This article is an attempt to summarize some of the thoughts and experiences I have made in connection with interactive video during my stay in the United States in 1988. I have been acquainted with the medium since 1983, and I have, for the last two years, been working on a project utilizing interactive video in film education, a project I hope to have finished in 1990.
I have chosen to underline some of the more critical aspects, especially those relating to economy and future technological changes in the not-so-rapidly-growing world of interactive video, since this is a field that very often is over-looked by enthusiastic converts to a new and exciting medium. This is not done in order to discourage further activity in the field, but it should be pointed out that there may be a considerable discrepancy in the cost of interactive video technology compared to what it actually delivers.
The "overview" given below has some clear limitations, as will become apparent: my first-hand experiences are from the United States, Great Britain and Norway, and I will refrain from commenting on activities I have only read about from France, Germany, Denmark and other EC countries. I would, however, be very surprised to find a development there that would contradict the general trends I have outlined.
The term "interactive video" is used to describe any combination of a computer and a video player, whether used for educational purposes or as a part of marketing or public services. In recent years, however, the term has increasingly been used as a synonym for interactive systems based upon the use of a laser videodisc player.
The laser videodisc player ("laser" is used in order to mark the difference in technology from earlier videodisc systems based upon mechanic or electronic signal reproduction) is an audiovisual medium that has been available for more than 10 years. Unlike its younger relative, the CD-player, the laser videodisc (LVD) has not become the commercial success originally hoped for, a fact that I will attempt to set in perspective in this article.
Storage of visual material on disc actually dates back to the infancy of television, when John Logie Baird used a disc system called "Phonovision" to provide reference images for his 30-line definition television. In the 1970's RCA attempted to introduce a videodisc system, Selectravision, based on the capacitance difference principle. This implies that the audiovisual information is stored on the disc in a way that allows a "stylus" that actually is an electrode to read and reproduce signals through variance of electric charge.
Later this technique was refined and carried further by JVC in Japan, and is still in use as VHD-discs in Great Britain.
In spite of large scale marketing and the fact that RCA had secured an impressive number of feature films available for their system, the Selectravision experiment was a dismal failure. This did not prevent MCA and Philips to initiate a cooperation towards a new videodisc system based on laser technology. The analog video signal was modulated and registered as pits of various sizes according to the modulation curves, these pits were given a protective cover of glass and read by a laser beam. The resulting product was introduced in 1982 as LaserVision and soon proved to be much more reliable and effective than its capacitance predecessor.
The LaserVision system was introduced, like the Selectravision system, as a consumer-oriented product for mass consumption of feature films. However, the disc system coincided with the introduction of the VHS and Beta video cassette formats and quickly lost in this competition. This failure of the videodisc to win a market position originally hoped for is reflected in the fact that the cost level of laser disc products has been constant since its introduction. In spite of its relative failure as a mass consumer medium, the possibilities that the laserdisc system had to offer for the concept of interactive video were quickly appreciated, and the format is now totally dominating in this field.
The principle of interactive video did not originate with the laserdisc player. From the "childhood" of interactive video we find several examples of interactive presentation units based on video cassette players in the U-matic, Beta- or VHS format. The major drawback with these tape-based machines is the long search and access time for the predefined video sequences. In addition to this, the video cassette machines are unable to search and display down to single frame level. In contrast we have the laserdisc player's ability to access any frame on a disc containing 30 minutes of video within 3 seconds, which makes it ideal for interactive video purposes. This is the background for the present synonymous use of interactive video for laserdisc presentation.
An interactive video presentation contains two main components: a prerecorded videodisc and a control program. The control program usually resides in a personal computer, but there are also existing presentation systems where larger computers are accessed through terminals. In some cases the control programs are included in the videodisc players through ROM cartridges that are inserted directly into a slot in the player.
To utilize the full interactive presentation capability of the videodisc system, it is necessary that the videodisc in question is in the CAV format (CAV = constant angular velocity), since this format implies that each video frame occupies one track on the disc and thus allows for immediate adressability. The videodisc may contain continuous video, single images, or a combination of these in addition to a large amount of digital data. A single side will allow registration of 54,000 single visual frames or approximately 30 minutes of continuous video.
