Um, my name is Bob Appelman. Um, I go
by Dr. Bob at the university because um and I
grew up in Bloomington Indiana, because my father was
on the voice faculty at the School of Music in
in Bloomington at IU so he was Dr. Appleman
and I didn't want to be that. So they
wanted to be Dr. Bob instead. So that's where,
that that's what I tell all my students,
because they seem hesitant to call me that at first,
especially the foreign students. And so, but
it it becomes has become my handle now. Um
and I have had such a long history with Bloomington,
all of the university and then also
um the Audio Visual Center. Um and it started,
actually that history started in 1951 when I first
came to Bloomington when my dad came from North Texas
State Teachers College to get his degree at Bloomington.
And at that time, there were army barracks called
Hoosier Courts in the where, you know, graduate
students could get a place to live with their family.
And uh lo and behold, there was this
family next to right across the hall from us,
uh and he was called Ed Richardson. And so
we grew up, I grew up playing with the
Richardson Joanne and, you know. We knew that
family and then we moved to another building and then
lo and behold Mac Fleming was in that building.
So I became best friends with his son and so
I wasn't even doing anything with audiovisual or instructional design,
although I was always interested in photography and music
and things like that because of my upbringing. Um,
so one of the things, and uh you know,
just to make this short, my dad told
me immediately that I was not a singer because that
you are either born with a voice or not,
and I was not. So, I got into instrumental
work uh and I kind of thought I would be
going into music. Um, because of the school there and
all the people that I knew, and I was
already playing in all the ensembles and things like that,
but um I found out I'd have to master
piano and I was not good at piano at all.
I was more of a visual designer. Uh
so I went over into the department as a school
of fine arts there and got my undergraduate degree in
graphic design. And then when I went out,
went out pounding the pavement to try to sell my
portfolio. I saw these little cubbyholes that they stuck
graphic designers into, and I tried to ask
well, what I really want to be is
a film director, because I want to deal with
something that merges all the art forms together into, um
you know. I wanted to do something emerges all
the art forms together uh into a communications package.
And, I wanted to be very interested in, Um
I mean, since graphic design, I was very
much focused on um getting, you know, well
all the art forms blended and motion picture, motion
picture production was the thing that I said, I
really want to do. So I left Chicago's pavement
and then, you know, trying to get a
portfolio sold and and they all said, well,
you know, you got to have experience in film
production to do film production. So I said,
well where the heck do you go to get experience
in film production? So then I say, I
heard about this audiovisual center that had a very large
film production unit, one of the largest film libraries
in the world. And uh, you could actually
get a degree that uh, you know, gave
you all the experience you need. So, at that
time then I guys said I'm going to get a
Master's and of AV Communications. And so then I
went into the department there and at that time,
[inaudible] Olie Larsson was running the show at
that time, which he always ran the show wherever
he was. He had figured out ways of gathering
buildings that the university didn't want. And so we
now occupied all these sort of decrepit buildings that were
falling apart Mitchell Hall, [inaudible], Rogers on third street and all
this other stuff. But heck, I came in there
first and had to have uh, I had to
have an acceptance of kind of more of a ghettoish
type of living style by where I started living.
So this was no different for me And uh,
actually kind of liked it. We had a
great community, tremendous bustle of activity. Um,
and so I really dove in, found out that
we had wonderful talent in the Audiovisual Center at that
time. 16 faculty, of which two thirds were
all practicing craft professionals. Um, Burrow, Blaine
and you know, all of the, you know,
even jerry kemp and uh, Hynek came in.
The Hynek entry was an interesting one along with
all of the other people with black because at this
particular time we were getting steeped in. How do
you put a film together? That's a good instructional
film. And the idea came out maybe if there
was some front end analysis that could be done before
you write the script, even though we know how
to execute it beautifully, maybe the script would be
better and maybe the outcome would be better. So
then we ended up bringing in a lot of the
theorists into the Audiovisual Center at that particular time.
Um, it was interesting, they didn't necessarily associate
with the production people as much as all the production
people were working together, but they tried to start
learning what the heck we were doing and where they
could fit in. So they started research and of
course we were in a very behaviorist IQ mode at
that particular time, it was skinner, doing everything
in Ohio with all the uh, skin Aryan machines.
