Customer Reviews

Rethinking University Teaching: A Conversational Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies

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Laurillard provides a basic review of what contributes to effective teaching at university level, much of which is relevant to education and training at other levels as well. She then reviews different media (such as TV, audio, audio-visual, hypertext, simulations, and, most importantly, intelligent tutoring systems) and provides a direct comparison of their effectiveness to the best form of teaching, one-on-one tutoring in a form of special conversation between tutor and student. This book provides strong intellectual justification for continued efforts to develop and commercialize simulation-based intelligent tutoring systems, as this is the form of media that most closely approaches one-on-one human tutoring in effectiveness. The book is clearly written and understandable by non-experts.

This book explores how technology can best be used to enhance university undergraduate education. Instead of focusing on the technology, however, the author wisely considers first of all what good university teaching is. With this idea constantly in mind, she then takes up the various technologies available when she wrote the book (1993), and explores how they might be used to help students learn. As to be expected, some of the technologies she describes have since been abandoned (hypermedia as in hypercard stacks) and some of her criticisms are no longer valid because the media have advanced; indeed, no mention at all is made of the Internet or the World Wide Web. But because Laurillard grounds this volume on the precept that it is the teaching that is important, and presents the specific media only as examples, the book will remain relevant for years to come.

Aside from the entire Part 1 "What students need from educational technology" (actually, an explication of her ideas about university teaching), the most useful comments in the book come in chapter 11, "Setting up the learning context," where Laurillard describes how students must be prepared to learn from technology. The technology, no matter how excellent, cannot simply be put in front of the students with the expectation that they will learn from it. The only disappointment was the last chapter, "Effective teaching with multimedia methods," which despite the promising title, is little more than an outline of recommendations for nation-wide (i.e. UK-wide) development of learning software.