The control program is usually created through an existing authoring system (or authoring language), usually in the form of commercially available software. These software products contain modules for the construction of program sequences based on predefined commands for search, definition and play routines for video sequences. Most authoring systems also contain graphic software and possibilities to supplement the information presented on the videodisc with text and graphics from external sources.
The technological principles behind laserdisc-based interactive video have remained relatively unaltered during the last five years, a fact that is surprising when compared to the rapid development the personal computer has undergone in the same period. This has cast a shadow of doubt over the numerous enthusiastic proclamations in the last decade about the definitive and immediate breakthrough for interactive video in the educational field. It is an undeniable fact that, in spite of the large number of positive reports testifying to the effectiveness of interactive video as an educational tool, the medium has not really "taken off" yet. It has remained in the field of "promising but over-priced equipment", and, as I hope to point out later in this paper, is in danger of becoming obsolete before its potential has been fully realized.
As for the reasons for this lack of development, some of them have been hinted at above. The keyword is economy, where the laserdisc has been caught in a vicious circle: the product has so far been unable to cross the threshold between institution-oriented and consumer-oriented technology. This threshold was successfully crossed by the VCR and PC products in the early eighties, a fact that made a fruitful, and most of all, widespread use of these media possible. As long as the existing market for interactive video products is geared towards the needs of large, affluent corporations, the cost level will remain high, and the diffusion of the medium limited. I got a very clear indication of this after having toured the exhibition at the "Tenth (!) Annual Conference on Interactive Videodisc in Education and Training" in Washington D.C. in August 1988. There seemed to be a major emphasis on integrated packages of hardware and software with price tags in five digits (USD). The "independent" authoring systems that were being offered were generally also in a price class prohibitive for those wanting to design interactive video courses on a moderate budget. One of the few exceptions was the Iconauthor authoring system, which I shall return to.
Today we can distinguish between three main areas where interactive video has been applied: trade/industry, military and public education.
1) Trade and industry
Without further ado it may be safely stated that to the extent that interactive video has been utilized, the private industry and trade sector has been dominant. Even here, the rate of development has been slower than expected and hoped for, especially in Europe, but during the last few years the technology seems to have gained a foothold in American private and corporate enterprise. These applications again seem to fall into two categories: those of personnel training and those of marketing and product presentation.
a) Personnel training
Use of interactive video has been made in several large American and British corporations, and in the U.S.A. we find a number of firms specializing in interactive video delivery systems for personnel training. Among the projects presented at the Washington conference, there were presentations of programs for teller training at The Chase Manhattan Bank, and a large scale training program at AT&T bearing witness to the fact that these corporations have found interactive video as an effective and, most importantly, a cost-saving device. The cost-saving factor was strongly emphasized in a paper by Steve Bainbridge, director of marketing and customer support at Wilson Learning Corporation at the SALT conference on interactive delivery systems in Orlando, Florida, February 1988, where he made a comparison between cost levels for a course in management skill development for 100 managers. He maintained that a solution based on the installation of interactive video stations would represent a saving of up to 60% compared to traditional training methods. (Bainbridge 1988).
Obviously, arguments of this kind will find resonance in corporations with sizable personnel training budgets, and it is no coincidence that existing companies in interactive video design have geared their presentations towards this kind of market. The usual procedure seems to be that the corporation or company in question engages a consultant firm to sketch an interactive solution and then proceed to build an integrated hardware/software package to cover the specific needs at hand.
Whereas the early emphasis in interactive video personnel training courses was in the field of simple job situation simulations, we today also find a tendency to try out interactive video as an educational tool in the training of customer and service functions, as is the case with the Chase Manhattan Bank Teller Training System.
The educational methods do not differ much whether the aim is the acquisition of certain mechanical job skills or ability to cope with a customer. The interactive video programs are usually constructed around a series of "do's and don'ts" where the positive and negative values are clearly defined and indisputable and the main pedagogical question is how to minimize effective learning time.
b) Marketing and product presentation
The other main area where interactive video has found use within private enterprise has been in the area of marketing and product information. An early experiment of this kind was made in 1982 in Britain by the Mothercare retail chain and proved to be very successful. Similar experiences were made in the United States and interactive video information kiosks now have started to show up in the American shopping malls, providing potential customers with instant fashion shows as well as step-by-step instructions for wallpapering.
