[Music]
We have gathered here a group of educators who want to talk informally
about individualized and personalized instruction. And our first guest will be
Dr. Fred Keller, whose background is known to most, but he is a graduate of
Tufts. He has two graduate degrees from Harvard. He has taught at Columbia, and
since his retirement at Columbia he's taught at six other institutions around
the world. He is the originator of the Keller plan also known as the
personalized system of instruction and he tries to share the credit for that
with three other colleagues including one American Gil Sherman, and we'll talk
more about some of Dr. Keller's background in a moment. I mentioned the
key name Sherman. To his right we have from Virginia Tech and out of the
University of Tennessee, Dr. Tom Sherman who has written a book in the Langdon
series called Individually Responsive Instruction. And then to my immediate
left we have Dr. Dave Roper, who was one of the early people in applying the
personalized system of instruction designed by Dr. Keller, and his
contribution to that was to be the initiator of the internal Proctor
concept and he has done some spin-off things since, including adding the idea
of optional video taped lectures and currently is coming up with some ideas
to use the computer. So that's our cast and I would like then at this moment to
try to get the focus upon Dr. Keller and let him tell us some of the details-
actually everybody's already heard the term Keller plan and most
people have heard PSI which you meant I suppose to be pronounced sigh but it
never turned out that way. Could you tell us what is PSI?
Well first I like your comment about the Keller plan. I'm glad that you mentioned that
because it isn't the Keller plan but you also said that, so we've got that all covered.
The PSI was a joint effort really and we came up with something and I've
been the spokesman ever since. I was old, I'd had no other work that took my time.
I could spend my time doing these things and they couldn't. They were all busy
earning their living and I could tell about it and so I became the Keller plan
and it isn't the Keller plan it's the Keller Sherman Martiselli Bori
and Adolfo Ozzie plan [laughter] but actually four of us were involved in it and as a
result of being invited to start a department, a department of Experimental
Psychology at the University of Brasília and we spent quite a lot of time
together deciding what we would do since we had a great deal of freedom in
starting this department and one of the things we had to decide on was how to
teach. And since we had so much freedom we ran into trouble because we weren't
doing just what we we didn't have to do just what we've done before. What we came
up with was a plan by degrees in which go to to make it as concise as possible
a plan in which an instructor first breaks up a course of study into small
elements in connection with each element he provides a set of perhaps I call them
study questions each unit of the of the course has study questions with it to
guide the student in his study each unit has several alternate tests on its
content which follow the the which follow the study questions pretty well
so that there's no guesswork you ask all of the study questions in one way or
another in the unit-tests broken up in this way
each student is permitted to go through the series of Units one after the other
until he finishes his course he goes at his own pace as soon as he has shown
that he understands he has mastery of that word mastery is a little tricky but
as soon as he convinces us that he understands this unit of work well
enough to go ahead he is qualified to go ahead and has essentially made an a on
1% a certain percentage of his course and then add from the first unit to the
second when his mastery is when his shift mastery is shown he's given the
next assignment and he goes through that meeting the requirements again at his
own pace not hurried by the others or not held back until he gets through the
course when he gets through the course he is given maximum credit full credit
the a credit for having done this now in that course he may have failed a
number of tests on the various units he may have taken longer time in another
person fewer tests or more tests but he got to the same place he met the
requirements of the teacher now I've left out one very important aspect of
this if the teacher had to grade all of these tests and he had 50 people in his
class or more as sometimes as a case he would have an an unhealthy situation
that isn't the word I was coming up with first he would have a very bad situation
so to help him in this we came on a scheme we came up with a scheme of
utilizing people either who had just completed the course of study or those
who were even in the course of study as you mentioned in connection
Dave's internal proctors or his bootstrap proctors, proctors taken from
the class we came up with the idea of the student proctor someone who might
screen at least in a rough way who might evaluate the student at least in a rough
way or ordinarily a satisfactory way but open to revision by the teacher or in a
large class perhaps by the manager of the course the assistant the graduate
assistant and the course who might function in lieu of the teacher.
