ABSTRACT
Some time ago two colleagues1 and I completed a three-year research project designed to study the contribution of interactive videodisc technology to the teaching of moral argument The participants in the first year of the project were students in my upper-level course in rhetorical argumentation at Carnegie Mellon University. The project compared the instructional value of videodisc technology with that of film and written text. The videodisc has some of the vividness and immediacy of film, but unlike film it offers students the ability to interact by typing responses to questions posed on the computer screen. The particular videodisc we worked with, which won the 1989 EDUCOM/ NCRIPTAL Award for Best Humanities Software, dealt with Dax Cowart, 2 whose life epitomizes many of the central problems in the growing controversy over euthanasia. Cowart, who was what we often think of as the All-American Boy (handsome, football player, rodeo rider, jet pilot), was burned over his entire body in a propane explosion and was forced to undergo more than a year of incredibly painful treatments, in spite of his protests and repeated requests for help in killing himself. The treatments saved his life but left him blind, crippled, and severely scarred.