Here, as in personnel training, the medium seems most attractive to corporations with large marketing budgets, as it requires a sizable investment in hardware/software solutions. A field where interactive video seems to be of special interest is within the travel industry, where interactive video presentations of various travel destinations have been coupled with visual information on lodging alternatives, utilizing the "simulated travel" technique to give the potential customer a "tour" of various hotels. The presentation system is connected with a database, allowing for immediate booking. In these days, a similar tourist-oriented laserdisc presentation has been produced and financed by public and private tourist interests in Møre og Romsdal, Norway.
2. Military
The military contingent makes an easily identifiable and strongly marked presence during American interactive video conferences and exhibitions. It also marks the armed forces as a major field of experimentation and utilization for interactive video, and its use here is at least as diversified as in the private sector.
Interactive video is used in connection with combat training (e.g. simulation programs for tank crews), in technical training (e.g. ICBM maintenance), in medical education as well as in administrative functions and as a general educational tool in the American armed forces. Very often these projects are carried out in cooperation with private and corporate industry, and the armed forces are major investors in the commercial development of interactive hardware and software.
During the last years the U.S. Army has decided to implement a commercial interactive systems package, EIDS (Electronic Information Delivery System), as the standard for future use of interactive video in the Army, and similar attempts at standardization can also be found in other military uses of interactive video. The hierarchical organisation structure of the armed forces definitely favours the kind of large-scale investments needed to make interactive video an effective educational tool.
3. Education
a) In the United States
My main personal interest is, for obvious reasons, how interactive video has been functioning in public education, primarily at university level. Since its inception, interactive video has presented a challenge to more traditional instruction methods at the academic level. We find again that American universities have been more quick to embrace this technology than their European counterparts. Indeed, some of the pioneer work that helped define the possiblities of interactive video, like the MIT Media Lab's "Aspen Movie Map" (1982), was conceived and developed at American universities. A central position in the development of the medium is maintained by the University of Nebraska, where the annual interactive video conferences and seminars have a great importance for the interactive video industry as a whole.
In spite of the fact that there is an enormously differentiated activity in research projects in interactive video at American universities, this activity primarily takes the form of general experimentation with a new medium, rather than being used in the form of practical applications. Although this seems to be in accord with the notion of the university's role in research and development, it is, nevertheless, a paradox that a medium with such great educational potential is nearly nonexistent in the teaching of standard university courses.
The fact is that with the exception of the institutions that have been able to secure external grants and projects for interactive video, further development towards integration of interactive video technology in existing curriculae is hindered by sheer lack of money. This is closely connected with the cost level within the existing interactive video industry, which appears prohibitive for a full realization of its general educational potential. When it comes to interactive video, public education plays the role of the poor relative, depending on handouts from richer relatives in the corporate world.
This having been said, it is necessary to point out the positive aspects of the various experiments being conducted in the field of interactive video at American universities. In contrast to the more narrowly utilitarian scope of the industrial use of the medium, research in interactive video at the universities explores fields that fall outside of the immediate profitability, and thus is a central factor in making interactive video a far more accessible medium than so far has been the case.
I have been able to register interesting interactive video projects at American universities in fields as diverse as physics and mathemathics instruction, practical law, ornithology, history, music history, theatre history and film history and analysis. Of special importance here is the work in the field of the humane sciences, since this is an area that falls clearly outside of the profit-oriented activity of the existing interactive video industry. In addition to this, the introduction of hyperconcepts like the Macintosh HyperCard has opened up for further exploration of the possibilities of interactive video based on existing authoring software and as a part of the general development of HyperCard "stackware" in the U.S. educational system.