So the proctors, the student proctors, did the grading of the examinations if
there's any question if there's any doubt about the value of their grading
or the correctness of the grading that can always be taken to higher authority
and checked with and also the higher authorities always around looking over
the shoulder anyway to see what's going on and keeping a close eye on the on the
operation now I guess that covers the major features of it probably Dave who
is now teaching this way our time who knows more about than I do I'm sure can
can ask or can suggest further things about it that well I want to be
mentioned I'd like to put a little weight on them on this Dr. Keller
I have heard you say that nobody does it exactly your way and I have also seen in
your writings that you have an effect import people to at least the first time
that they use the personalized system of instruction to try it with the
methodological components that you have suggested yes I must say that I have
said that and I said it for this reason when we used it in a certain fashion at
Arizona State we found that every term the results were the same
we got satisfied students and we got students who learned and we were happy
and the this was an important experience and when we started to monkey with
things it didn't work as well if we started to change things around from
that first guesswork we ran into more problems and we found that we had a
system and if one part of it was wrong it made squeaking in the other parts of
it you feeling if this went wrong with a student
the proctor was up in trouble or if the proctor was wrong the student was in
trouble or I was in trouble you know we all had to work together and with the
kind of a plan that we did outline it worked pretty well and when other people
tried it and did the same way then Billy Cohen
for example goes around giving speeches don't change the plan he gives these
speeches regularly now don't change the plan music justice just as old man
Keller said it should be used well changes can be made but some
changes are different from others and I said at that time I think you ought to
try it the way it worked with us and the way it worked with Joel and Bill and
Benny and so on and then then make your changes it's open to improvement lord
knows it's certainly going to be altered it's certainly going to be modified in
some way that's good but try it out that way and then you've got a baseline and
if it works is I think it will you'll know what to do from that time on Dave
as a an innovator how do you respond to that well I followed his advice first
time I taught PSI I basically did it the way he said of course he taught
psychology I teach physics there were some differences but I tried to do what
he said of course I had Ben Greene's experience to rely upon too and he
basically did what Keller said to do also and had success the thing that
impressed me about the plan when I first heard of it and I went to that first
conference in 1971 in my fear was that it was a consistent whole as I had
mentioned Dr. Keller earlier I saw that it put together in a coherent fashion
all these things I'd been trying to do and I never could quite put them
together in the matter of fact it was impossible to put them together in a
lecture situation that was the prime and the really the genius I think of
this plan was finding a coherent way to make this a cohesive course where you
could do all these things and being given a lot of freedom yes right that
that helped well Tom the word freedom came up here as a faculty member the
suggestion that you that you follow somebody's mold now you've done the PSI
like thing can you respond to I suppose the natural tendency to make it fit your
own teaching mold when you try to apply this method one of the you know sitting
besides a man here who has maintained really a remarkably radical stance which
i think is really good we need people who will say you got to do it my way
because this is the right way to do it and I really believe in that but the
first time I taught a course in college-level course at the end of that
course everyone made an A which I thought was marvelous I was kind of
naive at that at that time they that was in the like the Fall Quarter and the
between the fall and winter quarter the Dean called a meeting and there were
many people I was not the only one at this meeting but there were there were
many people there but the purpose of the meeting was to discuss grading policies
and as I listened to these discussion or it was really more of a lecture actually
yes and about grading policies I looked around and and I was the only one there
who had always in my students so I figured it was somewhat focused and
these other people were there just for a show and but that made it very difficult
there's some some problems that arise of that sort that I wanted I needed to eat
and had some bills to pay and so forth so I had those kind
considerations and at the time I thought I was sufficiently radical also but I
don't think I was and and maybe have not been since then but it really
necessitated some modifications of what I really thought ought it ought to be
happening although I think ultimately I was able to come to grips with that by
saying well or by I don't know whether it was a rationalization or not but what
I did was say well I can give people an option and they can have an option to
reach this level of proficiency or this level of proficiency or this level of
proficiency with with a minimum level of acceptability for passing grade of C I
never gave any D so I wouldn't get these but C and then if somebody wanted to
achieve a higher level they could get a B and that seemed to fit in very well I
don't know how you feel about that kind of approach well I don't like it what I
think is I would rather give if they don't want to do the whole course and
get a name ID or they get part of the course and let them get an A in that
that is if they can't handle twenty units and give them 15 units and let
them earn their a that way and say I well I took a course in physics you know
it was a sort of a course in physics that I got fifteen if I got less credit
for it but I know what you're I know what you're saying
this wouldn't work any better than the other you'll be giving just Moraes for
or a smaller number of points of points the course points or whatever you call
them I disappear don't like it it's I think it's basically wrong to do it when
a minute when a student has met the requirements that you set for him and
then you give him on some on some pretense or other you give him less than
the earned just because the Dean or somebody else decided but I know also
that they're buying that you're in and I don't think you know young people should
ever start doing anything radical I don't think young people are and I know
that the middle-aged group won't you know they they're not going to because
they're busy building an empire they're busy they've got their life
already well organized but the old people ought to be the ones and do the
the radical work because they're there you know you can't what can you say he's
gonna be gone a week or so and let him do what he wants to and so but it's very
