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4. Boud, D. and Feletti, G. (eds), The Challenge of Problem Based Learning. St Martins Press, New York, 1991. 5. Carroll. J. M., The Nurnberg Funnel. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990. 6. Cassie, W. E and Constantine, T., Students' Guide to Success, Macmillan, London, 1988. 7. Cowan, J., Encouraging the Reflective Learner. Open University Press/Society for Research into Higher Education, Milton

Keynes, 1997, 8. Jonassen, D., Mayes, T. and McAleese, R., (1991) Vision for constructivistic uses of technology in higher education. In

Cognitive Tools for Learning. eds. P. A. M. Kommers, D. H. Jonassen and J. T. Mayes. Springer, Heidelberg, 1992. 9. A. G. J. MacFarlane, Teaching and Learning in an Expanding Higher Education System. The Committee of Scottish University

Principals, Glasgow, 1993. 10. Marshall, L. and Rowland, A. A Guide To Learning Independently. Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1993. 11. Mason, G., Graduate utilisation in British industry: the impact of mass higher education, London. National Institute Economic

Review, 156, (2), 93-103. 12. Matthews, J. et al., Successful Scientific Writing: a Step by Step Guide for Biological and Medical Sciences. Cambridge

University Press, London, 1997. 13. Mayes, J. T., Learning technology and groundhog day. In Hypermedia at Work: Theory in Higher Education. eds. W. Strang

et al. University of Kent, Canterbury, 1995. 14. McAleese, R., The role of reflection in personal development planning. Paper read at the SRHE Annual Conference (available

from the author), 1995. 15, Nisbet, J., Beyond the study methods manual. In Study Courses and Counselling, ed. P. Hills, Society for Research into Higher

Education, Guildford, 1979. 16. Northedge, A., The Good Study Guide. The Open University, Milton Keynes, 1990. 17. Rand, A., The objectivist ethics. In The Virtue of Selfishness, ed. A. Rand. New American Library, New York, 1964. 18. Schtin, D., Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1988. 19. Schunk, D. H., Social cognitive theory and self-regulated learning. In Self-regulated Learning and Academic Achievement:

Theory, Research and Practice, eds. B. J. Zimmerman and D. H. Schunk. Springer, New York, 1989. 20. Schunk, D. H., Goal-regulated and self-efficacy during self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 1990, 25, (1),

71-86. 21. Spiro, R. J., Coulson, R. L., Feltovich, P. J. and Anderson, D. K., Cognitive Flexibility Theory: advanced knowledge acquisition

in ill-structured domains. Technical Report 44, Reading Research and Education Centre, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, 1988.

22. Trueman, M. and Hartley, J., A comparison between time management skills and academic performance of mature and traditional entry university students. Higher Education, 1996, 32, 199-215.

23. Zimmerman, B. J. and Schunk, D. H. (eds), Self-regulated Learning and Academic Achievement: Theory, Research and Practice. Springer, New York, 1989.

Distance Education: A Systems View. MICHAEL G. MOORE and GREG KEARSLEY, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996. 290 pp. ISBN 0-534-6496-4.

The authors' aim has been to produce an introductory text for graduate students and practitioners in education and training, who want to "know how to adopt a distance education approach in their work". The book has been designed so as to allow for one chapter a week (there are twelve chapters) as set reading in a regular semester, beginning with fundamentals and the historical context of distance education, through chaptes on technologies and media, course design and development, teaching and tutoring, administration, management and policy, international perspectives and the transformation of education. The authors intend that each chapter should provide an introduction only, and serve as the

basis for discussion and further study. This is a book written with its audience very much in mind. It is for US educators and trainers who

have more often than not used technologies such as video conferencing in order to extend the reach and market of otherwise 'unreformed' classroom based t each ing - -wha t some of my colleagues have referred to as "new technologies carrying bad old methods". What the authors are trying to do is to make Americans see that a revolution in thought and practice has occurred in the 'o ld ' world, stimulated by the success of the UK Open University, among others, which has not sought to replicate traditional education either in content or in method.

There are two aspects to this revolution in thinking about education and training that have occurred largely outside the USA, in spite of being fed intellectually by some thinkers in the States who have been ahead of conventional thinking in their country. One is the egalitarian and democratic aspiration, which seeks to offer learning in ways which make it accessible to those unable to benefit from conventional

210 Book Reviews

teaching and conventional institutions. The second is the 'industrialisation' of teaching provision, which is essential for provision of large scale distance eduation. Such provision has, up to now, required an integrated system of provision in which there is a technical division of labour and a managerial leadership which has to deliver production methods in order to enable the economies of scale which are essential for mass provision of taught courses. Hence the focus on system in the title and content of the book. The authors want to demonstrate that what educators in the States have been doing is using technology opportunistically to reach new markets, rather than practising distance education properly understood.

I think the authors have succeeded in their primary aim, and have produced a volume (priced in the UK at £41 in hardback) which could be used on graduate programmes in the way suggested. It does offer a comprehensive overview and useful further reading. In their need to explain that "Distance education has a history, and this history is not American only, but intemationar', the authors not only prompt their readers to consider that they will have to look to Europe to see innovation from which they should learn, but also remind us that 'independent learning' has a history in the USA also. It was independent study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Charles Wedemeyer's emphasis on self-directed learning, freedom from the lock-step pace of the classroom, which inspired the founders of the Open University in the UK to see how the technologies of television and radio could be used to bring university education for adults to a mass audience.

