e to answer some of a host of questions concerning "teaching machines"?
It is in order to attempt to hazard answers to a couple of these questions that this study will be undertaken. Regarding the "what", I have chosen foreign language instruction, because the "what" in itself contains too many variables to be generalized. Regarding the "whom", I have chosen a class of Junior High School students. Regarding the "how" is precisely the purpose of this study.
The question I have wanted answered is: Will a CAI experimental group of American Junior High School students today, students who are native speakers of English with no knowledge of the target foreign language (French or Spanish), learn more effectively, less effectively, or with equal effectiveness, the target foreign language, than a control group taught with conventional methods? I have not factored in cost-effectiveness, nor the vertiginous growth of technological advances in interactive media, nor the learning of a foreign language that is more alien to English speakers than French or Spanish or any other of the main West European languages, because considering these and other variables in the eventual selection of media would call for considerably wider scope of study than is practically warranted in my case at this time.
1. It is essentially Programmed Instruction which gave birth the "Instructional Technology". The delivery systems of P.I. were linear or branching programs displayed through "teaching machines", whether audio, audio-visual, or textual--or a combination thereof (Note that, in this perspective, a book is a "display machine"). The device and its programs allowed the learner to learn at his or her own pace. In the "branching" type of P.I., the learner was assessed progressively by the program and sent to remedial materials in the program. For essentially factual material, as one encountered in much technical and industrial training, for instance, this ...