The production of social work video discs is costly and requires a multidisciplinary production team. Costs to students for instructional computer software may equal current textbook costs. Technology increases dissemination of information to students and their use of it. Computer data bases and interactive hypermedia discs save students study time by storing and organizing a vast amount of information on a single disc. Students can use this disc in private and at their own pace for guided discovery of facts, concepts, social welfare policies and social work interventive processes.
Technology can increase teaching-learning options.
It may address authoritative learning styles better than reflective ones, and limit critical thinking by not permitting students to create their own solutions to computer posed problems. Instead they have to choose a solution from a given list of possible alternative ones. Technology creates access to knowledge. In concluding I once again thank the contributors to this issue of Tulane Studies in Social Welfare for the many examples of their work and their insights into how microworlds of computers and macroworlds of video technology may facilitate teaching and learning processes that will contribute to the professional development of social work students, and graduates, too, now and well into the 21st century. Current and potential applications of interactive videodiscs in social work education.