Sitting before the computer in his Bethesda
office Bill Harless holds a microphone and prepares to learn something new.
Perhaps he’ll discover how to diagnose
an elderly man’s heart failure or brush up on his Arabic.
Harless isn’t a doctor or a linguist.
For him, these computer-simulated lessons aren’t a way to do his job better.
They are his job.
Five years ago, Harless, an Alabama native with a Ph.D. in
philosophy from the University of Oklahoma, opened Interactive Drama Inc. with his
longtime collaborator, Marcia A. Zier.
Since then, the pair and an ever-expanding staff, now up
to 11, have been delivering the next best thing to being there – realistic
"face-to-face" conversations that give students the chance to learn by doing,
even though they never leave their seats.
The market for high-tech training materials continues to
grow, says Jim Spencer, president of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Video Learning Library,
which offers more than 10,000 special-interest videos.
Custom-designed interactive instructional materials
don’t come cheap, Spencer said. But, he added, if a company can prove the lessons
boost employees’ skills, then firms will be interested.
Sitting in front of his computer, Harless acts out the
role of a physician asked to diagnose a short-of-breath patient.
"Did you have a cough?" Harless asks into the
microphone.
"I’m a smoker, so yes, I cough a lot,"
answers the man, dressed in a hospital gown and wearing an oxygen mask.
Interactive [IDI] actually videotaped an hour-long
interview with the George Washington University Hospital patient seen on the screen, then
digitized and compressed his answers and other details of his hospital stay on CD-ROM.
Now, Harless can spend hundreds of hours at his computer
mastering how to interview the patient, order and interpret diagnostic tests and prescribe
proper treatment – all with an endlessly patient patient who’s at no risk if the
wrong treatment’s ordered for him.
"It’s a wonderful way to learn," says Zier,
who met Harless in San Francisco in the early 70’s and has worked with him ever
since. "It’s self-directed, so there’s no single pathway through the
material. Students love being able to interact with the person on screen."
Watching Harless question the patient, it’s easy in
forget that an actual conversation isn’t unfolding. Students often report
"losing" themselves in the material, Harless and Zier say.
Other lessons developed by Interactive [IDI] hold a
similar realism.
The Spanish and Arabic
language offerings are considered "immersion" programs, where students
converse in the language for hours with nary an English word to be heard.
Other programs include a triage
simulation where medical professionals practice making treatment decisions as a crisis
hits, an introductory Spanish program for health care workers
and a program designed to help primary care providers practice interviewing patients at
risk for HIV about their sexual history and practices.
All the programs feature naturally spoken dialogue with a
video character, a technology the company patented in 1993.
Now Interactive [IDI] would like to test the commercial
appeal of its offerings while continuing to develop new programs through contracts.
Harless and Zier aren’t sure how large the market for
such programs and other specialized lessons may be. Until recently, all the company’s
projects came as a result of contracts with government agencies, including the defense
department, or private firms.
"I don’t think we’ll ever create a strictly
commercial product," Harless said. "We don’t want to create games. We go
into a project asking ’What problem does this address?’ or ’What
educational gap is this going to fill?’"
Harless won’t say how much money his company made
last year or how much he projects earning this year. "We’re all still
eating," he jokes, elaborating only to say that Interactive [IDI] has grown steadily
since its start.
The company’s roots date back before its
incorporation in 1992. Harless and Zier moved to the Washington area in 1983 to take jobs
with the National Institute of Medicine, where they worked on interactive learning tools,
although the technology wasn’t as sophisticated as today.
When the pair decided to open Interactive [IDI], they
moved into a townhouse around the corner from the company’s current 2,700-square-foot
window-lined headquarters on Wisconsin Avenue.
Initially, the company consisted of three workers and four
rooms, a home Interactive [IDI] outgrew in two years.
Now the expanded staff handles all phases of a project in
the second-floor office, from bouncing around initial ideas in a conference room to
production rooms where video and sound are put in place.
Some of the company’s demonstration versions are
available for view on Interactive’s [IDI's] Web site, www.idrama.com.
To run any of Interactive’s [IDI's] programs, the
user needs a standard IBM-compatible computer running Microsoft Windows.
The company recommends a system featuring at least a
Pentium 100 megahertz with eight megabytes of RAM quad-speed CD-ROM drive and a sound card
for the microphone input and speaker output.
"The programs are complex in their
capabilities," Zier explains, "but the user doesn’t see it that way. To
them, you just pick up a microphone and talk."
Interactive’s [IDI's] latest project marks its effort
to move beyond medical and language applications. The new program is aimed at helping
families coping with a loved one’s brain injury.
The idea, Zier said, came about at a luncheon when she met
a young woman working on a next-generation architectural design for a facility for brain
injured clients.
When Zier explained a bit about her company, the woman
reacted enthusiastically and said such technology would be a perfect fit in a futuristic
care home.
Zier and her staff developed a program
for the families of brain injured patients to help prepare them to care for their
loved one.
Interactive [IDI] interviewed families who had suffered
such tragedies and asked them to share what they’d learned about everything from
medical care to dealing with the sadness they felt.
Soon, families waiting for their injured loved one to
finish a hospital stay or rehabilitation program will be able to use Interactive’s
[IDI's] CD-ROM to ask whatever’s on their minds, Harless said.
"It’s like a support group, available whenever
you need it," Zier said.
The two believe the program will attract a wider audience
than Interactive’s [IDI's] language and medical lessons, but they say they don’t
expect or want it to be a big moneymaker.
"We’d like to distribute it to families and
recover our costs and overhead," Harless said. "We have no interest making a
profit from a family’s tragedy.
"We want projects that will do some good. As long as
we bring in enough money to keep a roof over our heads and continue with new projects,
that’s all we’re interested in."
--Montgomery Business Gazette, Volume 2,
Number 10, September 1997 (p.22-24)
Copyright © 1997 Montgomery Business Gazette
Reprinted with the permission of the Montgomery Business Gazette
