Closed-Circuit Television

For the brief period of four days this summer, the Graduate School of Education sponsored a project of great significance for the future of education--the use of closed-circuit television as a medium of instruction.

The project was a limited one, and was concerned mainly with the uses of television in preparing elementary and secondary school teachers. A microwave relay system was set up to transmit actual classroom situations from Weeks Junior High School in Newton, Massachusetts, to the third floor lounge in Littauer Center at Harvard, where teachers-in-training were assembled to observe the various classes in action.

Although this experiment may seem of minor importance when related to the educational system as a whole, it has important implications. For as the nations colleges face a critical rise in the number of applicants by 1960, it has become obvious that some solution to the problems of expansion must be found. Closed circuit television may well be one answer to these problems.

Television as an educational transmission system has many advantages. One good instructor can teach via television a very large number of students who need not be in one place or even, for that matter, on the University campus. Experiments, equipment, and situations which cannot normally be shown students can be televised to them. By television, undergraduates can visit and observe clinics, experiments, and situations from which they are usually excluded. Small objects can be enlarged, and large classes may be given advantages of observation now reserved to small laboratory sections.

'Certain Limitations'

But there are certain limitations to the value of educational TV which must be given careful consideration. At the present time, more than 100 colleges are experimenting with closed circuit television in an effort to discover its possible applications. The research along these lines might best be divided into four main areas. 1) the feasibility of closed circuit telecasting, involving such questions as "Can it be done?", How can it be done?", and "Is the cost prohibitive?"; 2) the effectiveness of televised teaching, i.e., how does television effect the quality of instruction?; 3) the appropriateness of employment of closed-circuit TV, i.e., in what curricula, departments, and courses can it be used most effectively?; and 4) the acceptability of TV to students and instructors.

Research along these lines is necessarily slow, for data must be accumulated and evaluated from many different sources. But it is probably fair to say that experiments over the past few years have demonstrated the feasibility of using closed-circuit TV in the teaching process. Although the Education School's four day experiment was too short to reach any definitive conclusion, most observers felt that, with provisions for the control of classroom acoustics (which were very poor) and classroom lighting (which was satisfactory) and certain other technical problems, closed-circuit television has a definite potential for the observation and analysis of classroom situations. The chief disadvantage of the experiment proved to be the high cost of the five-and-one-half mile micro-wave link connecting Newton with the University.

Such a costly link has not been necessary, however, in most of the experiment carried out by other universities. These have mostly involved the transmission of a lecture delivered in one room to viewers seated in one or more other rooms. Technically, this transmission has proved entirely feasible. Through the use of vidicon television equipment rather than the familiar orthicon, the experimenters have managed to reduce costs considerably. Vidicon has a lower initial cost, a lower maintenance cost, and can be operated by less highly skilled personnel (i.e. students and others available on a university campus) than orthicon.

Although the answers to the first area of research seem fairly clear, those in the other areas are still nebulous and require a good deal more work. Probably the area of chief interest to most educators concerns effectiveness. The problem might be settled thus: When conventional instruction is channeled over a television system and is compared with similar direct instruction, do the televiewing students progress an equal or a less amount than the non-televiewers?

Study Inconclusive

No significant study has yet been made on the effect of TV on attitude formations and changing of values, but Pennsylvania State University has made a fairly careful study of the amounts of information absorbed by students under the two systems. Comparisons were made in each of three televised courses, General Chemistry, General Psychology, and the Psychology of Marriage, between three different groups of students: 1) those receiving lectures in the television receiving rooms, 2) those receiving lectures in the originating room, i.e. the same room as the instructor with television equipment present, and 3) those receiving lectures in the same room as the instructor with no television equipment (the control group).

The information learned by the three groups was tested on the basis of three hour exams and a final. For General Chemistry, there was considerable shifting in group positions from test to test. For General Psychology, all the small differences favored the conventionally taught classes. For Psychology of Marriage there was no control group.

But almost all of the differences had to be rated as statistically insignificant. This in itself, however, is some-what significant, for it means that no basis was found for rejecting instructional television from the viewpoint of information learning.

From other viewpoints, however, there may well be valid objections to certain uses of television. It is here that the crucial question of appropriateness arises.

