The New B.M.O.C.s: Big Machines on Campus

For years U.S. educators have touted the potentialities of the computer as a teaching tool. Dartmouth Mathematician John G. Kemeny contends that "the computer revolution will be just as significant in education as the industrial revolution." Now, computers have arrived on many campuses for programmed instruction, the solving of intricate problems by students, and the simulation of real-life situations in computer-controlled "games." M.I.T.'s civil engineering department is so enthusiastic over computer-aided instruction that it divides history into "B.C." and "A.C." — before and after computers.

Because "computing is becoming al most as much a part of our working life as arithmetic or driving a car," the Pres ident's Science Advisory Committee has urged colleges to spend $400 million a year on computer instruction by 1971. It wants the Federal Government to help by sharing the cost of acquiring and operating the big machines.

For Modern Man. The most common classroom use of the computer is to take over time-consuming drill in the basic definitions and concepts of a discipline. At the two-year-old Irvine campus of the University of California, which bills itself as "designed for the modern man," 17 courses are partly taught by computer. In Geography I, for example, the machine leads students through such questions as: "How does geography's focus differ from that of the other social sciences?" (Correct answer: "Geography is interested in the spatial impact of all categories of human behavior, whereas other disciplines tend to focus upon a single category.") If the student respends with any or all of the key phrases in the answer, the computer replies "good," or "excellent," and proceeds to the next question.

Harvard can operate one of five major computers from 50 keyboards around campus and is putting another 25 in student dormitories starting next month. One result will be to allow economics students to pretend that they manage a business firm; as they make decisions on wages, prices and products, the computer will monitor their profits—or losses. The University of Michigan uses computers in 150 courses, ranging from literature to political science, but mostly in engineering. More than 90% of the undergraduates at M.I.T., where 150 remote computer consoles are available, regularly use computers. Like the system at such other schools as Caltech, Dartmouth and Carnegie Tech, much of M.I.T.'s computer activity involves students' processing individual research data on the machines. At Texas A. & M., students drop their computer data at a window, walk half a block to find the answers waiting on a table—and find the process so pleasant that they dub these evening sessions "happy hours."