And so, uh, we ended up doing
films of rat mazes and students in that. And
uh and and there was a whole industry wrapped around
that well to make a long story short now on
where a C a E C T fits into that.
I could go ahead and be a film director
but I needed to use equipment and we found that
people didn't know how to use equipment. And so
now teachers didn't know how to use equipment and they
didn't, if we made a film they couldn't show
it because they didn't know how to use the film
projector or they didn't know how to use overhead.
So they didn't know how to do this other stuff.
And so all of a sudden the focus started
to be on on sort of teacher support. And
then there was this thing called the novel workshop.
And that was where we had the National Audiovisual Association
come to indiana. So being a graduate student there
at that time, I was given a huge amount
of work to do to try to get all this
workshop working and run through everything. So we had
people coming from all over uh to be able to
get instruction how to integrate this technology in their teaching
practices. I mean we had wonderful things like how
to do a rubber cement li lift and how,
you know putting uh you know, our thermal transparencies
in one place. But then doing an ammonia dish.
So we had places where we dropped these things
into ammonia sensitive. I mean it was really weird.
We had at that time we had 15 sections
of photography. I mean four let's see. We
had about eight dark rooms in this place. I
mean it was this huge machine that was how to
crank out people that know knew how to use the
technology but it was a hospital internship uh type of
environment because the athletic department the whole campus needed services
also on how to do this. So you're the
students were actively producing product for the university plus learning
how to do it how to design for it.
And my mentor was Howard levy who was trying to
also tie in message designed of course and I got
with Mac Fleming and Howard both. Um And so
my eyes started opening up wider and then came you
know a ec conventions or the conference. Well at
that time that was I had a workshop that I
thought was big. But then when we went to
the A. C. T. Convention we had
the whole Nava group there that was going to have
all of the vendors from all over the world were
presenting how their how they were going to be bringing
on new technologies. And I said oh my gosh
we're not even doing right with the ones we got
how we gonna handle these new ones. And so
uh presenting how we were using the technology and then
going to the exhibits that were there was just a
huge event every single year for all the students.
So I started in 1966 going to A. C. T.
Conferences. Um and I saw amazing
things like our whole industry was kind of look like
how do you make large signs? Well naturally use
a rico uh and you've got a template and you
can do that and I go to this conference and
I see a robotic right Rajko maker and so you
put it in there and this automatic thing draws the
Rajkot stylists around and creates it. I said we're
out of a job folks. We we've already you
know it's already happening were being replaced by these robots.
Little did I know about the computer industry coming
down the pike that was going to replace an awful
lot of the things that we do um Or that
we had to be the ones now doing that instead
of the other things. Um The thing that abc
t. Became important in was the linkages to other
universities and the networking because we met other people and
found out that they were either doing the same thing
we were doing or my gosh we're really leading the
field in a lot of the things that are going
on and uh that's when I started to be aware
of the administration that was running abc at the time
were mostly some indian university people that word and that's
why it was called the indiana mafia that was,
had a presence there and we were we were graduating
the most students. Uh so it really became a
partnership between A. E. C. T.
And uh what what the field needed. Um And
A. C. T. Was our tool our
implementation to be able to spread the word on techniques,
integration strategies, teaching strategies, all of these
things. Um That that was going to be really
having an impact on the U. S. Not
only that some of the projects that we're working on,
we were bringing in a lot of different foreign
students to be able to get trained at iU and
from Africa from Taiwan from the Thailand we had special
arrangements with all of them, some of us would
be going there and some of them we bring people
there um as academia is um Change is always in
the wind. So when the new president came in
and found out that our uh educational library was generating
about$1 million dollars a year uh that wasn't going
into the university pool, then we ended up having
to be split into our academic control and have that
move over and ironically at about the same time that
that was happening or a little bit before Nava was
also splitting up. And so the conference itself then
lost the Navajo exhibit and we just had the pedagogical
uh stress. So it's been it's been an interesting
path of kind of imploding in one area but then
moving over and building up in another area uh and
the struggle can still continues. Mhm. Um In
terms of the of the evolution of A. C. T.
