today, we're here in Fairfield California with Dr Jerrold
Kemp and it's june 14th 2000 and 12 and welcome
jerry, thank you so much for participating in the
history makers project. Thank you for this opportunity.
Barbara, this has been a great field for me
to work. Why don't you begin by telling us
a little bit about what you're doing now, where
you're living and what you've been up to. Okay
, my wife Edith and I live in a retirement
senior retirement community that has been burned by the,
by retired military people here. There are 23 apartment
buildings and about 40 homes. So There are about
over 300 people living in this area and they provide
a very good services which included assisted living nursing care
as necessary. We're getting along pretty well yet.
But those times to come and I discovered this by
reading an advertisement in the retired military offices, magazine
, monthly magazine and we wanted something in northern California
near Berkeley where my wife's daughter lives and this was
the best and we checked it out, checked some
others out and that's fine. So we're happy to
be here. I'm not involved in education stuff at
this time very much. You have other interests I
pursue and we'll mention those as we go ahead.
Okay, great. Thank you. Tell us a
little bit about your your work history where you began
and and a little bit about your career. Okay
. My work history in our field, which was
known as the audio visual field, came about after
I left the military during the Second World war.
I had been a chemistry major at the at the
university of of florida Gainesville before the war and I
studied chemistry there as I say. And when I
came back after the service I very much wanted to
teach, I like kids very much and I wanted
to teach science two Children. And I applied for
a teaching position at a junior high school in Miami
which had a very nice american name known as the
robert E lee junior high school. And I use
films a great deal because I love the idea of
not just talking as I had. Teachers would say
to me once in a while that I remember a
history teacher teaching of course to the students on the
revolutionary days as America was forming. And I said
, hey, there's a new film in the library
on the revolution. Oh, she says that sounds
interesting. She says, well, as soon as
I get done my lecture, I'll consider using it
. And I said to myself, wouldn't it be
good for her to use that before the lecture?
So the students would know more what this subject is
about rather than go through the verbal work that she's
doing in her lecture and that way. And I
became more interested in helping teachers to look at the
contributions that audiovisual made. So that's where I got
started. I tried, I took my master's degree
at the University of Miami in florida and there was
one course on audiovisual education and it was of course
that was mainly offered by the salesman from the film
projectors and slide projector companies for the students there.
And I learned how to run the projectors in that
way. But also the interesting thing was that there
was a textbook used in the course And it was
a book some of you may have been familiar with
from a long distance, it was done in the
1940s 46. It's Baker Dale audio visual methods of
teaching and this is really a fascinating thing to read
even today to to look at this. I marked
one page in here, which is which is what's
called the cone of experience. Moving from the most
communicative forms of technology. Down at the bottom,
direct purposeful experiences, contrived experience, dramatic participation,
where you're all doing things, demonstrations, field trips
, exhibits, and then those are the doing and
then on the second level are the observing and these
are with motion pictures, Radio and recordings. Remember
, this was written in 1946 visual symbols, and
then there's the top of it, which is the
symbolizing the verbal symbols, the voice and so forth
. So we're going from direct experiences to the media
which an intermediate type experience to the verbal levels dealing
in lectures and so forth. And Edward L just
did a great thing. And he was at Ohio
State and I admired him for many ways and kept
in touch with him later on because he made me
think about this field in new ways. So that's
how I got started in the profession. That's wonderful
. And tell us about the primary focus of your
work during your career. Well, when I when
I started working in the audio visual field, it
interested me greatly because it was learning things that you
could participate in. It wasn't a textbook, particularly
verbal learning the top of the tail cone in that
sense at all. It was hands on in a
large extent. And I had experiences as a as
a young kid going to a boy's summer camp in
Connecticut. And it was fascinating to me because the
director was just just a very good teacher, but
his teaching was that you the student had to be
able to do it or or discuss it or understand
it and illustrate that. And we would do things
about, learning about plants and the difference leaves on
trees and things and we would have to identify and
relate them ourselves rather than just hearing about them.
And that started me out thinking about if you're in
education you would want the students to be a participatory
resource in the process of learning rather than sitting back
and verbalizing about it, which is how it so
often happens. So the audio visual field for me
was the way to get out into that. And
and that got me going when I finished my degree
at the University of Miami the Master's degree and I
still have Gi Bill left, I talked to the
audio visual director at the film library in the county
and I said you know where can you go to
get a doctor degree? I still have G.
