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(1978). Visual Literacy: Background, Theory and Practice. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 291-297.

(1977). Some Factors in the Selection of Media. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 223-231.

Contrary to the early behaviourist claims, numerous studies have discovered correlations between achievement from Programmed Instruction and individual factors such as intelligence, introversion, anxiety and neuroticism. This article reviews and summarises the available literature and gives special consideration to the use of Programmed Instruction in relation to personality and behavioural disorders. In addition the application of Programmed Instruction for the assessment and prediction of educational achievement is discussed and suggested for future research. The preliminary study was concerned with the production of an Adaptive Programmed Reference Manual to teach the use of the SCRAPBOOK computerised retrieval and storage system at the National Physical Laboratory. The programme was stored and presented by the Modular 1 (C.T.L.) computer through the P.R.A.G.M.A. “ Beehive “ visual display unit, thereby placing this study within the limits of “ Computer Assisted Instruction.” *The work was und...

(1976). Toward Theory Building in the Field of Instructional Games and Simulations. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 5-9.

(1979). Introduction: Educational Technology in Australasia. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 4-7.

(1980). Educational Technology in Vocational Training in Brazil. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 218-231.

A large majority of earlier studies on individuals and dyads working with programmed material has not yielded statistically significant differences on post‐tests, transfer‐tests, or retention tests. Investigations aimed at comparing different methods of pairing have had the same results. As there were several restricting factors which prevented definite conclusions, four more experiments were performed. It appeared that learning alone or in pairs did not result in different achievement of elementary school pupils. Comparing the effects of homogeneous and heterogeneous pairing on the basis of capacity and personality scores indicated a similar absence of significant findings. Pupils with high IQ scores obtained better test results than pupils with relatively low IQ scores, both categories needing about the same amount of time. The correlation between test scores and speed were close to zero. It was concluded that working cooperatively represents a useful alternative to working individually.

An experimental study has been undertaken by the Arab States Functional Education Centre in co‐operation with UNESCO to investigate the application of programmed learning in literacy as a new technique that may enable the illiterate to self‐learn, or learn with the assistance of a mentor who has limited qualifications and training. A plan of action has been developed and executed as follows: First, the preliminary phase, in which visits were made to select suitable sites for the study, and agreements reached with the responsible authorities. Second, the study of the environment, whereby the educational needs of the illiterates were identified and the topics of the educational programme were defined. Third, planning the educational programme and preparing its requisities; in this phase the curriculum, the programmed lessons, the teacher's guide and the evaluation tools were prepared. Fourth, an implementation and evaluation phase, in which the educational programme was implemented, the evaluation ...

Responsiveness of higher education to an increasingly heterogeneous student population requires the solution of a series of instructional design problems. When relationships among instructional methods, features of individualized instruction, and design problems are examined, it is apparent that programmed instruction is the generic method from which other methods of individualized instruction are derived. Distinctive contributions of each method to the solution of instructional design problems are identified within the General Model of Individualized

An attempt is made to analyse and relate the findings concerned with individual differences in learning achievement from programmed learning materials, to those from learning studies generally. In particular intelligence, anxiety and task difficulty are considered in terms of an extension of Spence's theory of anxiety and performance. The subsequent study carried out revealed that significant effects due to anxiety and intelligence were only found on a moderate as opposed to difficult programme. In addition the use of a state anxiety measure revealed in interaction between anxiety resulting from the learning milieu and intelligence on the moderately difficult programme: among high‐intelligence Ss those with high state anxiety gained more; whereas, among low‐intelligence Ss those with high state anxiety gained less.

(1976). History Simulation is Alive and Well and Living in Textbooks. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 19-24.

The research was carried out in a secondary school in Malawi, Central Africa, using four programs in biology. The experiment compared multiple‐choice and constructed responding across four categories of learning (verbal association, generalisation, multiple discrimination and chaining). Analysis of covariance showed no significant differences on the post‐test scores between the two response modes in any of the four categories. There was a small number of significant differences in the analysis of covariance of the retention test scores, but no general pattern emerged. However, pupils who used the multiple‐choice versions of the programs took significantly less time to work through them.

One hundred Jordanian boys were arranged in two matched groups to study the effectiveness of programmed instruction in teaching English at the secondary school level compared to regular classroom teaching. Utilising a ‘t’ test and a 2 x 2 analysis of variance the results indicated the superiority of PI compared to regular classroom teaching. All main effects (method and ability) and three interaction effects were significant. Students low in achievement seem to have benefited more from PI than from regular classroom teaching. These results were interpreted on the basis of the inherent qualities of PI such as structuring the learning situation and providing immediate knowledge of results, which are lacking in regular classroom teaching.