There are, it is true, several distinct advantages to TV, some of which were enumerated above. Perhaps the chief of these lies in television's ability to magnify lecture demonstrations which would otherwise be difficult or impossible to see. In this capacity, television has become an important adjunct to dental education. A demonstration involving the drilling of a tooth, for example, could ordinarily be observed by only a few students. But television allows an almost unlimited number to view the operation, and view it better than the students who originally had to crowd around the chair. Television, in effect, makes every seat a front row seat.

Minor Obstacles

But there are other factors involved which seem to limit the value of television as a teaching medium. In the teaching of Chemistry, for example, it was discovered that television has certain physical limitations. Minor obstacles, such as the placing of micro-phones, wires, and lights, generally proved surmountable, but the lack of color and the small screen size were more serious.

The lack of color tended to make demonstrations of certain reactions virtually meaningless. Even when samples of the final result were present in the viewing rooms, students were unable to see a crucial change in color at a given point in any reaction.

The screen size problem was adequately summed up by an assistant professor of chemistry at Penn State. "The restricted field of vision for presentations on the blackboard would be a handicap for one, like myself," he said, "who desires to give material on board A, go on similarly to board B, and then refer back to board A while considering board B."

One possible solution to this problem might be a bank of television screens, one showing board A, another board B, etc. The obvious solution to the color problem would seem to be color television. As a general rule it is probably true that the technical difficulties in closed-circuit telecasting can eventually be overcome in one fashion or another.

But there are several factors inherent in the very nature of televised teaching which may limit its applicability. The chief of these is undoubtedly the fact that the "remoteness" of students reduces the possibility of teacher-student interaction. Although microphones can be set up to connect the viewing rooms with the originating room, it is obviously much more difficult for a student to ask a question than if he were in the same room as the professor.

It would seem, therefore, that TV does not appropriately belong in all parts of the educational process. It seems especially apt for those courses which have something to show the student, such as the sciences. But even in these, the necessity for interaction prohibits the use of TV in every part of the course.

A fact, such a "Two plus two equals four," can readily be disseminated over TV. But a more general concept, such as "Man and culture develop contemporaneously," becomes meaningful only when it is clarified by discussion and questions.

It seems fairly obvious, therefore, that discussion must remain an integral part of the educative process. It probably does not make too much difference if a lecture is televised, for there is no verbal interaction between instructor and student, and students in the back rows are apt to get less of the lectures personality than they would over a TV screen anyway.

But some opportunity must be left for discussion. Thus television would seem inappropriate when applied to section meetings, i.e. if used to show a section meeting to non-participating students outside the section. Most courses could probably use some combination of televised lectures and "live" section meetings to clarify or expand the lecture material.

Student Reaction

One immediate use of television might be to give distant students within the original lecture hall itself a better view of illustrative materials.

The whole problem of appropriateness still needs exhaustive study, however, before anything can be decided definitely. Now that the feasibility of TV has been demonstrated and that no definite evidence has been found to prove TV ineffectual, it is this area which experimenters are concentrating on.

The fourth area of research mentioned at the outset was acceptability. As far as students are concerned, they tend to regard television as equal to or slightly inferior to the ordinary method of instruction. Often they assume that because they have never learned anything over TV, they are incapable of learning anything over it. As a result, side activities, such as reading, talking, and sleeping, often spring up in viewing rooms. Perhaps this is unavoidable when students are freed from the necessity of courtesy to a lecturer, but if students can be won over to a positive attitude, educational TV may well prove successful.

Faculty Opposition

The chief faculty opposition comes from fears of technological unemployment, of the mechanization of education, and of George Orwell's 1984 atmosphere. As one observer of the Education School's project said, "If this medium is ever used by administrators or their "flunkies" for the purpose of observing and thereby controlling a teacher or his material, it will be a horrible blight on education and freedom of enquiry."

But educational TV does not seek to replace the teacher. Rather it aims at increasing his effectiveness to meet growing educational needs. Nor should it "mechanize" education if kept subordinate to the will of the teacher to use as he thinks best. Nor hopefully should it be used for spying.

Educational TV is no panacea, no cure-all for the University world. Rather it is one possible means of meeting expansion problems and increasing the effectiveness of teaching. If used intelligently and without attempting to apply it to the entire educational process, it has great potentialities