Interactivity and Pedagogy in 'Edu-tainment' Software

'Interactivity' is often proclaimed as one of the most valuable characteristics of educational software, yet it has rarely been adequately defined. This article provides an illustrated taxonomy of the different forms of interactivity offered by a range of 'edu-tainment' software wholly or partly intended for home use. It focuses on two key dimensions of interactivity – the extent of learner control, and the forms of feedback – and traces these across three main software 'genres' – drill-and-practice packages, exploration/reference works and educational games. The article concludes that, despite the claims of publishers and marketers, the interactivity of most educational software remains extremely limited. While some have argued that the market is now approaching saturation, the exponential growth of home computing seems to be continuing unabated. Of course, there are many reasons for this. As the equipment has fallen in price and become more 'user-friendly', the internet in particular is increasingly being utilised as a medium for entertainment – for leisure interests, home shopping and personal communication. Yet the potential role of home computers in children's education is undoubtedly a key explanation for their rapid dissemination. Of course, children are a primary market for computer-based entertainment, which is largely delivered through dedicated games consoles. But when it comes to the PC, it is the educational potential of computing that is most strongly emphasised in the advertising and in public debate. Indeed, the home computer could be seen as one of the indispensable 'symbolic goods' of contemporary parenting (Cawson et al., 1995). Investing in computers is, so parents are frequently told, a way of investing in your children’s future. Computers give children access to worlds of knowledge that would otherwise be denied to them; and, so it is argued, they give children control of their own learning. Education and parenting without technology thereby come to be seen as at least conservative, if not downright reactionary. It is the fundamental responsibility of good parents and teachers to ‘catch up’ with the children who are in their charge (Buckingham, 2000). In her research on the marketing of computer hardware and software in Australia in the mid-1990s, Helen Nixon (1998) points to the emergence of a new range of specialist magazines aimed specifically at the family market, with titles like Computer Living, Family PC and Parents and Computers. As Nixon shows, these magazines and the advertising they carried featured prominent images of ‘happy techno-families’; and they played particularly on parents' anxieties about their children’s education. Computers were represented as a key tool in the drive for educational success: they would give children an ‘educational edge’ on the competition and help them ‘move to the front of the class’. These discourses are still apparent in a good deal of marketing and consumer advice material aimed at parents. Parents, it seems, must be persuaded of the unique educational benefits of home computing, and simultaneously reassured about the fact that their children can be protected from harm (Buckingham et al., 2001). Nevertheless, in post-millennium Britain, there are signs that the promotional era is already over. There no longer seems to be any need to persuade parents of the educational value of home computers per se. The challenge now is to get them to invest in the software. Yet the domestic market for educational software now seems to be faltering. This is partly a result of competition from the internet, but it also reflects some endemic problems in the promotion, distribution and retailing of educational packages. Our research with families in the UK (Buckingham and Scanlon, forthcoming) suggests that parents do not necessarily know about the software that is available, or where to obtain it; and the fact that it cannot generally be previewed prior to purchase is a significant disincentive, as compared with books. Several of the parents and children whom we interviewed had invested in software that turned out to be of poor quality, or did not live up to the promises of its packaging. Most had bought little beyond the packages that came 'bundled' with the computer itself. These findings echo those of previous research. In an early study, conducted well before the widespread dissemination of the internet, Giacquinta et al. (1993) found that uses of educational software in the home were extremely limited, even in families with relatively high levels of enthusiasm and technical knowledge. All the research would suggest that children's uses of computers in the home are massively dominated by playing games; and that the use of specifically educational software remains relatively limited (Harris, 1999; Livingstone and Bovill, 1999; National Center for Education Statistics, 2000; Papadakis, 2001). While there are many possible reasons for this, at least some of them are to do with the limitations of 'educational' software packages themselves. In this article, we attempt to develop a taxonomy of some key characteristics of educational CD-ROMs. We consider a range of popular titles