Programmed Instruction

Program Characteristics

Skinner developed programmed instruction because he observed that a teacher with 20 or 30 children could not arrange either (a) sufficient opportunities for each student to interact verbally with the subject matter or (b) the accompanying appropriate consequences for verbal behavior. These consequences, referred to as reinforcers, are essential in developing learner skills because they increase the likelihood of the repetition of correct student responses. Skinner estimated that ensuring acquisition of basic arithmetic skills alone would require 50,000 reinforcements for each student.

Skinner's solution was to develop both programmed instruction from his learning principles and the teaching machine to present the instruction. Programmed instruction is a reproducible set of instructional events that is self-paced, does not require teacher intervention, and leads the learner to the acquisition of particular behaviors or skills. Skinner's programs, referred to as response centered, consist of a graded sequence of small steps or frames, each requiring a constructed response by the student. Reinforcements include immediate confirmation of a correct response, and the opportunity to move forward to new material, and to operate the equipment. Cues or prompts for correct answers are gradually withdrawn as the student begins to acquire the targeted skills. Skinner discouraged the use of a book format that placed the correct answer to a frame on a subsequent page. Problems include the possibilities that students may look ahead, skip frames, or lose their place in the material.

The assumption of response-centered programming is that behavior is learned only when it is emitted and reinforced. A different approach, initiated by Nelson Crowder, is stimulus centered. This branching format first presents a unit of material, usually a paragraph, and a multiple-choice question on the material. Incorrect alternatives in the multiple-choice question represent plausible misunderstandings. The student's selection of the correct answer leads to the next unit of material. Choosing a wrong answer is followed by feedback that indicates why the particular choice is wrong and directs the learner back to the paragraph to try again.

The rationale for branching programs is that learning is cognitive and the response fulfills a diagnostic or testing function. Skinner disagreed with this approach, however, because he believed that the student must recall rather than recognize information and realistic wrong answers to multiple-choice questions might be learned inadvertently.

...