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An Interesting Failure of Technology

1/28/2014

2 Comments

 
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The Associated Press had an article describing a Connecticut supermarket chain's experiment with automatic checkout lanes.  The chain, Big Y, has decided to phase them out.  Read it here.

Some quotes:

"… only 16 percent of supermarket transactions in 2010 were done at self-checkout lanes in stores that provided the option. That's down from a high of 22 percent three years ago."

"… found delays in its self-service lines caused by customer confusion over coupons, payments and other problems; intentional and accidental theft, including misidentifying produce and baked goods as less-expensive varieties; and other problems that helped guide its decision to bag the self-serve lanes."

"Another chain, Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons LLC, has said it's phasing out self-service lanes"

"Home Depot and some other businesses, which cater to customers with a do-it-yourself mentality, report success with their self-serve lanes."

"If he hadn't seen the clerk standing there immediately ready to help, he said, he would have used the traditional lanes …"

This experiment mirrors what has been happening with education technology like MOOCs.  Self-starters and autodidacts love it, which would seem to follow the typical technology adoption cycle, but then no one follows the early adopters.  The only way the technology consistently works is with a person standing by which of course is antithetical to the purpose of the technology: to replace cashiers.

If technology cannot replace cashiers, why should it be able to replace teachers?

2 Comments
Adrian
1/29/2014 02:04:42 am

Books are also technology (and so is language). Do they replace teachers? In some way, sure they do. Instead of taking a course I can just buy a manual on Amazon and study by myself. But that's just one way to look at it. You could also say that it expands the reach of whomever wrote that book, who becomes a teacher to not just a dozen of students say, but potentially to millions. Or you could say that it enables anyone to become their own teachers. Or that it allows teachers to more easily achieve their goals by giving out reading assignments. Etc.

I expect that education technology will continue evolving and see wider and wider adoption. Teachers won't go away either, their role and range will just morph in ways we can't even imagine. Nothing new under the sun (except for everything, of course).

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/all/1

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Rebel2Ruler
1/29/2014 04:21:20 am

Adrian, excellent point that books are technology, and that technology, properly viewed, has a long history.

Remember, though, there have been amazing advances in education technology over the past 100 years, starting with the phonograph, to movies, videos, tape recorders, photocopy machines, projectors, and calculators (ok, and the computer and internet).

But teachers' productivity levels have not changed in 100 years. (One teacher handles about 100 to 150 students a year) In fact, it has gone down a bit, as there is a strong push for smaller class sizes.

The modern push for a "revolution" in education technology is to enable teachers to handle more students (to solve Baumol's Cost Disease). It does not seem to be working. In fact, the more the technology tries to be "teacher proof" the more that I think it will backfire.

Check out these posts:

Baumol's "Cost Disease": http://bit.ly/KFsvzT
An experiment in online courses fails: http://bit.ly/1lQztgL
Thomas Edison's hubris: http://bit.ly/1dgAWNZ

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    I'm an entrepreneur and I teach math, history, economics, and fitness.  I'm looking for arguments. 

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