The genesis and history of usage of the programmed text Learning and teaching is reviewed. Information about methods of usage adopted by tutors is provided. Problems of implementation of concepts from programming as it relates to mastery learning and the relation of both to conventional methods of teaching and assessment and to dissemination are discussed.

The research reported involved the development and testing of a programme for increasing creativity, particularly in the visual field. The programme was developed following surveys of literature and work in the disciplines of creativity and programmed instruction, and utilised a direct approach ‐‐ involving the learner in terms of the creative product, the creative person, and the creative process ‐‐ including instruction in the use of brainstorming. Instruments for measuring creativity were chosen or developed. These were used as pre‐tests and post‐tests in an experimental situation involving control and experimental groups of secondary school male and female subject, aged thirteen and fourteen, of average and below average ability. Variance found as a result of statistical analyses of the data revealed two major features: (i) females were more creative than males, as measured by the test instruments; and (ii) the experimental group increased its scoring from pre‐test to post‐test administration, whereas...

(1976). Developmental Testing: an Empirical Approach to Course Improvement. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 31-42.

(1981). The Scottish Microelectronics Development Programme. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 130-135.

(1978). Theory in Educational Technology and Curriculum. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 79-82.

The paper seeks to evolve a scientifically validated instructional strategy for teaching educational evaluation in colleges of education. It has been evolved through two years of experimentation at the MS University of Baroda. The strategy was developed in four phases. First, analysis and identification of specific objectives of the course on educational evaluation were made, resulting in the division of the course into six instructional units. Second, suitable software in the form of programmed learning material (PLM) to achieve these objectives was prepared. Third, empirical validation on a sample of 69 BEd students divided into two matched groups was carried out, during which the PLM was validated. The fourth phase involved identification of other instructional components, viz., library work, practical work and discussion, preparation of software material for these additional components, and integration of them with PLM to evolve the instructional strategy. This integration was carried out on ...

(1976). Detailed Evaluation and Content Analysis. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 43-53.

(1976). Simulation a Framework for Programming Initiative. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 43-50.

This article examines the research on programmed instruction in the light of B. F. Skinner's 1954 clarion call to educationalists. In doing this the widening scope of programmed instruction is revealed, and the article concludes by indicating some of the areas of controversy in programmed instruction today. “ There is a simple job to be done. The task can be stated in concrete terms. The necessary techniques are known. Nothing stands in the way but cultural inertia.” B. F. Skinner (1954).

(1979). What's Happening to Individualised Mathematics? Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 146-150.

(1974). The National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning—Origins and Starting‐Point. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 59-73.

The following abstracts are reprinted by permission of University Microfilms Ltd. Future issues of the Journal will focus on a selection of research abstracts in a specific area of study. The abstracts are designed to be informatively complete in themselves but also offer sufficient detail to help readers determine whether they wish to obtain the full text.

Of the eight million people in Syria, about 25 per cent are enrolled in public schools and universities. The Syrian government allocates only 7.4 per cent of its budget for education because a great deal has to be spent on defence spending. Educational technology is suggested as a means to upgrade the efficiency of instruction without considerable increase in expenditure. For this purpose the Ministry of Education established the Central Department of Audiovisual Media, and a centre for the production of simple aids supported by experiments conducted by individual scholars. Several language laboratories were installed to improve foreign language learning. Most efforts, however, have been concentrated in two main areas: the utilisation of educational television for supporting school curricula in primary and secondary education; and the application of programmed instruction and systems analysis in developing multi‐media kits for training teachers and students in specialised areas, for example, Arab...

(1982). A Revised Model of Systematic Curriculum Development. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 70-73.

(1982). The Development of Communication Skills, under Adaptively Controlled Conditions. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 85-98.

(1976). 'Rolling Remake”: An Alternative Approach to Course Design at the Open University. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 25-30.

This paper surveys research which has been done on, or is relevant to, the use of programmed instruction with pre‐school children. This includes work on operant conditioning in young children and also work on programmed instruction in special education with children of mental age of less than five, as well as experiments which have been carried out using something like typical programmed materials with normal children of chronological age less than five. The paper also describes the various pieces of audio‐visual equipment which are currently available in the United Kingdom and which can be used to present programs to pre‐school children. It concludes that there is more scope for the development of programmed instruction at the pre‐school level than had perhaps been previously generally realised, especially since expense need not be prohibitive, but that research may be needed to check that there are no long‐term undesirable side‐effects.

