The decision process required for Individually Prescribed Instruction (IPI), an adaptive instructional program developed at the University of Pittsburgh, is described. In IPI, short tests are used to determine the level of proficiency of each student in precisely defined learning objectives. The output of these tests is used to guide instructional…

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) has not been cost-effective, despite its instructional effectiveness. This financial failure can be attributed to many factors, including: oversell of CAI capabilities, poorly authored content, expensive and unreliable hardware, an educational bureaucracy resistant to innovation, and the decentralized nature of…

A detailed specification of the LOGO programing system is given. The level of description is intended to enable system programers to design LOGO processors of their own. The discussion of storage allocation and garbage collection algorithms is virtually complete. An annotated LOGO system listing for the PDP-10 computer system may be obtained on…

This supplementary text material is meant to suggest ways in which the computer can increase students' intuitive understanding of fields and waves. The first way allows the student to produce a number of examples of the physics discussed in the text. For example, more complicated field and potential maps, or intensity patterns, can be drawn from…

The nonprofit special organization as a developer of computer-administered instruction (CAI) is advocated in this paper. The organization of universities and their mode of operation do not lend themselves to instructional product development. Faculty members engage in such efforts on a part-time basis and in competition with higher priority…

The traditional approach to teaching experimental psychology has emphasized laboratory instruction. But too often this means most time is spent on handling rats or wiring circuits. Students would better learn how psychologists think by designing their own, open-ended problems rather tahan duplicating classical experiments. Since this approach is…

Computer Assisted Synthesizer System (CASS), a portable music synthesizer system which can produce tones from ordinary paper and pencil graphs, was developed and its usefulness for music instruction evaluated in this study. After completion of a pilot study to determine the feasibility of developing CASS and to run a trail test period, 28 fifth…

Several different mathematical methods for optimization of instruction are presented and compared. A way in which one of these methods might be applied to the measurement and avoidance of inequality in educational opportunity and performance is presented. Finally, it is suggested that computer-assisted instruction might provide a particularly…

Over the past 2 decades the usefulness of the computer in science and education has been demonstrated by the rapid growth of applications. Striking advances have been made in data analysis and research through its use; however, in the direct application of computers to the instructional process, obstacles still exist between promise and…

This guide, written for high school students in Atlanta, Ga., explains how to use the computer system available to Atlanta high school students and teachers. The system is a remote terminal system. The language used for it is called APL/360 (A Programming Language for the IBM 360 computer). The guide explains how to sign on the computer, send…

Computer software for programed language instruction, developed in the second quarter of 1970 at Stanford's Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences is described in this report. The software includes: (1) a PDP-10 computer assembly language for generating drill sentences; (2) a coding system allowing a large number of sentences to…

Currently in computer-assisted instruction (CAI) systems a number of problems are presented to each student during a session, with each individual problem being specified by the author of the session. A better approach might be to provide the author with a language in which he can describe to the computer the general type of problem he wants his…

The ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) decoder described here accepts inputs from an acoustic coupler, or Modem, in a remote time-sharing system. On receipt of a special command character the decoder recognizes, stores, and decodes the next two decimal digits. The output can be used to access any one of 100 items. For…

Different approaches to using computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in teaching geography are presented in this collection of papers. The first paper overviews the use of computers in undergraduate instruction. Next is a paper on a program at the University of Iowa which was designed to introduce students to some of the basic principles associated…

PLATO (programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) is a computer-based teaching system which was developed in the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois to explore the possibilities of automation in individual instruction. The history of the PLATO program is summarized here, along with a list of courses which used…