These developments all point in the direction of a possible breakthrough in terms of cost level, a prophecy that admittedly has been repeated over the last five years, but now would need to be fulfilled if the interactive laserdisc is to become a usable educational tool before being overtaken by the next generation of technology.
b) Great Britain: The Open University
Europe, in spite of sporadic activity in the field, does not seem to account for any major quantitative contribution to the development of interactive video. However, there are noteworthy exceptions, of which I would like to draw special attention to the activities in this field at the Open University in Great Britain. This institution plays an important role in British adult education, providing education at university level by correspondence and through cooperation with the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Due to the fact that audiovisual presentation has long been an integrated part of the curriculum, the Open University quickly embraced interactive video technology as an educational tool. Since the students usually only were free to attend intensive summer courses, these courses were a natural testing ground for the efficiency of interactive video, and as early as 1981 the institution started experimenting with the medium. (Laurillard 1983).
Initially the experiments were conducted using VCR technology, a natural choice at that time, but in 1984 the Open University produced a videodisc that won acclaim in the interactive video industry as well as in the educational world: The Teddy Bears' Disc.
This disc was based on available dramatized video material for a course in materials technology: a producer of teddy bears takes a submanufacturer to court, claiming that faulty parts has made the teddy bears lose their glass eyes. During the mock court case, the student is presented with facts that should enable her, with background in the newly acquired knowledge in metallurgy and materials technology, to decide what the cause of the malfunctioning eyes is.
"The Teddy Bear Disc" holds an interest well beyond the immediate success of the concept for the course. It also was the material for an evaluation study by Diana M. Laurillard, where several of the advantages and drawbacks in the use of interactive videodisc were pointed out, offering useful advice for the interactive video design of future applications. (Laurillard 1984a, 1984b, 1987.)
The most famous example of interactive video from the British Isles is, of course, The Domesday "Machine", an interactive video program that acts as an impressive showcase for the many possibilities this medium has to offer.
This interactive video program is constructed as an update, after 900 years, of William the Conqueror's Domesday Book of 1086, where the conqueror surveyed his conquest. Initiated by BBC, more than 15,000 British elementary schools provided 150,000 pages of text and 9,000 images covering England and Scotland from county down to street level. In addition to this, an interactive video "gallery" made use of the simulated travel technique to let the user experience various typical environments in 1986 and the BBC Archives provided 30 minutes of live video of central events in post-war Britain.
The program was sold as a bundled hardware/software package at a symbolic price compared to production costs. Still, this symbolic price was said to be too high for the product to be put into general use at the elementary school level. The BBC unit later made a follow-up for the same system with the Ecodisc program, where interactive video techniques were used to present a "hands-on" course in wildlife conservation.
When compared to the development of interactive video in the United States, the impression is that public and educational use of the medium is relatively better developed in Britain, while use in the private sector seems to be more widespread in the United States.
3) Norway: Modest attempts from the sideline
The economic limitations represented by today's interactive video technology is felt even more strongly in a small market like the Norwegian. Although the medium has been known and experimented with during the last six years and there have been several attempts to implement the technology in trade and industry, potential buyers have approached the medium with caution. Here, as in other countries, "the immediate breakthrough" has been announced with regular intervals, but in spite of a few industrial appliances and projects for the tourist industry, like the "Sunnmøre" disc mentioned above, the Norwegian commercial attitude to interactive video seems to be that of a mildly interested view from the sideline.
Interest has also been registered in the field of education, where the Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities (NCCH – NAVFs edb-senter for humanistisk forskning) for several years has functioned as a resource center also for interactive video. Videodisc players are, however, few and far between at Norwegian universities and colleges and nonexistent at lower educational levels.
At the moment there are videodisc projects at the University of Bergen (language teaching) and my own project at the University of Trondheim concerning the use of interactive video in film and video instruction. In addition to this, the Stord Teachers' College is involved in a Nordic cooperation (Norden 90). At NCCH a senior research fellow is working on a two year grant to develop interactive video CALL applications for Italian.
So far the emphasis in this attempt at giving an overview of the status of interactive video has been on economic factors and the fact that these to some extent have slowed down the rate at which interactive video has proceeded. However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that interactive video represents an important step forward in educational technology, and it is possible to relate to this technology without becoming paralyzed by the economic reality.
I shall therefore try to point out some of the main features of interactive technology today and look at some of the future developments we can expect in this field.
1) Hardware
a) Videodisc players
Laser videodisc players are virtually unchanged over the last five years. In Europe Philips has been dominating the market, while Pioneer seems to play a similar role in the United States. The latter company has introduced a series of moderately priced players aimed at the consumer market, with such features as single frame display in the CLV mode, but since these players are manufactured without communication ports, they are uninteresting in an interactive video context.