The Ruleg system was used in the preparation true even for the more able pupils and in the longer‐term of inductive and deductive programmes for the teaching retention of ideas. However, ability and attitude did in‐of a section of the O‐grade SCE chemistry syllabus. Using fluence the effectiveness of teaching by both types of multiple‐choice tests it was found that inductive pro‐ programme whereas sex and age (fourteen to sixteen year grammes were not so successful as deductive, and this was range) did not.

(1981). The Transfer of a Self‐Instructional Teacher‐Training Course from Britain to India. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 136-143.

(1976). The Development of Project‐based Learning in the Open University. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 55-59.

This experiment investigates what happens when a student paces himself during learning, and does this by using a special teaching machine which allows response rate to be recorded. Throughout the experiment a 120 frame linear program was used. Many patterns of pacing emerged, although the most common was a U‐shaped curve in, which S started and finished comparatively slowly. Knowledge of the number of frames in the program appeared to make no difference to S's behaviour. An analysis of the effects of personality (as measured by the E.P.I.) on various global measures of work performance showed only that extraverts took significantly less total time than introverts. No sex difference was found. Concentration was studied by correlating speed and error rate over the work period for each S. Although with a few Ss there was a significant positive correlation and with others a significant negative correlation, most correlations were not significant; these findings are discussed in terms of three models of the student.

(1968). PUBLISHING CONTRACTS AND AGREEMENTS. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 231-241.

During 1964 a requirement arose in H.M.S. Collingwood, the electrical school of the Royal Navy, for a formalised course in fault‐finding techniques in electronic equipments. Due to special shipboard requirements and the wide range of equipment to be serviced, it was necessary to base this course as broadly as possible. For this reason a basic method of fault‐finding was devised applicable to all equipments. Drawing on the existing knowledge of programmed learning in the Royal Navy, and having regard to the conditions of operation of the course, it was decided that this method of fault‐finding should have instruction based on a program. The paper covers the development of this program, the detailed testing of it and the scope of its present‐day use. This program has now been accepted as part of standard training in H.M.S. Collingwood, and is also in use elsewhere. Currently several thousand trainees have worked through this program. Details of this development and testing have already received lim...

abstarct The aim of the present study was to establish whether or not instructor attitude influenced student performance when learning from a program. A mathematics program was presented to three matched groups of students. They were given an introduction to. their task in such a way that one group felt that the instructor was favourably disposed towards programmed instruction, the second group felt that the instructor was neither favourably nor unfavourably disposed to programmed instruction and the third group felt that the instructor was not favourably disposed to programmed instruction. Analysis of variance between the groups indicated that no significant differences existed between the groups in respect of their achievement, as measured by a criterion test administered at the end of the program.

The effect of pre‐testing on post‐test performance in programmed instruction was investigated by comparing three groups of subjects (aged 10‐11): (1) Ss took the same pretest as post‐test; (2) Ss took a different pre‐test from post‐test; (3) Ss took no pre‐test at all. All subjects were given a specially written program followed by a post‐test which was the same for all groups. All the tests were multiple‐choice: this contrasts with previous work using contructed responses and allows the possibility of post‐test results being made worse rather than improved by pre‐testing. The results, however, showed no significant differences between the groups. It is suggested, especially in the light of a significant relationship between taking a pre‐test and reporting enjoying the program, that there may have been two opposing effects at work, one increasing motivation and the other increasing incorrect learning.

This study examines the effects of different levels of confirmation holding constant attitude toward school and academic level on learning by means of programmed instruction. 500 grade 5 pupils were randomly assigned to one of five experimental, programmed instruction conditions. Measures on other variables served as covarients. Parallel forms of subject‐matter tests served as pre‐ and post‐test criterion tasks. The main predictor variables of the study were attitudes towards school and general ability. The data analysed by means of multiple linear aggression technique indicate that varying confirmation levels have little, if any, effect on learning by means of programmed instruction even when one adjusts for differences and attitude towards school and/or ability level so that the likelihood that confirmation level effects are being masked by various learner variables is slight. It thus seems appropriate to conclude that manipulation of confirmation frequency is not one of the individual differen...

Forty Nigerian pupils participated in this study. The pupils were randomly assigned to two groups: one to be taught by an American program, the other by the same program adapted to the Nigerian culture. On the basis of the analyses of the data obtained, it was found that (1) performance in terms of achievement scores of students who used the modified program is significantly better than that of those who used the original program; (2) there is no significant difference in the required time to complete the two programs; (3) the attitudes of students who used the modified program were more favourable than those of the control group.