The result at the institutional level has been the creation of a particular form of provision, which in its economies of scale mode has generated a transformation of academic production according to the industrialisation model. It is this aspect of distance education that the book best selves, in its emphasis on the need to plan and integrate all the components of a system beginning with the learner, through design and delivery of courses for study in the learner's home environment. The mode adopted in the book is explanatory and informative, with frequent recourse to the practical aspects of implementation. Concepts are treated in outline rather than analysed in depth but many of the major ideas have been included and with a refreshing clarity. This would be the ideal set book for graduate programmes where there is a strong professional ethos rather than a research one.

There is a chapter on the theoretical basis for distance education, however, and, though it focuses mainly on Moore's own theory of transactional distance, there are enough links to different approaches for the interested student to follow up. The chapter is also a particularly clear explanation of his theory that the degree to which there are opportunities both for dialogue and for learner control over the study process, determines the extent and quality of transactional distance. Moore emphasises that geographical distance merely exacerbates the potential in all teaching and learning for both psychological and communicative 'distance' between learner and teacher. Such distance is to be overcome by the way in which courses are designed, and learners are supported, taught and assessed.

In their chapters covering these more practical issues, the authors have been skilful in alluding to the hidden iceberg of educational theory and critique, while not overburdening their mainstream audience with direct treatment of a literature generated mainly by specialist distance educators.

The authors could have done more justice to the egalitarian aspirations of the first open universities and their collective efforts to teach those whom other universities would never have admitted into their classrooms. This aspect of distance education is only there in the shadows of the text, partly as a result of the visual impression the book gives. The photographs do not illustrate much cultural diversity, and learners are shown studying in well-resourced, well-dressed and well-supported contexts. There are references to programmes for geographically remote communities and for the disadvantaged but these are not explored very much.

Readers who want the stimulus of a more in-depth study of computer-based and networked learning can find it in texts such as Laurillard's 'Rethinking University Teaching' (Routledge) and Lockwood's 'Open and Distance Learning Series ' (Kogan Page), which includes Mason's 'Using Communications Media in Open and Flexible Learning'. For the general reader, however, and for those designing courses for distance/open/flexible systems, this book is an impressive resource. It does include direct extracts from both educators and learners for example, which carry immediacy and enrich a well-written and clearly presented overview. Much 'best practice' is included, on learner support, on course design, on interactive strategies via computer-mediated communication, and on administration and management. Even though, given the speed of technological advance, the authors share the fate we all suffer, whereby our books are outdated in their details almost before we can get them into print, they have produced a book that summarises why we created something called 'distance education' in the last quarter of the

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twentieth century and what it is. In that sense, their book will not date so quickly and it will be a valuable addition to the shelf of professional educators in our field for some time to come.

Institute of Educational Technology MARY THORPE The Open University Milton Keynes MK7 6AA England

Learning in Humans and Machines: Towards an Interdisciplinary Learning Science. Edited by PETER REIMANN and HANS SPADA. Pergamon Press, Oxford. 1995. 241 pp. ISBN 0-08-042569-0.

The relationship between human learning and machine learning is contentious. This collection of papers aims to bring together the two fields, encouraging readers to perceive them as one. Anyone who aspires to this perception, however, should be versed in both fields and to some extent in philosophy, logic, neuroscience, education and psychology. This book is not for newcomers or even for someone who has a good understanding of one of the two fields, because the bridge between them is rickety. Chapter 1 justifies a European Science Foundation research programme with the same title as the book. This rather prolix and turgid discussion of the relationship between studies in human and machine learning is unnecessarily enlarged by sections written by the leaders of five 'Task Forces' within the programme and an overview of the remaining chapters. There is too much repetition, throughout the book, because later chapters are organised in themes corresponding to the work of the Task Forces. The chapters do not systematically contribute to a coherent picture. Rather they sometimes seem to be pieces from several different jig-saw puzzles. For a team of people who claim to be working together, its members make surprisingly few cross-references. Each author (or group of authors) presents a standalone viewpoint, usually including a review of a particular aspect of one of the two fields followed by a closer look at something even more specific. Where an author has tried to be more wide-ranging the result has lacked depth. In some cases authors use sentences loaded with words that require further explanation--not exactly jargon, more a within-discipline use of words which seem almost familiar but which do not carry enough meaning to communicate more than a vague notion to the reader. Where the language is plain the message is often not new.

There are recurring themes such as knowledge representation and mental models, situated cognition and learning, transfer (of learning) and the notion of agents in computer systems. But these themes are part of the background rather than the foreground. They only serve to indicate that there are links among the various viewpoints expressed. The links are not strong enough to convince the reader that these viewpoints are actually different views of a single integrated field.

That learning in machines might illuminate learning in humans and that the design of learning machines might derive from models of how humans learn is clearly the assumption behind the research programme and the book. Yet the authors seldom make the connection between the two or, where they do so, they feel obliged to admit that the gap is still great between our understanding of human learning and our ability to design machines that learn.

The content is difficult enough, but poor layout and typesetting do not help. The typeface is too small and as a consequence the lines are too long. There is scarcely a correct apostrophe in the book and numerous instances of incorrect punctuation in the quotations.

I feel unable to recommend the book. I found it difficult to read both physically and linguistically. It gives no coherent picture of the interaction between the two underlying fields. I detect disappointment in the writers and possibly frustration at their inability to report interesting progress. The book does have numerous references at the end of each chapter (about 20% of the text). How comprehensive or representative these are I cannot judge, but they should prove useful to someone wanting to get into the literature.

Computer Based Learning Unit KENNETH TAIT University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT England