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Computer Assisted Learning (CAL)

The term Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) covers a range of computer-based packages, which aim to provide interactive instruction usually in a specific subject area, and many predate the Internet. These can range from sophisticated and expensive commercial packages to applications developed by projects in other educational institutions or national initiatives to simple solutions developed by individuals with no funding or support to tackle a very local problem. The amount of time and money invested in development is high and partly because of the very subject specific nature of the education market as well as the very personalised nature of the teaching process - particularly at FE and HE level - means that commercial success is difficult to achieve and work done in one subject area rarely transfers to others subject areas.

In general, the use of computers in education through CAL has been sporadic a great deal of effort was expended with little general impact. Many of those academics that took part in that earlier crusade are now cynical about the effectiveness of computers in teaching.

There are still good reasons to use CAL rather than Internet based technologies. CAL is run either straight from a CD or floppy disk drive, or over a local network so the constraint of the internet - slow download times for multimedia materials may not apply. This, coupled with the fact that CAL technology has been around a bit longer, means that CAL packages have the potential to offer more advanced, interactive, multimedia learning experiences than it is currently reasonable to expect from the Web. This has been changing as Web technologies develop and bandwidths improve but there are currently many things that can only be achieved with CAL rather than the Web and CAL has been an integral part of the curriculum in many departments at Warwick for some time.

More on CAL packages