different campus locations. We
have gone from one full-time person to four full-time people and should be at
seven full-time faculty by September, 1987. We also have experienced an
increase in women and minority students. We set up one program in Buffalo, New
York, and 80% of our students were minorities and women. We have weekend
programs at three different sites and they have been very successful for us.
When you talk about this from a marketing viewpoint, the marketing of graduate
weekend and other non-traditional formats are likely future success areas. You
must be able to find faculty who are
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willing to teach on weekends,
but there are students there. We started a new program this year in a
relatively small community (Watertown, New York). Our university extension
people said don't go there with a program as you are not going to get any
students. However, we had done our own marketing research and had 25 people
enrolled right away.
This independent study
program we are going to develop is another form of graduate study, but using
self-directed learning formats. We actually use self-directed learning
extensively in our graduate program. We also are seeing at Syracuse University
a relaxation of some of the formal requirements. For example, we have finally
relaxed our more formal residency programs for our EdD
students. This hasn't happened yet for our PhD students, but that will come
next. We were able to convince faculty outside of Adult Education that our
part-time adult students can develop for themselves a very viable residency
program through self-directed, contracting techniques.
One of the things we are
working on with our students is to increase their professional writing skills.
We have instituted a professional writing course. We ask many students to go
through a writing center in our building and also encourage students to get
published before they finish their graduate program.
We also are working to
increase the research skills of students. This is one we have had to fight all
the way. Many of our EdD students did not want
additional research courses and we convinced them that today, regardless of the
degree, advanced research skill is needed. So we have increased the general
requirement by one course and encourage additional skill building in terms of
using computers. We also encourage all our doctoral students to get a PC the
moment they get into our program. We believe they have to be computer literate
today. We also try to help our
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students become very familiar
with the mainframe and the programs that are available there.
Thank you for letting me talk
and dream about the future. Actually, much of what I described is the very near
future and we must keep up with such change if we are going to be viable adult
education professionals.
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