opinion We were discussing the cataloging for a library of the private papers of the late Professor N. K. Adam. "He was one of the &,"aid a former friend, "who kept up a world-wide personal correspondence about chemistry and research!' A few days later, recalling this while mulling over some notices of financial gloom about libraries, the thought came to me: we have done a foolish thing in academia-we have replaced discourse by communication. We are in danger of doing something even worse-replacing communication by information retrieval. These chanees are not merelv semantic. Thev are substantial. heyi impinge on variois aspects of academic life. Manv chemists are in the forefront of the chanees. Look a t a few examples, and I'm sure you will be able tocomplete the picture from your own experience. Let us look a t the classroom first. Discourse here might represent the disclosure of one mind to another, the presentation of the lecture that showed not only content and process of mind in the cognitive domain, but even something of attitude toward the subject in the affective domain. In thelatter areas, and even in the former if there has been student preparation, there can be two-way flow, question and answer, clarification and shaping of ideas and attitudes. I do not sueeest that the two-wav flow will necessarilv be eoual. . .hut there will be an increasing exchange and a growing involvement with the subject and with the people-of-the-subject represented by the local academic staff. Here is the professor who spends the afternoon in the undergraduate laboratory, possibly walking and talking or possibly, like the late Fred Beamish, sitting reading or writing but ready to chat with any approaching student. Discourse is likely to provide more erratic coveraee of a subiect. both in breadth and deoth. than its successok It is stiliseen in classrooms today, but the system no longer posits it as a major course of action. Discourse brought with it a certain style of bwk. Since the lecturer was expound in^ on some topics in a rather personalized way, the book set701 the course was m o r e ~ o m ~ r e h e n sive. It tended to be larve and informative, and was clearlv meant to be kept as a reference work. Have you noticed that the new generation of textbooks tend to be one or two terms long by two or three hours wide, with a minimum of anything
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The syllahus set the scopeof theexamination rather rimilady, in broad terms. No douht the candidate would not be able toanswer all uuestions. but he should be ahle toshow that he had thought ahbut, and somewhat understood, and was still thinking about the topics of some questions. Well, on to communication. Welcome to the world of instructional obiectives. of course-size rather than subiect-size books, of lecturers who "cover" the course (with what?) in a brisk efficient manner. There are pauses for questions, carefully judged or casually inserted, but the communication is more reminiscent of the Signals Corps than of conversation in comfortable chairs. Getting the word through, correctly and completely, is the aim. On the affective side, some enthusiasm may show through, but drive and efficiency often predominate. There is concern over a lecture "lost" for a holiday. In some departments, notices are circulated officially "excusing" a student who was ill, or away with the choir or the team. The professor who espoused discourse would laugh them to scorn. But the student brought up in this era can't see the joke. He is worrying about what pages of the book he is not responsible
for, so he won't use his time inefficiently by reading them. He is protesting about the unfairness of the example chosen for the examination question: it wasn't on the lisfso it's certain to be missed. The onus for exploring and setting the scope of the subject has passed across the lectern, and is no longer his. If a professor settled down to chat about the experiment, he'd be annoyed at this impediment to getting the experiment done. He'd be annoyed also if the lab script expected him to read a paper, choose a kind or size of glassware, or do preliminary calculations to get the sense of an experiment. That's inefficient communication. So is writing a report in your notebwk. Fill in the blanks. At least, though. there's a man there and vou mav be ahle to see him at hiioffice. Of course, office ho& are no longer whenever he's in, but are likely to be confined to set hours when he's not a t the various meetings needed to keep the communication system running, or to stew about the cost of the paper and printers i t involves. You have to feel sorry for the chap-he can't even find time to answer letters anymore. he's so busy communicating. Information retrieval is coming. Computer managed instruction is replacing computer-assisted in&ruction. The mts are even higher than those of comnlunicaling. The