I. Bill so I wouldn't have to be paying
for my education. And I would like to study
somewhere where I would learn the practical things dealing with
audio vision. He says the best one in the
country is Indiana University. I said in indiana.
Yeah. I said oh that's interesting. And I
contacted them and I found out that they teach you
how to film production. How did you slide and
record with tapes and you can make little strips,
which we called filmstrips and put sound on them and
those can be used for students to study by themselves
. I said this sounds fascinating, it's practical.
I was also learning about running film libraries and the
theories of of communication and all and you need to
learn on the doctoral level. So I went to
Indiana University and I was there about two years working
on my on my doctoral degree and I learned wonderful
things from a faculty and a staff that were most
remarkable. I wrote down on paper here some of
the some of the take the people boy, I
didn't have that guy's name down that ran the show
. But there was a fellow in production harvey fry
who taught graphics and all. And there was a
fellow named Denny Pet who taught the motion picture techniques
and it was just awful. You really got to
do it and became so good at it that you'll
be able to work with it as you did it
. And that got me into the field that way
very much. And after I finished my work in
indiana, the interest now was to find a job
I could work in and apply this stuff. And
I was told that at a place called and it
was actually san Jose college In the late 50s,
which was in California in the bay area, relatively
near San Francisco. And they were setting up an
audiovisual center with a film library and so forth,
primarily for resources for the faculty. And they did
have what we know what we used to call.
They still do except they're retired overhead projectors and opaque
projective that faculty members could use in their teaching to
illustrate things and the audio visual center, in addition
to having the film library had staff members who could
help the faculty members to use this stuff and also
produce it. We had a film production man that
worked with me in film production. I had a
graphic artist, I had a recording technician and these
old could work with faculty and meat and I was
doing scripts and doing storyboards for faculty on things they
wanted to illustrate and that was a great come on
. And it got things very interested in. Faculty
members became very active with this and it satisfied me
, excuse me, because I could see things that
they would want to do. I still remember an
instructor in the art, art department who taught art
history and this was general education. So she had
students that came to our history who came from Business
and Engineering and the sciences, history, language and
they have to take a general education class. And
they picked the one in art history And she said
they would sit and she had about 60 of them
in a lecture hall and she would show slides and
lecture about historical topics and she could see they were
born by this sort of thing to do. And
as she said at the end of the course,
when they took the final exam and they were leaving
, one guy would say to another one as he
left through the doorway, he'd say, boy,
that's the last art class I ever take. He
said, that was just boring. She said,
I want to make it more interesting. I said
, well can't we get them to learn some of
the stuff on their own by having the visuals you
show and talk about and ask them questions that would
get them involved. And then instead of your lecturing
, they could study this stuff in a layout with
filmstrips or slide tape or whatever we can provide.
And you and I could script those together and then
you would present and they would have time and we
could set up a lab where we have this whole
series of film strips set up and it would be
open. We could get graduate students in art who
could run it there for you. And then you
would meet them three times a week for three hours
of classes and have them meet with you and discuss
these things and review questions before you test it all
. And I said you might even be able to
take field trips to museums and art galleries that they
could see the artists and what you're talking about.
And she was very open to this sort of thing
. And that became a big deal. And that
got me started. I'm thinking about teaching in new
ways with the media and all sort of things.
So that that, that worked with me at SAN
Jose state and uh, and as a matter of
fact, the word got out with her and I
had a fellow in science doing this also with his
labs and so forth. And, and, and
, and work have the students studying this stuff ahead
of time and prepare to meet in the class with
the instructor and go over reviews and so forth.
And we even had people from the chancellor's office and
what are these people doing there? That's so different
we could hear. And I used to go down
into the lab of the uh, of the art
teacher and into the, into the, where the
students were studying by themselves and they used to be
people coming in and looking around and the, and
the graduate student who sort of, we asked,
excuse me, uh, you're not in the class
. So you know, he says, brace took
the course last semester and I wanted to see what
you're doing different now. So it's just a whole
series of beliefs in that and professionally that got me
starting to think more and more about the need for
getting us to use the audio visuals, not as
assistance for the lecture, but for student learning that
they can pace themselves on at their own time and
then move on to it. So that was my
background, so to speak. As I moved into
this sort of thing, I was having contacts with
other leaders in the field and I can convention some
of them, pardon me for putting my head down
for a moment. I wanted to get a book
here. Uh for example, a fellow named Jim
Finn James Finn at USC did a book on extending
education through technology, which my colleague at san Jose
state, Ron Macbeth was the was published all the
he was sort of the editor he was edited by
, but this was this was James Jim Finn.
