REPORTS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPLEXITY IN SUPPORTIVE SYSTEMS FOR EDUCATIONAL COMPUTING Thomas A. Dwyer Department of Computer Science University of Pittsburgh We have all smiled at old film records of the varied attempts at powered flight that took place around the turn of the last century. One of the many constraints the experimenters of this era lived with was an unfavorable horsepower to weight ratio in their power sources. imenters who ignored this constraint Those exper- (or more likely did not recognize its significance) went their merry way using everything from human powered flapping devices to on-board steam engines. The unhappy consequences of mis- matching resources to ideas are well documented in the annals of early aviation. The application of innovative ideas to educational settings that are part of a formal school "system" is subject to an even wider variety of constraints. Many of these constraints, either because they appear to be peripheral to the innovative project, or because they are too difficult to deal with by the investigators directly connected with the work, are bee Such acceptance can grudgingly accepted as part of the experiment at hand. play havoc with some of the most important aspects
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