From the Dragon's Lair to the Tacoma Bridge

Malone's suggestion of challenge. curiosity, and fantasy as the key aspects of instrinsic motivation for learning. based on his analyses of computer games, is used as a format for discussing four interactive videodisc lessons for general physics. The idea of challenging learning is expressed in the lessons based on the Physics and Automobile Collisions and Energy Tranformations Featuring the Bicycle videodiscs. Curiosity is especially evoked in the opening ballet scenes in the Studies In Motion videodisc. As pan of a fantasy story line, students are asked to solve the puzzle of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in a videodisc lesson with that title. The history of interactive videodiscs before 1983 is a painful one to us in education. During the early years the exciting uses of videodiscs seemed to be reserved for corporate and military training projects. We began to wonder if we would ever have widespread use of videodiscs in education. Then we were saved from extinction by the advent of the fmt video-disc arcade game. Dragon's Lair. Instantly. interactive videodiscs reached an enthusiastic. young, lay audience. Soon schools and colleges began to wonder how to use this technology. of Physics Teachers in 1980. He presently enlivens his university work by serving as the director of the ADAPTprogram a Piagetian-based, tnultidiscipli-nary program for freshmen at UNL, and writing articles, sc+ts. and proposak for interactive videodisc and computer lessons in physics. He may It is clear to all of us in education that students are coming to us with more interest and expertise in interactive learning, especially through the use of arcade games and microcomputers, than we faculty members possess. Furthermore, many of these students have experienced interactive learning through the use of microcomputers independent of instruction in their schools. Several features of this interactive learning are in conflict with the formal educational processes as we know them today. In the modern world all formal education below the PhD level is essentially a batch process. For years we have talked about individual differences and individualized instruction. But walk into any school, college, or university in the world and look. What do you see? Batches of students all being treated in the same manner by a teacher, lecturer, or professor. Now thanks to the low cost and ready availability of microcomputers. students can experience interactive learning in an institutional setting. Our most important learnings, e.g.. talking and walking, have always occurcd …