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featuring top scholars discussing key topics and shaping important ideas.
This is an effective way for students in general education and disciplinary
core courses to gain access to the best faculty. At some point, interactive
avatars may present ideas and solve problems. There are also opportuni-
ties to utilize 3D graphics to make points that are difficult to make in a
2D textbook, PowerPoint slide, or other traditional tools. A key for mak-
ing successful video lectures and video vignettes, which is discussed in
Chapter 12, is to carefully integrate the lecture with high-tech reading
materials. The videos should use concepts, graphs, and problems from the
book, even going so far as to mention chapters, section titles, and figure
designations, so students see a consistent message.
Students should be able to ask questions and get customized answers,
but that may be difficult with the current technology. However, it should
be possible for faculty experts to anticipate where students may have trou-
ble and allow them to pause the video and ask questions. If the question
was anticipated by the designers, students may get an answer immediately,
but if not, the question would pass electronically to a faculty member, who
would answer the question and suggest reading materials that might clar-
ify their concerns. The questions would go to instructional faculty and
graduate teaching assistants first and be handed off to tenured and profes-
sional faculty as needed. Student questions would be compiled and used to
improve the videos by addressing the most common questions.

13.5 WHAT MIGHT BE IS UNCLEAR

The ideas in the prior sections and the ideas discussed in Chapter 12 offer
good first steps in efforts to electrify and digitize learning while reduc-
ing costs and improving outcomes. Publishers are creating some of these
electronic tools. Also, there are efforts to provide video presentations to
supplement and replace face-to-face lecturing as well as other mecha-
nisms to enhance learning. The journey toward better teaching materials
has begun.
The challenge in the early phases of technology development is that
efforts are bounded by the context in which people live and work,
which is determined by their life experiences. For example, approxi-
mately 80 years ago, the Englander, Alan Turing, invented what is com-
monly called the Turing Machine, which was a theoretical computing