DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COMPUTER EDUCATION AND COMPUTER IN EDUCATION - Onyeji Nnaji

DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN COMPUTER EDUCATION AND COMPUTER IN EDUCATION

From 1970s onward, there has been increasing awareness of the contributions of computer to the human mechanical efforts. This awareness continued and even became greater in this twenty first century. As days glide, new problems continue to develop demanding the attention of computer in solving them. With this, more attention became drawn towards the uses of computer. Assessments even have focused primarily on the effectiveness of computers as aids to learning and on how well students may be prepared for their use beyond school, the negative effects on the younger generations notwithstanding. Considering the magnificent contributions of computers on the human activities generally and knowing that the determination of the proper roles of computers in education must begin with an understanding of the computer itself, the introduction of “computer education” in schools became relatively inevitable. This idea borders mainly on how efficiently man could use the computer in his possession to solve his numerous educational needs.

It may be argued however that the introduction of computer in education is a consequence of insufficiently taking into account factors that are crucial when introducing change in educational settings. Many of the problems in the literature, for instance, show great similarity with the kind of problems often experienced in curriculum implementation. In this context the endeavors to make computer use an integrated part of classroom activities are very necessary. With the knowledge one has about computer he is positioned to appropriately use the machine to solve the educational problems confronting him, especially those problems that are computer inclined. With the knowledge of computer acquired by man he is now able to ease off certain strenuous tasks that would require greater human effort to solve. For this reason education research particularly has been relatively made easy. Marrying them together, we should know that for us to use “computer in education”, we ought to have acquired “computer education”.

Differences between Computer Education and Computer in Education

There are always two sides of every coin. In other words, it does not matter how similar two or more things may look, there are always differences among them. The uses of “computer in education” are relatively synonymous with “computer education” since they both border on the relevance of computer to education. Above all, they also share certain disparities.  The disparities between these terms may best be considered on role computer plays in education as shown in the succeeding paragraphs. Also, when a learner is working on a problem that may be of interest to the rest of the class, the teacher can broadcast that learner’s display screen to every other workstation in the network. This development and that of interaction between learners meet the objection of those who complained of “computer obstructed education”. Their objection was the individualized nature of CAI did not enable learners to work together in social situations, interacting, learning from, teaching and examining one another.

The use of “computer in education” enhances learning generally, while “computer education” only promotes greater knowledge of the uses of computers. The internet facilities have been programmed to provide learners with the bulk information covering various fields of studies and numerous range of topics. The essence of this is to create an enabling atmosphere for learners to have enough information valid to whichever field of study they focus on at every given time. With this learners have been able to reach out to vast information covering their areas of educational endeavors. Computer education can only provide information bordering on the knowledge of computer alone.

The use of “computer in education” assists learning instructions, while “computer education” only assists the leaners in accessing the learning instructions. In education, we use the computer for teaching/learning and the management of education. The use of the computer for teaching/learning is referred to as Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI). Its use in the management of education is called Computer-Managed Instruction (CMI). CAI is an automated instructional technique in which a computer is used to present an instructional programme to the learner through an interactive process on computer. It is an instructional technique in which the computer instructs the students and the computer contains a stored instructional programme designed to inform, guide, control and test the students until a prescribed level of proficiency is reached. In CAI, ideally, as learners embark upon a course of instruction, the computer assesses their initial competence and diagnoses their difficulties, if any. 

The assessment and diagnosis are continued at every step in the teaching/learning process. With a versatile computerized programmed instruction, the learners are enabled to individually proceed performance. In this type of learning environment, learners would start their learning from different points, take different learning routes, and finish at different times. But in computer education, only one route is required, viz. concentrating on a particular computer package.

The use of “computer in education” also makes learning faster, while many packages in “computer education” are difficult and make learning relatively boring. A teacher always teaches, taking into account what he taught the day before, the past week, months and even years, as well as the particular condition his class is in at that moment. Nothing of this sort happens with computers. In particular, the internet is absolutely un-contextual and requires a high degree of maturation for the user to choose what is adequate for her learning process. “Computer in education” opens the doors to the adult world of information. Even worse, it allows children actually to participate in that world on an equal footing. While some researchers hale displays of adult-like, rational thinking, we fear that children and young people will be crippled by the too early suppression of their natural, intuitive, open, holistic way of relating to the world. 

The vast assistance of “computer in education” is described as “machine thinking”. By “machine thinking” we understand the type of thinking necessary to create thoughts that may be introduced into a computer, in the form of software commands or instructions in a programming language, so that the computer may correctly interpret them.

Conclusion

The sequence of learning and the amount of time spent on learning tasks are determined by the performance of the learners themselves in a Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) situation. Basically, the sequence adapts to the ability and the current competence of each learner in the subject matter being learned. This procedure is clearly very different from what happens in a conventional classroom where the very able and not so able are taken through the same sequence at the same time. Also, in CAI the achievement of each learner is assessed against a given performance standard rather than against the performance of other learners. In all this, CAI is in line with our concept of continuous assessment as a guidance-oriented teaching-learning process. The ultimate goal is to enable all learners maximize their learning achievement.

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