Richard O. Mason
Integrated services digital networks (ISDN) can be used to educate groups of people by means of dialogue featuring an interactive exchange of textual, voice, graphic, and pictorial information. Participants need not meet in the same place at the same time. Rather, they may be remote and dispersed, and they can exchange information asynchronously, for instance, without the need to come to a campus. Benefits secured via this approach include: 1. increased flexibility in the delivery of educational services, 2. reductions in travel and other costs, and 3. the ability to engage a large number of people with different backgrounds in a knowledge-gaining conversation. A model seminar is presented in which 20 people sign up for a seminar on architecture and agree to meet electronically once a week to exchange ideas on famous architects and their works. Such a conversation is highly interactive. Participants can also interact reflectively.