Interactive Systems for Education: The New Look of CAI.

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) during the decade of the 60's was characterized by a number of limiting factors: insufficiently powerful computers and terminals, restriction to a few rigid "teaching strategies," and the splitting of resources among too many projects below critical size. During the present decade, CAI has undergone a remarkable change, due to a fair extent to two large-scale projects, PLATO and TICCIT, which differ in significant respects from earlier approaches to CAI. Some key aspects of this large-scale experiment involving PLATO and TICCIT are discussed, and some tentative conclusions, based on limited experience with actual instruction, are drawn. As an example of the use of such large systems, an automated system developed on PLATO for teaching computer science is discussed. (Author)