It was a very good theorist in the field.
He didn't ever make audio visuals himself, never made
a film or anything, but he did the theory
behind it, a white man and I would read
that and others would read it and we feel this
sort of thing is so, so valuable. And
I'll mention some others that were very important here.
I mentioned Edgar Dale Jim Finn fellow at Penn State
charlie open there. There was a fellow in And
by the way, as a side issue when I
went to San Jose in 1958, uh huh.
What was happening in the early 60s? Many of
you know about the Silicon Valley was being started in
that area and there were a great number of companies
that were forming to deal with computers, Apple intel
, you would pack it and go on and on
. And they were running into interesting problems they were
teaching, they had to they had to provide instruction
for their employees and the engineers were developing the components
of computers that would be necessary developed here and that
was going to cause training for the people who assembled
made the equipment, put it together, those who
sold salesman out in the field and many others in
the company to understand what the computers are and what
they would be doing, how they should be put
manufactured and so forth. And they were lectured to
by engineers and as one of the companies Hewlett package
give us a call one day and said and said
Dr kEMP, we have a problem. We have
engineers giving lectures to our employees so they understand what
they have to do in their operational footwork or in
the sales work. And and the employees tell us
that they don't understand what the engineers are talking about
because they're giving them election. As one said to
him, the manager said, we're giving, it
sounds like one engineer lecturing to another engineer and they're
not communicating to average people. So we took the
engineers and we gave courses where they would make visual
materials, they can make videos if necessary or 16
millimeter in the early days and slides and use these
along with handouts for the employees. And they describe
them and the staff started to learn this stuff and
they thanked us profusely and I said, you know
, we don't only have to train our teachers and
professors, but we've got to help the engineering and
the manufacturing company to understand and training their audiovisual has
a key role to play. So I had people
some of you may remember the name robert meager bob
maker today in a very nice book and he remembers
something called programmed instruction that went on in the early
days, which, which was pages in a book
, which were, which was just questions with some
information. And you have to pick an answer to
the question and go to another page. Either a
right yes, I would, no, I wouldn't
. And you pick the right page and say,
Oh no, you're wrong. You have to learn
more about that. Go back and read it again
or something or yes, you did. If so
, now turn to page 37. So you go
all over the place. And publishers were very upset
because you're only writing a little bit on a piece
of paper when you're doing the book. But mega
did a book on preparing objectives for programmed instruction.
And he started to teach me about things that I
wasn't thinking about initially here. So there are a
lot of people in industry, robert gagne at florida
state was into the theory for some of these sorts
of things. Yeah. Roger Kaufman at Foreign State
also, I think was in that Dave Merrill who
was in our field either Davey, I have a
number of people that are listed down here, be
of Skinner, I mentioned also, they were into
this sort of thing in new way. Now what
this did to me was to think of doing beyond
what we were originally doing and what I was doing
was dealing with the audiovisual material stuff. And I
have then said, I'm going to make some text
books about this that people will understand. And I
first started my textbooks Where was 63 planning and producing
audiovisual material. I had a graphic artist when a
photographer that worked with me. And you can just
see on pages there are photographs are things trying to
tell people when you talk about a camera shooting a
long shot through the lens. What does that mean
? Well you can see what different you have a
long shot medium shot close up and so forth.
