Air University Review, September-October 1968
Almost any workday on many Air Force bases one can find a classroom whose unique environment is immediately noticed. Using a set of equipment descriptively called a multimedia teaching system, an instructor holds the attention of forty students, seldom uttering a word himself.
The equipment, now being used throughout the Air Force for training in traffic safety, consists of a tape deck, still and motion picture projectors, student responding devices, and response recorders. The system presents the audio portion of the lesson from conventional magnetic tape. A separate track of the tape controls the projectors, selecting still or motion projections to present the visual stimuli. Lessons presented by this equipment contain many questions which are voiced by the tape and presented visually by still projection. Each time a question is presented, the student selects his answer by depressing one of four buttons on his responder. His relative performance is observable on digital counters at any time during the lesson, and the percentage of responses to all choices of each question is also visible.
The Air Force has in use about 150 complete sets of multimedia teaching equipment at stateside and overseas bases. When one sees this hardware in operation, he realizes immediately that it looks quite like programmed instruction. That observation is correct; the system is the result of some of the most advanced thinking and study in the application of the behaviorally oriented principles on which programmed instruction is based.
Two separate though related conditions are responsible for our having procured this multimedia teaching equipment (hardware) and programmed traffic safety lessons (software): first, the excessive involvement of Air Force members in traffic accidents; and second, the highly successful experience of Air Training Command with programmed instruction in the shaping of desired behaviors. The question arose: Can programmed instruction increase traffic safety consciousness in Air Force personnel enough to improve their driving behavior?
That question has not been answered yet because the multimedia teaching systems have not been in use long enough for their effectiveness to be conclusively evaluated. But Air Force experience thus far points up one irrefutable fact: Careful selection and integration of media and the application of the behaviorally oriented principles of programmed instruction do in fact mold student behavior very efficiently, significantly, and desirably.
Behaviorally oriented principles of programmed instruction guarantee that the student can perform the behaviors required by the job for which his training is designed. No item of subject matter is justified in the curriculum unless the end behavior requires it. Briefly, this behaviorally oriented instruction trains the student to do the task to the level required by the Specialty Training Standard (STS) and discards all irrelevant material, even that which is nice-to-know. Both economy and the basic principles of programmed instruction require that training be limited to teaching the tasks of a given job.
The history of the development of programmed instruction is not all as recent as the term itself. As a matter of fact, programmed instruction is a bringing together of principles long known, and little of its present status is attributable to one person or group of persons. Many people, spanning centuries, have discovered and expounded the principles, but only recently have they been merged into an impressive and still growing discipline.
The chain discovery of these principles dates back at least to Socrates, who questioned his students, then confirmed or corrected their responses immediately. Socrates used another of the characteristics that programmed instruction proponents have “discovered” and still use where possible: self-pacing. By teaching one student at a time, Socrates moved the student along in the lesson only as fast as he could learn.
Following the analyses of mental processes by Binet, Dewey, and Thorndike, Sydney L. Pressey devised a machine for administering multiple-choice questions.1 Some alert pedagogues saw in this device a new dawn: its use could mechanize the process of imparting knowledge. But others, although impressed with teaching by machine, felt sure that response construction was superior to response selection in effecting changes in verbal behavior. The Pressey apostles then completed the initial draft of programmed instruction. Their product is with us today and is the classic image of programmed instruction. It has long series of verbal stimuli (or sometimes even two-dimensional graphic stimuli), always followed by an abundance of blanks to be filled in with the information from the prior sentence. After a soporific maze of such stimulus-response pairs, the student reaches a real objective of having learned by rote. This approach, known as constructed response or linear programming, is the most frequently used in paper-and-pencil or machine-administered programmed materials.
The pencil-and-paper medium has, however, been used effectively to train to
the discrimination level of knowledges. Contemporary
with the appearance of machine-administered linear teaching programs, branching
programs also appeared as “scrambled books.” Designed by Norman A. Crowder,
this method employed a more lengthy stimulus on each
teaching page and exacted a multiple-choice response to the stimulus material.