Sony seems to have taken an interest in promoting interactive video further, and a very interesting development is represented by the company's new multisystem player. The incompatibility between the American NTSC television standard and the European PAL and SECAM systems has for a long time prohibited the exchange of programs and videodiscs across the Atlantic. The multisystem player makes such exchange possible and widens the amount of accessible courseware.
For my own project, this means that I shall be able to make use of the Los Angeles based Voyager Company's series of "annotated" motion picture classics. The Voyager classics library consists of some 40 titles, among these are CAV versions of films like "Rashomon", "The 7th Seal", "Breathless", "The Graduate" and "Citizen Kane". The second soundtrack of these films contains a running commentary written and read by a film historian and the fourth side of the two discs contains various visual material relevant to the film and its history.
In addition, Sony also offers a complete interactive video unit comprising a player and an IBM-compatible personal computer.
An interesting improvement on player utilization is the use of multiple players within the same authoring system. The MIT Media Lab has successfully managed to interconnect six laserdisc players running under the same authoring system. This system has been used by Gloriana Davenport for "instant editing" of documentary material, and points to an exciting use of "life-time" simulation.
b) Display
The dominating display concept in interactive video is the one-screen display format. This implies that data and video information is displayed on the same screen through a video overlay interface. The main argument for this is the sheer convenience of having one screen instead of two to concentrate on. Most interactive hardware/software packages are based on a one-screen solution and the authoring software available is also focused on this need.
Another trend seems to be the rising popularity of direct communication with the screen in the form of "touch screen" systems, like the IBM Infowindow display, or by light pen. The reason for this is mainly to react to a part of the public that seems to be hesitant to use keyboards, and feels more comfortable with the illusion of direct access that these systems give. This applies especially to customer-oriented activities like interactive video product information.
The two-screen display is still in existence, although it usually denotes a user with an insufficient budget for a one-screen solution. In the rapidly growing Macintosh/interactive video environment, the two screen solution is still a necessity, due to the problems of mixing the Mac display and video signals. It is rumoured that steps toward one-screen interactive video presentations on the Macintosh have been taken, but in the meantime, those who want to use the Macintosh HyperCard as authoring software will have to be content with separate screens for video and data.
c) Future hardware development
"The Future is Now" – in the case of interactive video, this phrase seems appropriate and it may be one of the reasons that prospective purchasers of interactive video systems after seven years still seem to be a little wary of the future of the LaserVision standard. The development of optical storage disks for the standard PC – the CD-ROM, with a storage capacity of 500 megabytes – has raised the question of whether the analog laserdisc is becoming obsolete.
At the bottom of this uncertainty lies the question of successful digitalization of the video signal. With the help of modern VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) technology it has become possible to store the enormous amount of digital data continuous video requires. Even if this technological problem has been, at least theoretically, solved, the demonstrations of digitalized video I have seen so far have done nothing to convince me that the comparatively superior image quality of the Laser Videodisc will be surpassed within the next five years.
However, it seems that forces within the interactive video and the video industry seem intent on pressing forward with this project, as the Philips/Sony standard of CD-I (Compact Disc-Interactive, also referred to as the High Sierra Standard of 1986), bears witness to. This standard is mainly aimed at text and graphics display, but does allow live video presentation on a part of the screen. If this concept is developed further, together with the concept of "writeable" optical discs, we obviously will have a medium that will prove superior to the Laser Videodisc as an image source for interactive video.
Another development that points in the direction of the demise of the Laser Videodisc, is the emergence of the commercially oriented CD-V format, mentioned above. The CD-V (CompactDisc-Video) of Sony bears witness to the seemingly unshakable belief by the electronics manufacturers that sooner or later the public will want to purchase motion pictures on disc. This standard, which is incompatible with the Laser Videodisc system, will play ordinary music CD's and CD singles, in addition to 12 inch analog videodiscs. The retail price will be at consumer level (i.e. 1/3 of today's "industrial" LVD-players) and it is also to be expected that the videodiscs will be sold at a considerably cheaper price than the present CLV-mode laserdiscs that today represent the consumer-oriented low end of the videodisc output.
