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[Robert Braden] For the next few minutes we would like for you to join us for a free ranging
discussion about educational methods in the United States today and particularly
about some innovative things that have been and are being done now in college
instruction. I have with me three educators today, and from your left to right
we have Dr. Terrell who has done his research with Joe Hill on cognitive style
mapping and immediately to his left we have Sam Postlethwait who has originated a
system of learning called audio tutorial instruction, and to my immediate left I
have Dave Roper, who is one of the pioneers in what we call a personalized system of instruction.
And with that sort of an introduction I think maybe we just sort
of like to talk about where we're coming from with some of these kind of things
and we're going to put a lot of the weight on you Sam because we're
interested in your philosophy and I'd kind of like to know how does somebody who
comes from Allister Ridge West Virginia get to where he has such an innovative attitude toward learning.
[Sam Postlethwait] Well maybe it's because that's where I started teaching
and actually I started teaching in Hickory Knob West Virginia in a one room
schoolhouse and there we had individualized instruction because I
only had one student in each class and I think that I learned an awful lot about
people and about teaching there in that in that situation. I learned to
appreciate they that students are a lot like people and they want to be
successful and that they like to tell people what they've learned
and a whole lot of things that I'm finding out as I read some of the
educational psychologists are fundamentally sound things.
You were telling me before we got on tape here about a little girl in in that one room
schoolhouse I think that's a wonderful story would you share that yeah you bet
I'll never never forget this little girl up I in in this setting I did everything
just like I had seen done earlier and that is I had a minute and a half for
eighth grade reading and two minutes for a seventh grade spelling actually had
two students in the seventh grade and that sort of thing and when it came time
to give out the report cards at the end of the session ended for six weeks
and then I did this in a very formal way even though I had only 15 students I
walked around and handed them their report card in a very formal way and as
I went back toward the front of the building I felt this tug on my coat and
it turned around and here was this little blond blue-eyed girl and she had
a report card and she said look here mister Postlethwait she said I made an A
well of course I know she'd made an A given it to her but I
I realized right then how important it is for for people to be successful and
the the significant thing I think here is that the design of of instruction as
we've become kind of institutionalized this is not designed for success in fact
an awful lot of us who teach have become kind of all oriented to and concerned
about how many people would fail and more concerned about how many people we
fail then how many students are successful here and some of our are
really good friends tend to
to design their instruction around the numbers that they expect to fail and I
think they the Keller plan I think the audio tutorial system and I I think the
the cognitive style all of these things are to ask a different question how do
we help people become successful learners rather than how do we have a
certain percentage of failures well that's so one of the things I when I
tell people about psi is the biggest reward we talk about rewarding people in
PSI the biggest reward is a success that someone has the fact that you recognize
that success and they recognize it and they're just no bigger reward than
success itself yes and then the striking thing the interesting thing to me is
that my first encounter with that was back in a little country
school as a as a teacher 18 years old teaching some fifteen students. Well if you
really think about it though your first encounter was probably back in your own youth.
I suppose. I think all of us thought about it that would be the case
yeah well would you kind of react to that success line as an underlying sort of thing?
Well I think the thing that I'm pulling out of this is Sam & Dave's
attitude toward the learner as being very positive and in cognitive style
we're trying really find out more about the learner as an individual and we're
nowhere nearly as accomplished as these gentlemen and their systems that they're
talking about and so we're still looking for how to to get this information but
in the cognitive style methodology they employ elements of both audio tutorial
and PSI and many other systems and the real distinction is the fact that we're
trying to devise tests and measurements to get at who is the student what are
their characteristics and hopefully help Sam and help Dave as they relate to
their classes and through knowing more about their students can design better instruction.
You bring up a good point there about about the doing it
anything and then I again I like come back to you see him on this the
philosophy is good you know and your students are a lot like people and I
enjoyed the article you wrote that had that title but
would you share with us a little bit about how you sort of put this into
practice the nuts and bolts of making this kind of thing work in other words
it I mean you you have your system and it's well known what I think some of
your own expression of how it works would help. Well if we ask what is the
fundamental issue or what is a fundamental question what is a
fundamental problem if indeed we want students to be successful we have to to
look at how they become successful learners. Most of us accept the
definition of learning as a change, a change that is brought about in the learner.