And it's all explained in the book. And this
was a great book because I ended up with about
eight editions. And there was a fellow from Utah
State University. I'll get it right don smelly who
became a co author with me because I wasn't up
on some of the new technologies anymore now. And
we did great on that. Ah we made a
thing for toastmaster people who give talks and so it's
great that they would use audiovisual Toastmasters international and audiovisual
Handbook that a colleague of mine at san Jose state
critic louis louis did. We did it together with
an artist that he illustrated how things could be explained
. Very nice. I noticed the very beginning they
had a great a great deal of people seated sleeping
with intellectual holes at all. Yeah, it wasn't
working. And then it was so interesting that we
prepared a guide for educational media from McGraw Hill,
which talked about what these media are and how they
are. And then we did a kid, we
produced a whole series of visual material that could be
used by teachers to learn more about this. And
this was our contribution and the productivity of us and
got our name into many people. And then when
I was doing all this, I became president sheikh
in the afternoon, I became president of act in
1973. And guess what year that was? That
was the 50th anniversary of the CTT and AV It's
forerunner, which started in 1923. And now it
was 73, our 50 years in a V.
We did a commemorative booklet on this sort of thing
. And and I was, I was president and
bob Jarecki was the president elect from sacramento. Howard
Hitchens was executive director And Dick nine Bec It was
a deputy executive. These are going back to the
70s, there's a copy of this around, I
know, put this out of how it worked and
all that. It's fascinating. All the folks that
I talked with, I can mention names like charlie
shaw from michigan state, Ray Wyman from central Washington
and and all those my colleague Ron with Beth Phil
Lewis, he was a president of a company in
Chicago and so forth. It was Jim here was
uh huh. I mean I don't change name Jim
Finn here, Donald healey from Syracuse. So these
were all people participating and we were getting well known
and as this as they moved on my feelings started
to change in the field also. I said you
know it isn't just audiovisual that's important when we talk
of technology and I was learning from the people in
industry is in Silicon Valley that the terms technology is
a process, not just how to do it.
And I started to think about other ways we can
do things that a hey a company that is inventing
something is helping to design And I think today about
the space vehicle and all the advanced stuff that they're
dealing with has got a lot of elements of technology
to put together and how may the supply and Jim
Jim Finn talked about this theoretical and not get into
the guts of it. And what happened was I
said you know it deals with planning and I are
how you plan instruction. So if you're going to
make a film, there should be some objective that
relate to what the film is going to be doing
and then how that fits into the subject area,
science teacher and you're going to make a film about
birds and how they're able to fly and so forth
. You want to say no, what do you
want the students to learn about that? So I
said there ought to be someone I call. I
came up with the word instructional design And this was
in 19 19 71. My first book entitled instructional
design, a plan for unit and course development and
the format I had was very had my blinkers on
pretty much it had the whole series of steps I
started from, you picked the topic in general purpose
. Do you want to deal with? You look
at the students as to their characteristics, which means
which means the preparation for it? What are the
objectives you want to teach? What is the subject
content for the objectives? Pretest to give. So
students will test, the teacher would test the students
and the students would say, see I know all
that stuff. What do I have to study it
or these are the parts? I don't know and
I need to now study that and fit them in
. And then what we call the teaching learning activities
and resources. And you think about what the teacher
could present, what the students can learn by him
or herself and what projects that students can have and
in activities, problem solving applications and so forth.
I call that teaching learning activities and resources and the
resources you need with it, what films, what
places in the community and so on. And then
evaluation and it was a linear list you come down
and then isn't right. You keep coming back.
And I did that. And when I called the
instructional design process in those days and as I worked
with this, I came across a a person who
is very thoughtful Canadian. The name was Marshall McLuhan
who came from Canada into the field of media and
he had a a statement he made many times in
presentations at our national convention and elsewhere and he said
, we move into the future looking in a rear
view mirror. People have to think a moment.
What do you see when you look in the rear
view mirror where, where, where I've been,
what I've done before. So old habits don't change
easily. And people who are used to giving lectures
as professors are changing is quite different. I,
I ran across an article from a recent paper and
you folks have made many of you possibly heard record
created the film name Salt. Com, K H
A N, who he has has quote has a
labor of love is sparking a revolution in online education
and he was in my son's a area of mountain
view and so forth. Uh, uh, he
is dealing primarily with students taking online courses, most
of which are set up for self paced learning on
their own and then and being done by technology and
he has 100,000 students around the world taking this and
getting getting credits for it to, it's debatable.