This means that the Laser Videodisc system is crowded from two sides. The further development of the CD-I may take away the CAV format interactive video market, and the CD-V will make the CLV format unable to compete on the commercial market. Since the manufacturers of these new products (Sony and Philips) also are engaged in the Laser Videodisc format, it is not very difficult to read the signals ...
2) Software
As mentioned above, one of the main characteristics of the authoring software available for interactive video has been a prohibitive price for the small-time operator in the field. Even products that seem to aim at smaller producers, like the Quest system, is still priced at a very high level.
An exception to this rule is the Iconauthor authoring system, which was introduced at a price of US $499 and delivers a very good performance at that. This may be one of the reasons for an immediate popularity that has made the program one of the authoring systems most often referred to among practitioners and experimentators in the field of interactive video.
Iconauthor runs under the MicroSoft Windows environment, a wise decision, given the popularity enjoyed by Windows lately. Iconauthor relies on a "top-down" authoring principle that accounts for several drawbacks for larger applications (the system does not allow any "GOTO" functions), but with its clearly defined module structure it is ideal for small to medium-size applications.
One weakness that Iconauthor shares with other commercial authoring systems is a certain inflexibility that tends to take certain learning procedures for granted. This results in routines that are difficult to modify for specific needs that may exist outside of the needs and uses anticipated by the program authors.
The introduction of HyperCard for the Macintosh in the autumn of 1987 provided an authoring tool with the degree of flexibility missing in traditional authoring systems. Although HyperCard was not designed with interactive video especially in mind, it has proved to be an excellent authoring system with its flexibility through the user-friendly HyperTalk language. In the full Macintosh environment, the creative use of graphics, sound, database and text programs is extremely well suited for combination with the possiblities of interactive video.
The explosion of cheap "stackware" that followed in the wake of HyperCard has also had consequences for interactive video. There are now several solutions available for specialized and "narrow" applications that normally would not need a full authoring system available as commercial stacks or "shareware". The Voyager Company of Los Angeles has designed a Videostack for authoring use with their Voyager Collection of film classics, and through the various academic computer networks in the U.S. a veritable forest of HyperCard stackware for interactive video has sprung up.
The drawback with a HyperCard-based authoring system is that it at the moment is dependent on a two-screen solution. However, with the interest that HyperCard has brought to the interactive video area, I have no doubts that within a short time one-screen solutions will be available also here.
As for the future of interactive video software, this lies closely connected with the development of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and expert systems. The existing authoring systems are characterized by hierarchic structures and a rigidity which will have to be changed in order for interactive video to reach its full potential. There is at present interesting work going on in this field with special relevance for interactive video, and there is no doubt that future developments in AI and expert systems will be needed if interactive video should be able to advance from the present rather rigid cause/effect-oriented learning model.
Ideally, interactive video implies real interaction in the relationship between author and user of the various interactive video applications. This relationship is, however, virtually nonexistent in the majority of today's applications. The joke among practitioners in the field that "interactive video" in reality stands for "interrupted video", is, unfortunately, more true than funny, and we find that the concept to a large extent merely denotes any form of structured videodisc playback.
The future of interactive video as an educational tool is therefore crucially connected with the development of theories and ideas in the field of pedagogics.
Pedagogically interactive video belongs to the area that is usually referred to as computer-assisted instruction – (CAI) or computer-assisted learning – (CAL). While the two terms – CAI and CAL – very often are used synonymously, I would like to maintain the disparity of the two concepts as representing the crucial difference between where interactive video as an educational tool is today and where we would want to see it in the future.
There seems to exist a clear distinction between what we may call interactive video education and training, where the latter concept clearly applies to the short range result-oriented world of commercial applications (the personnel training concepts referred to above) and "education" to the long-range problem-oriented world of public education. (Laurillard 1987 p. 9.)
A similar distinction could be made between the concepts of CAI – computer-assisted instruction, where the aim could be said to coincide with that of interactive video training, and computer-assisted learning – CAL, where the larger concept of education is implied. This distinction takes its cue from the axiom that although instruction has taken place, this is no guarantee that the recipient of this instruction has learned anything.