Each alternative directed the learner to another page—wrong answers to
corrective pages, correct answers to confirmation, and thence to a new teaching
page.2
Variations of the two basic principles have appeared, each with some merit.
One such variation is mathetics. Devised by Thomas F.
Gilbert, this one applies reinforcement theory to the analysis and engineering
of behavior. It features extensive use of laboratory techniques found effective
for training.3
The Air Training Command has experimented exhaustively with all these types. For presentations that are limited to or primarily aimed toward changing verbal and knowledge behaviors, ATC uses a presentation that draws heavily on all its predecessors; it can be described as “discrimination linear.” Its segments are presented in consecutive order, as are those in conventional, constructed-response linear presentations. Yet, instead of exacting a constructed response from the student, it borrows from Pressey’s teaching machine, Crowder’s branching techniques, and Gilbert’s mathetics, by exacting only discrimination responses. Multiple-choice, matching, and true-false are examples of the response modes employed. This type of programming lends itself not only to shorter and less boring paper-and-pencil lessons but also to multimedia instruction for group presentations. ATC requires that all courses, those employing multiple media as well as those using only programmed paper-and-pencil exercises, use all the following characteristics:
· Behavioral analysis is applied to course content to determine (1) what the trainee must know to perform the task he is assigned to do, and (2) the stimulus necessary to elicit each behavior. Explicit specifications of training objectives are then formulated. All behaviors not prescribed in the objectives are avoided like sin and rattlesnakes.
· Controlled response is required of all students of behaviorally oriented materials. By forcing the student to make specific responses, his behavior is shaped step by step until he achieves mastery of the subject or skill.
· Immediate confirmation after each response assures the student of the correctness of his response. This tends to prevent him from becoming habituated to wrong ideas or practices and strengthens the probability that he will respond correctly in a like situation later.
· Optimum step size is determined by experimentally applying the instructional materials to numbers of typical students. Care is taken to prevent moving in steps that are too large; they tend to lose the student. ATC experience has demonstrated that too-small steps are also damaging; they bore students. Hence, the optimum step is small enough to assure that the student can respond correctly, but not so small as to be boring.
· Validation before implementation is accomplished for all programmed lessons and multimedia teaching systems used by ATC. A system is tested and revised until it has successfully trained a large sample of the target population. The minimum acceptable performance level for a system is for at least 90 percent of the students to achieve the proficiency level specified for each learning objective.4
· Self-pacing allows the student to establish his own rate of progression through the material. When each student has his own separate material to attend, as in individually prepared programmed lessons, this practice can be fully employed. Yet when the systems designer has employed movies, still projection, television, or even the check of the functional system of an aircraft, self-pacing can be sacrificed if its loss can be offset by the advantages of group pacing.
Air Training Command entered the field of programmed instruction in 1962 by planning and executing an elaborate experiment in programming portions of many resident courses. Indoctrination of personnel was as complete as possible, with many trained in the techniques of programming; countless others were familiarized with its characteristics and potentials.
The results obtained from the use of programmed texts during the experimental phase were not phenomenal, but they proved that programmed instruction had a place in the ATC picture.5 Before its techniques could become fully accepted and used, some adjustments had to be made to fit programmed instruction into military training. Fortunately, these alterations led to many improvements in programming techniques and to the adaptation of programming principles to many other types of presentation. ATC does not claim to have invented the principles of programmed instruction, but her contributions in this field have been impressive.
From the outset, ATC was overripe for programming’s most outspoken dogma—the necessity for behavioral objectives. Nice-to-know material was already gasping for breath because of the choking pressures of austerity. It followed naturally that the training contract should specify the skills and knowledges the trainee must have on termination of training and that all else should be excluded. Clearly and precisely stated objectives, specifying end behavior and the degree and conditions for it, soon became the norm for all ATC courses—even conventional courses—after the programming movement introduced them. All present ATC courses have felt the impact of behavioral objectives.
