Learning Packages

Learning packages, also known variously as experiential learning packages, individualized learning packages, or learning activity packages, developed largely during the mid- to late 1960s and the early 1970s in response to several factors. First, an increase in available media technologies such as Xeroxing, microfilm, microfiche, film strips, and audio cassettes enabled a much wider range of instructional techniques than was previously possible. In addition, this was an era that was still firmly entrenched in the tenets of behavioral learning theory. While behavioral learning theory is often erroneously interpreted as being dehumanizing, in fact the theory lends itself well to the idea of individualized instruction and self-paced learning. Finally, the 1960s and 1970s were a time of renewed interest in empowerment of the individual and breaking out of the structured mind-set of the establishment. During this era, experiments with team teaching, open-concept classrooms, flexible scheduling, nongrading, and various other alternative educational techniques and structures were widespread.

Although much longer in coming than the structural and organizational changes described above, eventually the curriculum began to be examined more critically and it became evident that traditional instructional methods and materials were not amenable to meeting the needs of individual learners; education was still largely teacher centered, based on whole-class instruction, and geared toward a conceptual norm that might or might not in fact exist among the students within a given classroom. Instead, a movement began that sought to empower individual students to take more responsibility for both the pacing and the methods of their own learning, and encouraged the teacher to act more as facilitator of learning than the primary source of learning. Overall, the goal of the movement to incorporate learning packages as a primary learning technique was to enable teachers to deal more effectively with the unique combinations of skills, knowledge, interests, motivation, preferences, aptitudes, and learning rates of individual students as well as to allow students greater freedom in their own learning process, thus ensuring a more enriching and meaningful educational experience.