The central concept in making interactive video work in educational terms, whether this concerns training or education, is what is referred to as instructional design. This area represents both the "how to" approach of training as well as the "why" approach of education and has become a rapidly growing academic subject at American universities, where several institutions now offer degrees in instructional design. Consequently, there has also been a sizable output of textbooks on the subject.
The aim of instructional design is to present structural solutions for the practical applications of interactive computer-assisted instruction or learning, and these solutions clearly fall in two categories according to their goal. Of these categories, the one associated with commercial applications is clearly dominant. In this area instructional design means a way of finding the most effective way of making the recipient emulate the skills or behaviour defined as the goal of the interactive program.
These instructional design theories tend to be goal-oriented with an emphasis on eliminating any form of "excess" knowledge, that may distract from the predefined, usually very "narrow", goal set for the program. There is quite a number of instructional design consultants working within this concept in the United States, and although these consultants have a quantitatively impressive output in the form of interactive products and textbooks, we have to look at the other category of instructional design, the educationally oriented, for the development of general theories in the field.
A glance at some of the theoretical work in connection with instructional design is reassuring for the future of interactive video in an educational context. The anthology Interactive Media (ed. D. Laurillard, Chichester 1987) gives, in spite of its subtitle "Working Methods and Practical Applications", a clear indication that there is a genuine effort made in academic research to find ways that will utilize interactive video past the knee-jerk-response principle. Alfred Bork, a veteran in interactive educational technology, strongly emphasises the need for interactive programs to be able to respond to the students as multiple individuals and personalities. Bork, by the way, discourages the use of authoring systems ("Authoring systems and languages are the work of the devil."!), an attitude that may well be afforded at an institution well-equipped with programmers, but is rather questionable advice to small-time operators in the field.
Of great interest are also the articles by Gordon Pask and Gary Boyd on the application of Pask's Conversation Theory on interactive instructional design, a theory that embarks from the notion that the genre of discourse is problematical, a contention that will raise relatively few eyebrows among students of literature, but in this context is a blow to all straightforward instruction programs assuming the opposite.
This leads to an essential point, easily overlooked by the newly converted humanist interactive video enthusiast: that when embracing a technology, it is not necessary to embrace the ideology embedded in it. It is all too easy to disown the humanist heritage when confronted by the impressive machinery of educational technology instead of realizing that the future lies just in the combination of this heritage and the impressive, but basically unintelligent, technology.
Interactive video has already proved its value as an effective enforcer of rigid instrumental knowledge transfer, which so far has been the reason for its modest success in commercial and military training and product information. What still remains is to make this a useful, and widespread, tool for the wider concept of learning.
Bainbridge, Steve: Efficacy of the Interactive Management Skills Training Program – Design of Research and Results to Date. In Sixth Annual Conference on Interactive Instruction Delivery, February 24-26 1988. Orlando, Florida 1988.
Brand, Stewart: The Media Lab. Inventing the Future at MIT. New York 1987.
Duke, John: Interactive Video. London 1983.
Floyd, Steve/Floyd, Beth: Handbook of Interactive Video. White Plains, N.Y. 1982.
Iuppa, Nicholas V./Anderson, Karl: Advanced Interactive Video Design. New York 1988.
Laurillard, Diana M.: Interactive Video and the Control of Learning. Educational Technology Vol. 24. London 1984.
Laurillard, Diana M.: Videodisc Evaluation Report: "The Teddy Bears' Disc". The Open University. Milton Keynes 1984.
Laurillard, Diana M. (ed.): Interactive Media: Working Methods and Practical Applications. Chichester 1987.
Parsloe, Eric (ed.): Interactive Video. London 1984.
Sørenssen, Bjørn: Interaktiv video – et nytt medium? In Rønning/Ingvaldsen (ed.): Det data-assisterte samfunn. Trondheim 1988.
Sørenssen, Bjørn: Interaktiv video – en kritisk vurdering av muligheter og erfaringer. In Rønning/Ingvaldsen (ed.): Teknologi og tilpasning. Trondheim 1989.
Bjørn Sørenssen is Professor of Drama, Film and Theatre at the University of Trondheim.