Sort of talked about in the context
of the indiana experience, what can you say more
globally? You've had leadership positions in the, yes
I've been um I've had I've been past president of
the multimedia the media design and production division at that
time I was involved in by being in that position.
I was also working with uh the foundation and
also the board at trying to look at uh what
the role of divisions were and how fragmented the the
divisions became all you know and and when we were
into trying to own multi I keep saying multimedia production
because I'm now on the board of the multimedia production
division. So that's the new division that's come back
up, that's replaced the old one. And I'm
still I'm still not happy with the the sense of
family that um that A. C. T.
Has among its members. And I've I've always been
one to stress that the process that we're dealing with
is one of collaboration and integration and and and working
together as a team. And I think that the
divisions have a tendency to break that apart and to
have just some um operation and focus just within the
division and look at saying well the division next to
me is not really doing the same thing that we're
doing. But in reality if we ever get into
the um business of creating something it takes every single
division. If A. C. T. Itself
was given the grant to produce something and then said
okay now all you divisions need to work together in
this process for doing the best what you'd be doing.
I think it'd be hard to be able to
get everybody to sit around the table. But if
I go in the in the public sector as I
then went on to produce films and industrial films and
all other kinds of multi multi image projects of which
nobody remembers what multi images anymore. Uh And as
soon as I saw a Macintosh displayed I couldn't believe
the graphic interface and how easy it was to do
things. And then teachers became the ones doing it
and all of a sudden we weren't the ones doing
it. So it was it was it's been an
interesting path. And A. C. T.
Has had to really struggle with how do you support
and encourage all of this because it's uh in a
lot of cases there's not a lot of happy campers
in one place or another. As the as the
new thing shifts from one thing to the other.
So I'd like to be able to work at a
much more inter division collaboration. Uh And of course
I've been working with all the old timers. Mendel
Sherman, I've been working with uh he's in his
nineties now and his um last conversation I had with
him was which editors that I think we're best on
the new digital stuff because he's making movies for his
retirement community and uh you know, we don't stop,
we just keep on going and I'm sure that's
the case with a lot of us that are just
so immersed in our own particular focus that we just
want to keep on pushing. So that's good.
And that's why this association is so important because uh
there's a lot of knowledge collectively within this organization,
all from the people that have been here before that
say, yeah, that's a new media. So
um why is it that I should say like for
instance, the new thing is games and simulations that
are out there. Well, we went through the
process of film, would film, encourage and and
make education better. Oh no, because video just
came in, video is going to be the one
that make everything better. And then every new media
that comes online, every learning environment that does and
we are one organization that is supposed to be able
to see that it's not the media that's going to
do it. It's still the darn good instruction and
implementation of it, that's going to be whether it's
a deciding factor, even clark and Kozma went on
and on about that battle, but nobody took,
nobody said it's what you do with the media that's
important. Not the media Kozma was trying to say
some of that stuff, but uh, you know,
we we get caught up in these banters.
Uh, but all the media studies that went on,
they never talked about which media they talk.
What was the attributes of the media And this is
where where did message design go? I mean,
that's what I grew up on with Mac and Howard
levy and now where is message design in this whole
process? Because it's a critical thing that makes it
work. And then we are having now sort of
an insurgence on just the word design. So there
is a design process and, and we're trying to
get a division called design division, you know,
and everyone's kind of take that word and dropping it
across what they're doing and I agree that we are
all doing design. We just are working on different
aspects of the process. And uh, if we
talk to each other more and and bridge our thoughts
and look at iterative models of development, um,
that's something that this organization is going to be one
to be able to support. And the way that
I think that might be happening is that we are
providing more showcases of actual product and cases that worked
and when you go back and think about it.
The only thing that we've had with our academic support
has been publications and it's very difficult to look at
any publication or study and really understand what that product
look like that they're testing and what the implementation context
was, what really happened during that. It's not
documented. But if you document a case study rigorously
enough you'll pick up some of that stuff. So
both D. N. D. And media production
division are having awards for the best case scenarios that
they can show that learning occurred out of that.
And so we are gonna have maybe a journal,
a design journal, that's a case study journal.
