Role of the Counselor with Computers

T he computer is an invention of unparalleled significance. In the last decade several innovations have been heralded as having the power to change how we live. Probably none, however, has the potential of the computer to affect our lives in general and education in particular. Certainly part of the reason for the tremendous impact of the computer on education is the time of its arrival. Education is currently under attack from dissatisfied constitutencies who are demanding that students acquire a great deal more from their schooling. Postsecondary education, after a decade of emphasis on equity, is now being called upon to place greater emphasis on excellence and achievement. New strategies for educating both adolescents and adults are extending learning beyond school and college walls to a variety of self-managed educational experiences. These cries for greater excellence in education and improved student performance are occurring at a time when the costs of education are rising rapidly. The demand and the need for a quantum leap in improving education is so great that if the computer did not exist, something akin to it in potential, power, and impact would have been invented. The computer is having a strong influence on school districts across the country, on state educational plans, and on policy pronouncements for both public and postsecondary education. The clamor for the computerization of education is becoming a din. Yet even before computers have become established in the educational enterprise, some people are decrying both their potential and the way they are being used. Are computers merely “electronic page-turners,” or do they have the capacity to affect significantly how students and adults learn? Will school systems, training institutions, and organizations be able to use them to change and enhance the learning process? These questions are paramount. The difficulty in answering them is compounded by the fact that the real development and contribution of computers is only now emerging. The “computational powers equivalent to that of present-day super computers . . . will be available in a micro-process system for under $100 by 1990” (Computers in Education, 1983). Clearly, any discussion about the role of the counselor with computers needs to focus not on present activities or past experience but on possible and probable developments for computers and their impact and influence on counseling and human services in the near future.