All the students completed the last exercise of the “programmed” course within the final month. No mark on the examination was below 50 (II.2), and hence everyone passed the course. Operational definitions still provided difficulties for some students so that the criterion behaviour was only partially achieved. The students were mainly favourable towards the course, although there were some reservations. Detailed comments were considered with reference to the nine principles of programmed learning given in the first article. These principles are now presented in reverse order of importance in the light of the course. Those relating to the individual learner are, in general, seen as more important than those referring to the material. Aims and objectives still have priority. Greater staff/student interaction, with reciprocal feedback, is recommended, and it is hoped that the principles of programmed learning will be applied to even larger educational units to help in the achievement of a diversity...

For a system to work effectively, each component must act reliably. The student is an essential component in a teaching machine system: in particular, he exerts considerable control over the time constraints of the system. Yet it is unlikely that the • student‐‐because of external and internal pressures‐‐can always work in a reliable way, and so the teaching system may operate in a less than optimum manner. In this paper American and British experiments concerned with this aspect of programmed instruction are reviewed. It is concluded, despite the limited nature of the evidence available, that there are conditions where learning under conditions of self‐pacing may be less efficient than learning with others and/or under some form of external pacing. * Paper presented to the 3rd International Conference on Problems of Programmed Learning and Teaching Machines, Liblice, near Prague, May 1967.

Following some previous research, the aim of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that taking a constructed‐response pre‐test would improve a subject's post‐test score in programmed instruction by increasing curiosity but that taking a multiple‐choice pre‐test would not have this effect because it would concomitantly increase incorrect learning. Three groups of subjects (aged 10 to 12) were compared: group 1 took a multiple‐choice pre‐test; group 2 took a constructed response pre‐test; group 3 took no pretest at all. This was carried out at two different ability levels (above average and below average). All subjects were given a linear program followed by a post‐test which was the same for all groups at each ability level. There were no significant differences between the post‐test scores of any of the groups at either level, and therefore the hypothesis was not supported. It is suggested in the light of this result and that of previous experiments that the age factor may be the crucial one...

Three groups of university students, in all 268 of both sexes, were taught with either two traditional and one programmed learning methods, each group receiving a different method. Immediately thereafter, all subjects received an achievement test. Later, a practical application test was given for half of the study groups immediately, and for the other half one day later. The hypothesis that programmed learning is superior to traditional teaching if the comparison is founded on a test measuring passive achievement (and the testing occurs immediately after learning) was confirmed. The opposite relation, that traditional teaching is superior to programmed learning in practical application, was confirmed regarding the teaching group where the students were given questions relating to practical application. The hypothesis that the superiority of traditional teaching in practical application would be more evident in a test given after a lapse of time than in tests which are given immediately after teac...

Can social work education profit from the use of programmed instruction materials? How do social work students feel about using such materials of instruction? An attempt to answer these questions was the major goal of this study. Based on the performances of the students tested, programmed instruction was a most effective method of learning the relevant, basic ideas in at least one area of social work, namely, mental retardation. The generally favourable attitudes expressed by these students toward programmed instruction would lead us to conclude that they are certainly willing to utilise such a method to enhance their knowledge as long as it is not the only method at their disposal.

(1973). Teacher Training in Educational Technology—The View from the Outside. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 16-23.

(1972). Structural Communication‐a New Contribution to Pedagogy. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology: Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 63-78.

The aim of the present study was to establish the relationships amongst a variety of individual differences while children were learning mathematics from intrinsic programmed instruction presented in teaching machines. In order to investigate the reliability of such relationships in different external environments a replicate rather than a large sample design was used. The sample consisted of six groups of children from four secondary schools (minimum N=50). Various measures of intelligence, reading ability, personality traits, mathematical attainment, attitude and speed of progress were assessed and intercorrelated. Greatest gains from intrinsic programmed instruction were made by older, more intelligent, extroverted children who read accurately. Correlates of post‐test scores were more recurrent than were correlates of gain scores, higher post‐test scores being obtained by more intelligent, non‐anxious extroverted children with higher pretest scores. In every sample more frequent errors and mor...

Three groups of university students were exposed to the same computer‐administered programmed instruction in numerical differentiation with different degrees of access to the output from the typewriter terminal. Analysis of covariance showed no significant difference on post‐test scores between students who were allowed to keep the output and those who were not, nor between those students who could look back during the session at previous output and those whose view was restricted to the most recent output. This evidence lends partial support to the conclusion that character display terminals for computer‐administered programmed instruction are not necessarily enhanced by the provision of a feature for the production of hard copy.