Some of the things he does. I wonder whether
it's lecture and looking at videos and filling out of
forms and so forth. And interestingly when I started
teaching my instructional design class at SAN Jose State the
students, it was a graduate course in our Construction
Technology Master's Program And we would, we would meet
from 7-10 on Monday nights for 15 weeks of the
semester. And the first night we got together,
students all came in and they got notebooks out and
when the right stuff professor tells him and I told
him, I said, now this is the textbook
we're going to use and it's in the book store
to get and we're going to spend the first five
weeks of the semester or six weeks of the semester
studying the text and we're not gonna meet in class
at all. What what kind of course is that
? I said you've got a responsibility student And this
could be 20 students and maybe a third of them
are people training people from industry. We're taking the
master's program there and I said, Your job in
five weeks Is to study the 1st 10 chapters in
the book, which are explaining what the instructional design
processes, how it works, what the elements are
, how you can apply and you are to go
through the book. And there are the end of
each chapter. There are a whole series of review
question and I said, and and they're just questions
there. Now with each, with each for each
of you, I'm going to give you a set
of six or 8, I can't remember six,
I think six or 8 audio cassettes which are audio
guides for you for those chapters you're really dealing with
. You should listen to each chapter, start listening
to the beginning tape on that chapter. Before you
read the chapter, then it tells you to read
certain pages in the chapter from First pages to the
1st 10 or 12 of the 20 pages and then
do the review question and then come back to the
tape. What's going to happen? I'm going to
give you feedback on the review question and you can
check your answer if you weren't right, review for
yourself, check the questions again and then check the
answer to see if it comes out better And you
will have five weeks to do this and I will
be here in the classroom all of those five weeks
from 7-10. And if you can't make it,
if you're working and so forth, call me and
we'll set an appointment up sometimes come to my office
and work and you've got to do that and then
guess what? You're going to take an exam from
me on those 10 chapters and you know what?
You've got to get 90 on the exam to pass
. And some students would say, And if we
get 90 of the exam said, I said,
well give it a try and if you go through
the review questions and they're not coming out right,
do come in and visit with me and let's talk
about. And we started this and I said now
after the five weeks we're all going to meet again
And I'm hopefully that 90 of you have Got the
90 great on it. Some of you are going
to be going to drop outs. I know you're
not going to enjoy this. I don't want that
pressure and so forth, but give it a good
try and let's go on. Then we're going to
apply this. You're going to become a resource subject
. You want to take a subject that's important to
you that you know about and you're going to work
with one of your colleagues here and do the instructional
design process to develop instruction for that topic. You
got the subject expert now and the other person is
the instructional designer and show us how it works.
And then you come back in together and we present
these to class and discuss and go on and realize
you're not just giving lectures. You're dealing with self
paced learning by students and interactive activities among students and
instructor. And so so go to work and it
worked fine and that students used to come in and
tell me this is wonderful. I can get this
and I can study this myself at my pace.
I can review it and I have questions I can
ask you or ask another student who would help me
. And it went on like this just fine and
someone would say to me which I kept smiling when
they said this, they said you know in my
instruction that I'm giving a course I would like to
use. Mhm. Where I can have a reference
guy here in texas but I want to call it
a textbook and have them study this and review and
then work on it And then we would help them
and they would get it because you know, you
deal with people that are in the manufacturing so you
don't want them to create 80 answering the question when
you're 100%. So people would start doing this more
and it caught on more and more and that's where
we got out to do it more. That's a
terrific overview of uh your contributions to the field dairy
and a real treasure trove of publications you've assembled there
. And so you really helped initiate the whole concept
of instructional design. I hope so. There were
people we're doing and I told you Jim Finn,
he wrote about it. But he always gave Jim
never went into the technology in an application sort of
way. But we like to hear from him,
but the fellas who picked it up and applied it
at florida state, uh, did I mentioned roger
coffee. He was a name I had on my
list who applied this stuff so well in his way
his way there too. So they yes, they
picked it up for me and I'm just pleased to
see it move, keep moving around. And so
what do you think was the greatest accomplishment of your
career and why? Well, it's really that instructional
design to the instructional design process that that that picked
up and came about and people saw the way to
apply it and they were able to use the marshal
, not use his but understand that you don't look
in the rear view mirror when you're teaching, you
look in the future, the world has changed and
right now, you know, I feel like the
guy that used to run something and ran it and
other people took over and advanced it and all the
guy keeps running and say, wait, wait,
I'm your leader, wait for me. And that's
where I am. Now when I when I think
about that that Kangai who's who's got his his stuff
now online, I'd like to look at some of
his courses and see how they run. And are
we? Are we Is this the guy that talk
at the convention that we're having? I would think
and talk about his approach to it because that's where
the world's gone. I mean, it's coming to
the point where where schools are not going to be
needed period, we've said that before way many years
ago, but it isn't happened, but now it's
happening with online and opening it up in all sorts
of ways. So I feel I'm I'm lucky to
be early leader and there are many others, but
from here on it's it's stand back and get out
of the way and let the world change and it's
going to change more and more in our business.
