Robert Cavalier

Learning, Media, and the Case of Dax Cowart: A Comparison of Text, Film, and Interactive Multimedia

This study reports the results of a 3-year investigation into the comparative advantages of using interactive multimedia in the presentation of a case study in Ethics. The study involved undergraduate students in philosophy courses at Carnegie Mellon and the use of the case of Dax Cowart, a burn patient who wished to be allowed to die. In representing the case, we strove for functional equivalence in the content of the media chosen: a literary narrative plus expert commentary (text), a 1-hr documentary (film), and the Guided Inquiry/Archive sections of an interactive multimedia program (A Right to Die? The Dax Cowart Case). We also strove for functional equivalence in the use of the material: an evening assignment and a follow-up essay exam. The results of our research demonstrate a statistical difference in learning outcomes based on the medium used. Students in the interactive CD group outperformed students in the text and film groups with regard to (a) understanding the complex perspectives and positions of the principals in the case and (b) analyzing the case with respect to its morally relevant details.

Ethics in the History of Western Philosophy

Notes on the Contributors - Preface R.Cavalier - Plato A.Adkins - Aristotle A.Gomez-Lobo - Augustine T.Losoncy - Aquinas V.Bourke - Hobbes L.May - Hume D.Fate Norton - Kant C.Korsgaard - Mill N.Lachs - Nietzsche R.Schacht - Dewey J.Gouinlock - Sartre H.Barnes - Moore to Stevenson S.Darwall - Toulmin to Rawls J.Sterba - Index

Theoretical and Practical Perspectives on Technology and the History of Art History

The creation and development of art history has historically been linked with the availability of the technology of photographic reproductions. Present-day computer-based technology provides some new ways of handling such reproductions as well as novel instructional tools. After describing the development and evaluation of an interactive videodisc system, the authors suggest some ways in which such an apparatus both provides new methods of teaching aesthetics and may suggest novel ways of thinking about art history.

‘Evaluating evaluation’ in light of discipline-specific computational turns

THE GROWTH IN COMPUTER USE within each discipline is leading to the ‘evaluation’ of a transdiscipline field of evaluation. Paradigm sets of discipline-specific problems and solutions relating to ‘educational computing’ are being addressed within the disciplines themselves. The author suggests that the ultimate evaluation of computing within each discipline domain will arise from the particularusefulness of computing within those discipline-specific domains.