aimed at children between five and twelve years of age, ranging from 'drill-and-practice' packages to more game-like products. Our primary interest is in the pedagogy of this material – that is, the relationships between 'teachers' and 'learners' that it attempts to establish. Our key concern here will be the notion of 'interactivity' – a quality which is often trumpeted as one of the unique benefits of educational software, yet in our view is rarely well defined. The decline and fall of interactivity? Advocates of digital technology in education are often dismissive of the majority of commercially-produced CD-ROMs, and of the 'marketing hype' that surrounds them. Aldrich et al. (1998: 321), for example, claim that such packages are 'poorly constructed, consisting simply of a mishmash of images, sounds and video that offer little more than light entertainment'. Lydia Plowman (1996a: 263) argues that educational packages are often no more than 'electronic books... betraying the material's origin in a different format and failing to maximise the potential of a new medium'. Seymour Papert (1996) likewise condemns the more popular ‘instructional’, back-to-basics software packages, particularly those which attempt to ‘deceive’ children into believing that they are simply playing a game. The consensus here seems to be that (with some rare exceptions) the software that now dominates the market represents a betrayal of the educational promise of computers. In some cases, there is a kind of nostalgia for a past 'golden age' of educational software. Thus, John Robertson (1998) offers a representative personal account of what he calls the 'paradise lost' of educational computing. He argues that in the early days of IT in schools (in the 1980s), the software in use was 'highly interactive and pupil-empowering'. In more recent years, largely as a result of commercial pressures and changing government policies, the software has become much less adventurous. Robertson argues that the multimedia encyclopaedias and reference books that now dominate computer use in schools have a degree of superficial sophistication, but are much less 'interactive' and 'empowering'. These packages contain much more information, but they typically allow the learner very little control over the nature of the learning situation or the purpose of the interaction. While there is a considerable amount of truth in this view, there are also some problems with it. As the quotations above would suggest, the argument seems to reflect a suspicion of 'entertainment' per se, on the grounds that it necessarily represents a form of 'dumbing down'. Perhaps more significantly, Robertson and others are not comparing like with like. The early software packages they favour (such as databases, word-processors, spreadsheets and LOGO) could be broadly defined as tools: they are packages that enable the user to achieve other things, such as solve problems, create multimedia texts, or handle data. The more recent packages are different in kind: they are essentially media – that is, means of 'delivering' or providing access to information that is contained in the package itself. Of course, the 'tool' programmes are still being used in schools and homes; and some at least do seem to offer new creative possibilities, for example in terms of image manipulation and animation (Sefton-Green and Parker, 1999). Nevertheless, it is important to make distinctions between the different types of educational software available, and the different functions they seek to perform. From this perspective, the place of the domestic market is rather paradoxical. On the one hand, it could be argued that parents are likely to be more vulnerable than teachers to the inflated claims of marketeers – not least because they have fewer sources of independent advice. Yet on the other hand, it may be that they are in a better position to exploit the more 'empowering' possibilities of computers. Many critics have argued that the institutional constraints of schooling make it fundamentally incapable of exploiting the potential of new media technology (Cuban, 1986); and for some, the home represents a more promising site for development. Jerry Wellington (2001), for example, believes that the technology inherently fosters a more flexible, open-ended, student-led style of learning; and he suggests that this 'marvellous platform for learning' is more attuned to the 'informal' learning style of the home than that of the school, which he characterises as rigid and conformist. Indeed, he suggests that it may be for this reason that computers are now being taken up much more rapidly in homes than in schools. However, this view seems somewhat essentialist in its depiction of these different learning styles: the notion that learning with ICT is inherently any more 'openended' or 'free-ranging' than learning in school (as the author alleges) can quickly be dispelled by a brief glance at the software packages on sale in any high street store. Indeed, it could be argued that there is a growing pressure to align the learning style of the home more closely with the learning style of the school – and this realignment is bound to be reflected in the kinds of software available on the market.