Well, speaking of online education and future trends,
what do you think future professionals could learn from a
look in the rear view mirror at the history of
some of the trends and issues that you've discussed,
You know, I think, and I think I'm
just I'm just a piece of that process. Uh
huh. See, I have to say say this
, Mhm. When we when we when we got
started with this, and I have to say charlie
rangel of another one, some of the indiana folks
and others that came about and charlie and I worked
together in my experience, I applied this stuff,
this is what I was doing. And a lot
of my colleagues I found out we're on the talking
level about and I don't know, I asked,
charlie is just kiddingly charlie, do you teach all
in lectures in your class? What we have discussions
too, you know? But he doesn't say anything
about technology in what's happening. So I don't know
where folks are going in the future that way.
Because we had set up the the division of systemic
, systemic change in the field and all, but
I don't hear much of that happening that way people
are applying things, but I don't and I don't
see again, I'm out, I'm out of circulation
pretty much. But what impact is act having another
national and international organizations in what we do. And
from a research standpoint, they are because 86 emphasis
in so many ways is on graduate students and their
research and I re tech trends. It's really graduate
student articles dealing with their dissertation on what they've been
doing and how it can affect education and so,
But I want to see I want to see the
the real stories of how we have affected it,
where we have impact on the Department of Education.
You know, the no child left behind concept,
which doesn't deal with what we're dealing with. We're
here at all. They don't think of, it's
the rear view mirror stuff. It's the same old
practices, but you've got to speak louder to them
or run faster and it isn't it isn't doing it
. I don't have enough knowledge about some of the
technologies now to be able to help people. But
all right, I have been asked to meet with
any and and throw out questions that could stimulate some
rethinking where we should be part of the the changes
in technology, changing impacts of technology within this.
You listen to an interview on the news hour on
PBS Bye Education. Mhm. What's his name in
the Department of Education? Can't think of it.
That runs things. And what he discusses is never
everything dealing with this kind of media change and how
how you can change away from the teacher in control
to where the students control much of their learning.
And the teacher performs another function. We don't hear
that in the education involved here. You know,
there was the convention before, during or after mine
in which we try to take the conventions away from
from from lecture presentations at the convention to have some
uh video that set up that the attendees could review
before the presentation was scheduled and they would get the
message that the presenter has to offer and then presents
his job was to form small groups of discussion and
then come back, present their summaries on his topic
. And so and let him talk about how effective
and so forth. We tried that, we tried
that in California a couple of times with film strips
that people would look at beforehand sound filmstrips and and
see how that would affect the changes in the in
the in the programs. And there was interest shown
, but not much pick up after whoever was running
in charge of the convention director would do this.
And the next time the guy didn't care about doing
it a he or she at all. And I
still say we're still in some of those areas jerry
, that was a fantastic review of your career path
and you're amazing contributions to our field. Tell us
a little bit about what you've been doing recently.
Well as you get older, you've got to think
more about what's going to happen with your life and
what you need to do if you're interested in keeping
it going. And mhm as I said earlier,
I've been thinking about well living For many years and
there are three components of healthy living. One is
exercise, which we tell people you got to do
not just sit and watch television. Secondly, you've
got to eat properly, good nutrition and third,
you've got to keep an active mind which is,
is helping you keep away from Alzheimer's and that sort
of stuff. One last question, how would you
like to be remembered within the profession of instructional design
and technology? I can only say you have to
look at my, my, my publications and those
that are of the later dates dealing from When I
say the way the dates because I retired in 88
, so dealing with the 70s and 80's knows that
seem to apply and that our people in the field
can see efforts to include in the new technology theory
as well as the operations would feel that I've contributed
something to them that for the with those resources that
can still be applied today, I feel thank you
so much during our pleasure to be with you.