The learner is now able to do something they they were not able to do
before and so we're asking the question how can we bring about this change in
the learner now if indeed the change is to be brought about in the learner then
the learner must be involved in the process and so where do we start
designing instruction we start designing instruction around involvement of the
learner not around the delivery of information most of us who teach tend to
think in terms of how we deliver information rather than how do we get a
learner involved with activities or the design of activities that will cause
this learner now to know things that they didn't know before or to be able to
do things that they weren't able to do before
and by your analysis then of the learner so that you can look at the learner and
say the learner is able to do these kinds of things one then ought to be
able to to better design learning activities to accomplish or achieve
certain ends or our goals here and so we're saying then
that we're starting at quite the opposite end of the spectrum the the I
don't know whether it's unfortunate or not but it but the unfortunate thing it
seems to me is that that indeed human beings do learn vicariously and when
information is delivered to a human being human being will will identify
with this from their past history and consequently experience things by
curiously and consequently learn and so we've built on that and built on that
until we've gotten so far away from the fundamental issue that we really don't
get back and say all right I'm going to to help people learn botany I need them
to define botany what is botany what are the things that I expect my students to
achieve having identified these clearly and laid them out so that other people
can look at them and see that these are appropriate proper then I can look
critically and carefully at the at the activities the experience is you know in
the early days of audio tutorial I used to call it an integrated and experienced
approach to teaching botany and I wish I never had changed the name in fact I
wrote a little book just it was kind of a little booklet called
integrated experience approach to to learning botany
well that I think expresses much better than audio tutorial the concept of what
we're talking about but as I begin talking about integrated experience
approach to to learning botany many of my colleagues felt so threatened by the
fact that students would be learning by themselves and what they were doing that
in kind of self defense I came up with well I do believe that the most
important single factor in a learning system is is a teacher I think their
teacher is very important and to try to emphasize that I felt the
teacher was important I said well maybe my colleagues will be pleased with the
idea of tutoring so I used the term tutoring and and audio it was simply to
convey the connotation of storing the tutor in a vehicle so that that tutor
could be retrieved at the demand a few plays of the student or whomever might
need them need this this information you make this distinction and I'm going to
pursue it a little if I can with you about the delivery of instruction and if
I can put one word on it the design of instruction and I think maybe I'd like
for each of you to respond to the kind of question that I would have about that
which is how do you see these two rules are they are they compatible and which
is more important you know and I think maybe that each of us ought to explore
that kind of a question well if money must be done by the learner then the
design of the instruction ought to involve the learner in the process now
that that's not very profound but it's but it just seems to me that that that
that follows here I'm saying again that delivery of information may be a part of
involving people in the learning process and people can sit and be involved by
hearing information delivered so that you see means that there that a lecture
can be okay and it can can be right here but most of
us who are in the profession of Education have become so accustomed to
education as being a delivery process we don't ask these other questions so much
so that and just to emphasize my point No
I've teaching assistance and bless their hearts they are the people who make me
or break me and I appreciate him very very much because they work hard for me
I really appreciate him occasionally I get one who comes to my Learning Center
and to participate in my program because he says he wants to learn how to teach
all right I put him in a Learning Center where
students are constantly coming to him and saying I don't understand this or I
don't understand this it isn't very long until that that
instructor comes to me and says look I came to you because I wanted to learn
how to teach and all I'm doing it's just helping these students who are in
trouble we don't understand well I'm saying to that person you don't
understand either sick people are those who need a doctor
not people who are well and by the same token people who don't know or don't
understand are the people who need teachers those people who know and
understand are the people who need teachers now not think with me here this
person who came to learn how to teach believed I'm sure that teaching was to
learn how to deliver information better yeah well I'm saying that on this
one-to-one kind of arrangement that he has in the learning center this is a
good opportunity for that person to then talk with an individual bring in new
materials to test your creativity and skill in helping that person learn now
the thing that you have always is the student who is I don't know how shall I
put this delicately here but the person who doesn't learn fast and so indeed all
day long somebody in the learning center will be dealing with the person who's
having a little more difficulty understanding and consequently that