We're going to have these awards. So I could
see in the future that A. C. T.
Is going to have a place that you need
to go to find out what's working and that would
be. That's what I think the best case scenario
would be because I don't see it happening in the
site conferences and some of these others. Um and
so maybe that's how we could be unique and stand
out in the field, which is what it was
always the problem as our ebbs and flows of money
that have happened to hold things together. I feel
us on a little growth spurt right now the wave
is starting to swell and maybe even crest. So
uh we've had good attendance at this conference and hopefully
when people go back they'll say boy I really did
learn a lot and they'll encourage everybody else to come
back. Somebody surfing the web or told about
A. C. T. Hits the site finds the
history makers. And we have a series of little
sound biting sort of remarks about why a new career
professional or a gratitude should be interested in being involved
in A. C. T. What I would
say that it is that one time where you can
talk, go to and meet um practitioners that are
talking about the micro level analysis of the design process
in whichever air either instructional strategies, context analysis,
evaluation development, media production, implementation teaching. There
are people here that are really doing it and talking
about the difficulties uh of getting it done correctly.
And um so that's a lot different from going to
a conference where you have papers presented on studies,
you don't get to talk to them and they usually
don't go into the detail that's necessary. So uh
networking here to actual people that are doing the same
thing you're doing in another location. And that even
is setting up collaboration uh is what I think is
going to make a A. C. T.
A real mecca to come to anything else you'd like
to say well I don't know what my crystal ball
is relatively foggy in terms of so much of the
new technologies, the mobile technologies, the new students
all of this stuff. I don't know that it's
necessary for us to be responsible for making it work.
Um for a number of reasons it's very complex
and you can't get access to a lot of the
things that you need to get access to to incorporated
into your teaching. I think that um we are
going to have to step back and look at things
that are happening and really be maybe some leaders in
suggesting possible combinations. Uh And the only reason that
I say we need to step back is because I
think the whole instructional design field is being challenged to
be to flex and two we we have been having
things which originally started with Dick and Carry model and
then now we go to uh any of the other
A C. T. S. Even the addie
model is in is perceived initially as being a linear
process. Linear processes are out the window. You
can't do it that way. So, how how
do you define what we do if we're taking an
iterative development model and I'm gonna start with evaluation initially
as being a linear process, linear processes are out
the window, you can't do it that way.
So how how do you define what we do if
we're taking an iterative development model and I'm gonna start
with evaluation and I spent a lot of time with
T. A. G since he's in indiana and
he is probably the the worst salesman for A.C.T.
Because he says you guys are all
going the wrong direction. Um And his point is
that uh we're not paying attention to the news types
of students and the fact that we're trying to uh
codify the process too closely, We're trying to say
this is this is the formula as if this whole
process we're in is the science and if you do
these things this way is going to work. So
we need to be able to look at the field
and start acting ourselves as if we are going to
be adaptive and flexible and dynamic and not hold on
to a lot of the older paradigms and be able
to really start getting into that very uncomfortable area of
talking to students and finding out where they're coming from
and not just saying to our students this is the
way you gotta do it. Um And my last
example would be if you take a gamer they die
and they address failure 100 times during every single game
session. But our paradigm of teaching has always been
flipped is to avoid failure at all costs in our
teaching. If your students are failing, you obviously
are not doing a good job teaching, which means
that the only alternative you have is to front load
instruction with all the stuff that is so boring to
these students and they they want to just get in
and manipulate the variables and they said but you can't
do that you're not, you're gonna fail, you
know, a couple of them and they say cool
I'll learn from that now. So if we say
we need to flip around our whole instructional process to
where we give the manipulable and we do coaching along
the way and then we do reflection and we do
all kinds of things like that. We're also going
to have to change instructional design to be a lot
more adaptive and that whole process and to the extent
that that's going to bounce off of A. C. T.
And what we call as far as
divisions that are based on that sort of linear model.
Um We need to just challenge that and just
let other things kind of starting to emerge and fall
away. So I certainly don't think A. C. T.
Is going to be static for a
while. I think it's gonna be pretty dynamic in
terms of change both organization. But I really believe
that A. C. T. Is going to uh see
the handwriting on the wall and start adapting.