Are we recognising the organisational impact on educational software design?

When computers were first used in business and industry in the 1950s, programmers and engineers were, for the most part, the only real computer users. Computer useability was little more than a question of speed of processing and throughput. As such, the idea of human computer interaction was a largely meaningless concept, as was any thought of the effect of the computer upon work practices. Grudin (1990) suggests that since that time the concept of human-computer interaction has shifted outwards from hardware, to software, to the terminal and on towards the work setting. Today, there is substantial interest in the effect of computer technology on organisations. Although the effect of computers on organisations is far from predictable, (Attewell and Rule 1984, Soorgaard 1988) it is well established that the implementation of computer technology brings with it changes to the organisation and changes to relationships within the organisation (Little 1990).