Another fallout benefit of the programmed instruction movement is its influence on the preparation and presentation of conventional instruction. In a conventional informal lecture, questions are sometimes used to measure the teaching effectiveness of each point presented; active responding is thereby elicited from one student when he answers a particular question. The immediate knowledge of results occurs when the instructor acknowledges the student’s response. But by the use of certain techniques—for example, a “response card”—the participation of all students at every step along the way is assured. A response card (and this is just one of a variety of similar devices) reveals a minimum of four colors, any one of which can be shown to the instructor in response to a question. For example, red may stand for answer “A,” blue for “B,” yellow for “C,” and green for “D.” With such a device, all students answer all questions asked during the presentation. Those who respond inappropriately are corrected on the spot. At the same time, the instructor measures the effectiveness of his instruction so he can make changes in later presentation of the same material based on student response. Of all the characteristics of programmed instruction, only self-pacing is absent from a lecture so prepared.
Another effective technique is the lecture-discussion-recitation (L-D-R). In
such a learning situation, the class is first divided into groups of 3 or 4
students. As suggested by the name, the material is presented to the class in
lecture form by the instructor. After a point is presented, members of each
group briefly engage in a timed discussion of the material among themselves,
normally in response to a question. A representative of each group reports on
the responses of his group; then the instructor evaluates and comments on these
responses. Though this technique lacks the strict control of student response
which is characteristic of most programming, it effectively employs many of the
features of programmed instruction.6
Air Training Command is now concentrating on the second generation of
programming. This vigorous prodigy is called the “systems approach.”7
If the parents of instructional systems are programmed training and conventional training, the offspring retains and magnifies the best features of both. This apparent hybrid, systemization, has more potential for instructional success than either parent.
But wherein lies the difference between programmed instruction and systemized instruction? Lo, in the media each employs. Almost exclusively, programmed instruction was accomplished by a type of device called a programmed instructional package. Prepared as individual books (or machine-administered individual lessons), these packages typically shunned such desirable experiences as projections (motion or still), lectures (recorded or live), and other group media. On the other hand, the newer concept of systemization adapts any and all media to the principles previously employed by the individual packages.
Air Training Command has five Instructional Systems Development Teams. A single team is assigned at each of ATC’s technical writing centers. Its primary duty is to prepare instructional systems to support the mission of the center to which assigned. In some cases, however, teams are assigned to prepare materials for use outside the command. The Lackland team, for example, has prepared programmed materials for General Military Training. It has also revised and administered commercially prepared materials used for driver training throughout the Air Force, and it is now preparing new materials for driver training.
In addition to the development teams, ATC maintains courses in instructional technology. All these courses are behaviorally oriented, stressing the principles of programmed and systemized instruction which have endured.
The parent course, which has existed since August 1963 and is entitled “Instructional Programmer,” has been attended by people from all branches within domestic and allied military establishments as well as numerous nondefense activities.
Another activity within ATC is the USAF Programmed Learning Advisory Service. Situated at Randolph AFB, this organization functions as a ready bank of information or aid for every activity within the defense establishment and for other government and even nongovernment agencies. Having the capacity to provide guidance in the most advanced aspects of programmed instruction or instructional systems, this organization has fostered the command’s reputation as the prime authority on the instructional systems approach within the armed forces.
Where to now? What is the prospect for growth of behaviorally oriented instruction? Will systemized instruction continue to influence the evolution of pedagogy? We in Air Training Command are convinced that it is gaining impetus. As with all movements, it has met some opposition, and some of the original conflicts still give pause to the most optimistic seers. Yet with the development of new hardware more adaptable to behavioral philosophy and with the increased need for austerity in training, this command’s efforts in “behavioralizing” its courses are moving forward at full throttle. The growing public acquaintance with the potential for the art in its highly developed and still advancing state is inducing other commands and branches to swell the procession.
Lackland
AFB,
Notes
1. A. A. Lumsdaine and Robert Glaser, Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association of the United States, 1960), p. 32.
2. Ibid., p. 21.
3. Air Force Manual 50-1, Programmed Learning, Hq USAF, 13 January 1967, p. 27.
4. Air Training Command Manual 52-10, Instructional Systems Engineering, Hq ATC, 1 March 1967, p. 29.
5. Ibid., p. 1.
6. AFM 50-1, pp. 28, 29.
7. ATCM 52-10, p. 2.
John P. Murphy (B.S.,
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of
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