F.H.D. Gastkemper
Drs. F.H.D. Gastkemper, Head of Educational Technology at the Open University of the Netherlands, spoke at the 1988 CHArt Conference about the Dutch Open University's innovative use of electronic media. Their Visual Arts foundation course is taught with the assistance of an interactive videodisk which students may consult at study centres - and almost all Dutch Open University students live within 30 km of a study centre. About 54,000 frames could be stored on one side of such a disk. The art historical videodisk in fact contains 'only' 15,000 works of art amounting, however to 30,000 images, since each work of art is stored twice, once in a 'graphics' form to be incorporated on the computer screen with informative text and once in 'full screen' form. The student can switch at will from one to the other, and can also explore the visual database, selecting different styles or historical periods, comparing a variety of works by one artist, or different artists whose work is in some way related. The computer can also use the visual database to present the student with a self test, asking such questions as 'Who painted this picture?' 'What is it called?' 'What style/period is involved?'; keeping a log of mistakes in order to give the student at the end of the session a record to show where more study is needed. In the paper presented here, Dr Gastkemper discusses the role of such tools as the Dutch Open University videodisk in distance learning.