doesn't give you the same feeling of success I guess as a teacher and so what
happens is you having spent two hours or three
hours doing this you feel a bit of frustration because you know the subject
matter well and the people whom you're trying to help really don't know the
subject matter that well and you've done your best explanation they still don't
know it and since it's a one-to-one situation the light doesn't light up and
and you realize that you have been a failure as a teacher because you're face
to face with this in a big General Assembly Hall or even in a smaller
setting where you have only 20 students indeed you can make a presentation and
you'll see some lights light up there and you know you'll feel successful
whereas the system now selects out those people who needs help and you I'm not
sure that I pinned you down on design versus delivery but I'm gonna ask Dave
to comment on on the concept of the two and and where he sees the faculty member
fitting in well I would begin where Sam started with that you're there to try to
help people learn and so what you want to do is provide everything that you can
think of that will make it easy for them now some students will want some type of
thing some students one another some will need lectures and some won't some
need textbooks and some don't need them as badly as others or don't use them as
much so my philosophy basically is that I try to provide everything I can get a
hold up for the students or it's a proliferation of options you might call
it and so when I sit down the design of course that I will deliver in various
ways then I have that that in mind I try to use everything I can so that's the
reason I I use textbooks I give a few lectures I put lectures on videotapes I
use film loops I use computer terminals with physics simulations on the computer
terminals since I'm the physics department and I will use micro
computers when I can get the department to buy me one in fact I will use I hope
I think I can use the micro computers to help me integrate all these things
eventually so that's delivery then it's just a
matter of to put all these things together and
make them available to students in the way that's best for them that's a
difficult job because every student theoretically every student would need
some different combination than others and it requires a lot of organization a
lot of hard work and it gets tiring sometimes after two or three years of it
you think well I think I'll just go back to luxury it's a lot easier a good
springboard for what I expect maybe bill would have to say on this topic I just
love hearing these guys because both Sam and Dave were saying things that I
really approve of but I find myself asking related but a little bit
different questions and my professional experience has always been the fact that
people would come to me and say what's the best media to use for something and
it always puzzled me you know because I didn't have a good answer for them some
things because they required motion seemed to require a film or television
other things because they needed sound required a an audio tape but I really
didn't have beyond that a good blanket answer to people other than the fact
well it's easier for you to use it I've got into this notion through Joe
Hill of Oakland Community College who is no no longer with us but John was
working with educational cognitive style and it rang a real bell with me because
now all of a sudden I had some good answers for people because we talked
about including the student in the design of instruction in the realist
sense Dave you may be an inductive learner in Sam a deductive and Roberts
he may like to learn by himself and the other two in small groups may be myself
in a large lecture hall there are lots and lots of variables that make up the
characteristics of the individual that's how we're talking about is measuring
those variables and then turning to the person designing instruction helping
them by knowing the student better to actually decide no we're not going to
use just audio tapes or a slide tape or a film strip or a
a videotape in fact we may find that between a videotape and the site tape is
very little different maybe there's more difference between two videotapes
because of the intrinsic qualities that relate to the student and we I wish we
could say we've got the answer to all that but right now we're I've been
working about five years trying to design a test for upper division
University students which would pull those variables own I got some
significant differences just recently but nothing yet to report is great and
until these researchers come up with something that will help you pick your
students for the right mini course and that sort of thing I suppose you're
probably going to keep on revising and and and building many courses the term
you use it yes we we talk about many courses and course that's my those are
really just modules which is the best term directly yeah but important here it
seems to me is again that the vehicles were talking about videotape movies
textbooks or whatever are only quality if indeed the person who did them with
put things in there that made them quality are you talking about content
I'm talking no not only about content I'm talking about instructional design
as well some people can write in such a way that you can understand what they're
saying other people including I'm not going to mention them so there are
people who write so that you can't understand what they're what they're
saying and most of us who write textbooks write for colleagues and not
for the students who are to understand these so I'm again content is important
but it's only one aspect of of communication and video tape is its
quality is dependent on what is done in front of the camera and the quality
are the the technicians that operate the the camera so videotape is nothing in