scope of information available to the student is even more limitedafter all, think of what the disc store space costs, and i h e programming, and the incredibly hard work of sitting down with your squared pad and thinking up every possible turn of the student mind that must be met bv a suitable branchine of the program. Then of course it has to be cut down to whG the machine can do and the course budget can afford, with the latter item including the computery expert and his ox and his ass and his servant. Write your own local script for it. The console (if you can afford it) or the teletype (if you can't) never tires of teaching the rules of nomenclature or displavine the curly arrows of modern organic archery. But have ~ou-no&d something? The man has disappeared. He isn't a t a meeting till three-he's at a programming course till Friday. Push HELP for help. The lab has gone too. In a letter about lab courses, Ireceived the news that "The Inorganic section has been replaced by a new set of videotapes." "Hmmm . . !' savs the Old Discourser. "Ever hear of a- tutorial? One or two students, and a written assignment to keep the talk on some kind of a track. Somehow we manaeed to make the necessary paths of the branching program on the spot both to retrieve the erring and to encourage the explorer. I t didn't take a five thousand dollar screen and keyboard and gwdness knows how much computer downstairs, and I seldom came out with, 'Sorry but that word is not in my vocabulary.' If it wasn't, I learnt it from the student." Well, that's the classrwm. Try your own band at the library, or the research group. . . I'll offer a brief scenario for the latter. In days of yore, and still today in the humanities, the Ph.D. candidate was supposed to read around (and possibly experiment around) in the area of interest of his supervisor, formulate a problem, hack and beat it into a manageable si& and shape and solve it; all the while discoursing with the others in the lab and most particularly with the supervisor. He then went out with his degree and the knowledge that he knew how to solve a chemical problem, that he knew how to define and limit a problem, and that he had (at least once) recognized a problem which was important enough to bother about. m--
volume 53, Number
12, December 1976 / 785
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In the communication era, the student is given a problem. Its im~ortanceis a t once evident-it's been promised to some panting agency (who pays his stipend) that a solution will he delivered hy next June, so get on with it. No time for discourse. Pity. Hut we can lay on some graduate courses (required) to deliver systematically and efficiently the information about a few other aspects of the subject. Apart from the inefficiency of discourse, it is seen in this era as having other dangers. It is a threat to security and priority of one's research proposals [see Lanshury, P., J. CHEM KI)UC. 52 510 (1975)l. When he has completed his technicianly service, for which he is rewarded with a mixture of caqh salary and a degree, the student rides off in search of a post-doctoral appointment and with a fair hit of luck and discretion in choosing his new supervisor, may he able to spend the next few years doing something about like the older style Ph.D. Information retrieval? The student now resides over the console. He becomes the initiator ot'outpuk and the interpreter of data from Big Black Box No. 3 which produces HGV spectra. Armed with transcript of courses and a degree, he seeks postdoctoral employment as a supertechnician. With a bit or luck, and a verykse choice of his new hoss, he may end up in charge of a project, just like the Ph.D. student in the
a
previous paragraph. Without that luck, he ends up not very employable except an a supertechnician, and he's priced himself (and psyched himself) out of that market. Again, the costs of moving from discourse to communication to information retrieval are nromessivelv meater. In the research group, they more obvi&~sGincludesh"man coats. In the lihrarv. - . the costs are more fullv monetarv. In neither case. I suggest, can we afford them. The move from discourse to communication was ~ r o b a b l v triggered by the pressures of World War I1 and its aftermath. The shift to information retrieval modelsseems related to the move from mass higher education and selective postgraduate education toward universal higher education and mass postgraduate education in North L e r i c a . In his recent paper, "Selection of a Theais Research Advisor," Kovacic [J.CHEM. EDUC., 53,144 (1976)jmentions the tendency of students to emulate their advisors. Which model do you wish to see most commonly reproduced in the next generation of chemists: discourse, communication, or retrieval?
George F. Atkinson University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 361
786 / Journal of Chemical Education