and of itself it's a series of images and audio that is stored so that you can
retrieve it whenever you want and so I think we have to get to get our concept
right here what we're doing is trying to store a human being in such a way that
that human being can be retrieved and you see there are good books and they're
bad books there are good lectures and there are bad lectures and we tend to
lump them all together and somebody's get sewn up if the drum you know and
beats the drum for saying that lectures are all bad that isn't so because you're
a good lecturer makes something that's really worthwhile for for many people
and you know I don't know what this does bill in terms of looking at the learning
styles are a couple of things that that I think are of concern here one is that
suppose you find out that the learning style is better through a lecture for
somebody then indeed we've got to assume that all lectures are the same quality
you're which which we can't assume and if you have a bad lecture it may be that
a good textbook is much better than than a bad lecture
I also need wonder sometimes if indeed I learned better from a textbook if I
might ought to train myself to live in this world by learning from a videotape
sometimes that that I I really ought to avail myself of a number of different
kinds of learning experiences rather than a single one is raising you're
raising a good point that I did not make because we fully recognize that that
when we want people to learn we may play on their strengths so that they will
learn X amount of remain now the other hand we also recognize
that sometimes necessary to augment a person's learning style so that in fact
if you are weak on reading maybe we ought to be few up there I know the
dimensions that that the notions that I'm talking about add to let's say your
possibilities if you're let's say shopping around trying to buy a set of
materials recognizing the fact that there are deductive and inductive
materials recognizing that there are learners who prefer to read others who
prefer to listen etcetera would then help you perceive the world of materials
in a different light rather than going out and buying a film strip or a
videotape or somebody just some thinking that's different because there may not
in fact be intrinsic qualities that are different between the pieces of material
we're also getting into another notion and that is of preferences as opposed to
capabilities yeah on the KE let's say through junior college system we're
talking about is the learner capable when we get into the university system
hopefully we're not always quite so sure about this anymore everybody that's in
the university is a fairly capable learner and the farther up they go in
the system the more capable they should be
therefore we begin to talk about well how would they prefer to live learn with
the notion being that if I can associate the learning that I intend for them to
have with a pleasant environment that is a learning environment then there are
their attitude about that material will be much more positive they're more
likely to believe what I say they're more likely to go out and practice what
I say and that seems to me to be of something of value you're all set up the
whole humanistic thing that's involved here and I wanted to get to that and
then actually I want to get to from the other side which was to ask that out of
a flat-out question how do you respond to those people who say to you you've
devised this the system and I think that it does violence to humanistic concerns
or some such question yeah you get that question very often and I think they
just don't understand what what they're talking about they haven't looked at the
system they haven't seeing that that indeed in the design of
our instructional system we want to provide students an opportunity to
interact with one another in it and this this does occur on the other hand we do
find that some students don't want to interact with other students and and we
do provide that we allow the student to be their own or we assume that they're
mature and if indeed they are paying their money to go to college they will
want to carry away from college all the information but I'm saying this with
tongue-in-cheek that they're all that they want and they want to get want to
get their their money's worth but audio tutorial in no way leaves out the human
aspect learning as a human to human phenomenon and and and we see it all of
the time and all of us are standing on the shoulders of the people who came
before us and and again isn't it a marvelous trait that human beings can
take the information that is accumulated and start from there and go from there
otherwise the progress we we have no no progress and so it is a human the human
thing and we still have our big ol lecture where I go in there and just
smile and smile all I know how to say I love botany and and I think plants are
fantastic don't you shake your head yes so indeed I also try to memorize the
names of my students so that I can call them by name I'm not not that successful
as I'd like to be with this but we start with it and and really work at it Dave
do you do you get any vibrations on the humanistic question yeah as a matter of
fact quite often I tell my friends who do nothing but lecture that I have more
contact with my students than they do do they believe you
well they didn't they seem to not believe me but I then asked them to come
in and view for themselves I think you've been there you know it's the case
you know you deal with them personally you don't deal with some on mass and to
me that's much more humanistic than dealing with 220 students or 40 students
even with 120 students in a PSI course you still can deal with each one
personally once or twice during the term whereas you may only deal with 10 15 or
20 and a regular lunch of course now I'm not saying they shouldn't lecture and I
agree with what Sam said a while ago that sometimes lecturing is an excellent
way to get across material I can remember two lectures I had to my
education that were terrific you know I wouldn't have wanted them to teach in
any other way and then that particular way and but others I would have wished
if they had done something else and so I think it's not only the way the student
learns but it's also the way a professor can get the material across one
professor may not be able to get it across so well in lectures but he may do
a beautiful job with something some other way of doing it
and so I think yeah it's a you have to factor both sides it's the humanistic
thing again because you've got humans in different with humans and you got to
then take all the factors involved in all those humans including including the
people that are designing the system and trying to do the delivery so it's a
complicated problem and I'm not saying about your possibilities of putting it
all down on paper and saying these are the rules that everybody abide button
because I don't think it's that easy but it's but it's significant that you said
you had two lectures here I do think of the group that one undergraduate one
graduate school and your contact now with your students is a much more
meaningful contact and then coming back to Bill's point here we have made an
assumption that a an exchange between a professor and a student is going to be a
pleasant exchange that is an assumption students we professors have
personalities do that the conflict with with the students personality
and we may any contact that I have in a very direct way may be negative rather
than than positive some of these Dan's death of you Thanks it would learn much
better from up here and and in that in that situation what we've created is
more tension anxiety and and not really had a pleasant exchange in that
situation however with that student that student might identify in a large
lecture hall and and feel more at ease and and learned to know a professor all
right we almost back to the success thing that we started with yeah well in
in a sense you're talking about the large lecture hall maybe the most
successful students there are the ones who went to the faculty members office
and there he had one-to-one contact with the faculty that was what he needed he
was self selecting his own learning style and the other might have gotten a
better learning situation out of meeting with her colleagues for a coffee after
class and some of them just didn't do anything at all and they were the ones
who who fell by the wayside well most of us feel like we are good lecturers I
think that nearly every teacher that I encounter feels that they have something
special to give students in in a lecture hall that nobody else can give it in
quite the quite the same way so there's a little delusion there I think on the
part of some of us who lectured but also on the part of some students too because
they've been conditioned for many many years and now Dave what yours a
three-hour course therefore it's a three hour course three-hour course now when
you think of trying to have impact on somebody's life with the three hour
credit course and they have a whole history of I don't know how many years
here of previous exposure to a system which they quaint with education or
learning and you're going counter to this then you ought to expect
I think that you would have some negative reactions by those students and
that to have much impact on the way they learn in just taking that little segment
of their lives is asking an awful lot of the instructional design and of the
instructor as well what surprising thing to me has been the small amount of
negative reaction there is I would have thought there would be more because as
you say they're so used to the other type of teaching all the sudden you're
hitting them with something new here and their senior year they've never seen
them before but you get negative reactions when it comes to grading or
the level of difficulty and I think maybe that's something that the people
who watch programs like this I don't know is that it isn't easier oh now I do
your kind of thing or do Sam's kind of thing it's harder on the professor and
it's harder on the student I think both because the Stute you design the system
for mastery your high level of mastery as you can as you can maintain and the
normal extra courses are really not designed for masters right and so when
you're going to require the master it means they have to work like the devil
and you know people don't like to work that's one negative aspect of the system
is that people don't like to work the positive aspect is when they do it and
they they have a success that's wonderful and they're totally they're
great that's wonderful too but the fact that they had to work so hard to do it
is negative but you can't get around it if you're going to accomplish something
you have to work you see that is something that a lot of students don't
understand and even our whole instructional system is designed around
a curve type grading which suggests to students that all is relative to and
that you can have know something and if you have know it that might be an a in
some courses and and here we are coming in now with a with a whole different
concept saying no you're not going to have to know you're going to whole know
you're going to know it all and you need to know it a hundred percent or you
don't pass this well of of all of the things that I'm criticized in my course
by my students that is the one thing that that I get my
lowest rating on it and that is unfairness of grading because they
consider it not fair to have to know subject matter maybe we can sort of
terminated all that because that's a provocative thought to carry us forward
and I certainly thank all the participants here today bill Terrell
samples the way and Dave Roper thank you very much