difficult if you try to to introduce an all a procedure you can do several
problems one is the general attitude of people these days about the the lowering
of quality of our educational program we're giving a z' for look at all the
A's we give now and they're doing no better than they were doing before
that'll be right in there then they don't matter I think of grades versus
credit and how much of each and thinking that we can quantify I think maybe
that's a philosophical issue rather than an instructional one although it
certainly brings two I think to mind the very important point here and that is
that it is not easy to make these kinds of changes that a method such as you
have suggested is fraught with many kinds of drawbacks from the standpoint
of people who are doing something else it is fraught with roadblocks from a
standpoint of people who would like to be more radical and do something
different and some of those things I think would be worth are talking about
could i interject one thing sure people ask me about using the psi1 of the first
question I asked me do you have tenure and have you been promoted and because
you haven't you've got problems saying if you had I said great and you're in
good shape go right ahead and otherwise I won I still help them but I warn them
about what kind of problems they might run across and sometimes it discourages
them from doing other other problems that were mentioned here and that's the
hard work that's involved now I think one of the greatest things that I PSI is
it ensures that the instructor is prepared exactly you know often as I'm
trying to do for a class 11:00 this morning I'm not quite prepared and I
don't know what I'm going to have time is short
but when you develop a psi-corps you got to have 2/3 of it ready before you at
least before you go to class I mean you're 2/3 of the way through the course
or they're gonna be up ahead at you some of the students and say you're prepared
so it's a tremendous amount of work on it says upfront work that's that's the
hard part I think for many instructors now on this sign here I'm not quite an
agreement go yet I think there's a function in part of your course and what
you'll finally want to have in your course when you say that you must have a
large amount of it prepared in advance but the first time through did you have
a large amount prepared in advance had you gone to a workshop or something had
you had you well I've gone to the MIT and you had time for that
well I took time to do it I think I spent an entire summer preparing yes
well alright and you at you were also an experienced teacher when you did that so
you didn't make as many mistakes in your preparation as you might have but you
probably made some as oh then he'll do but it's also possible to start with one
or two units now if you're an experienced old soldier in the game and
you know what you're ordinarily assigning and what you're ordinarily
expecting and you have a course that is a little less demanding than the one you
were describing I think it and I think it makes a difference as to what field
you're in at Christmas in my own course I started with two units
I had one unit complete and one set of examination one form of the test ready
when I started I didn't have any opportunity to do anything better I
didn't get the idea till at two o'clock one morning about about two weeks before
the course was going to start or before the end of the term rather and I went to
a class that I already had and I said look I need help you're all through this
course and I picked I asked for 20 of them to stay after class and I had a
select group was I talked them you've been through this course
you've got good grades or you're headed for good grades apparently would you be
interested in serving as Proctor's now this was just two weeks before the new
term was beginning and I hadn't I just had the idea I didn't have I did the
notion of how I would grade exams had been holding me back
and now I got the notion of that Proctor that's the only thing I contributed not
yes the Proctor would now there and so I had
to I had to hurry I only the new term was that I wanted to
go I knew that would work I thought I knew at that moment I thought I knew and
so I got my Proctor's and I had one two units and I worked like a dog but I was
also the elderly man on the staff I was free to do nothing else but this for my
term I had the one course only I worked out of the morning until night I did
more typing I did I did everything in the course and I managed to get it going
but with the help of the problem you were teaching 12 hours know I had that I
was only teaching this one about the average and struck ah yes that you're
right get something done that or you would have to I guess you'll have to
tell me but it isn't essential that's what I'm getting at it isn't anything
intrinsic to the to the course it's it's it's you've got to have the thing done
because you have other other demands upon you having started of course once
without having the materials ready I would never recommend anybody doing that
well it was so much pressure I mean I it was it was I think that was one of the
worst quarters I ever spent thing in there cranking those things out
and as and I could see people getting into unit five when I was still doing
the last period on unit six you know and it was getting worse and worse because
they were completing them faster than I was producing them and here you are with
the last unit just completed this bright eyed girl walks up and says where is
unit eight
when you just finish units it's like loading our students want to learn it
faster than we can get it to it I you know we have we have a real barrier
Tom's point is excellent in that the burden on this on a faculty member can
be just unbearable at the same time the evidence of what happens when you start
this is is something that ought to be very positive to those of us who love to
teach yes sometimes I wonder if all the success of the other psi isn't due the
fact that the instructors are so well prepared no I was just going to say one
thing that seems to me about psi is at the point that Dave's made a couple of
times is the impact of psi not on students but on instructors which i
think is probably one of the major contributions that this ideas had in in
higher education is to focus on instructor behavior and make instructor
behavior a legitimate area of research concern and interest by others outside
the particular instructor as well as instructor him or herself in providing
some guidance relative to organization of information and I think this idea
about having the instructor more prepared or better prepare this is
certainly true because once you delve into the material that much at that
depth you're bound to know it better than you would if you hadn't but it
seems that had a remarkable impact to me in terms of just thinking about or
generating thought about how to organize instruction I've heard my reactions that
say well now that's fine for the introductory course
or something to the nature that the things that are simple to teach that are
easy to organize we can dump into a PSI course but for my students who learn
these higher-level things and the esoteric sorts of things etcetera that
these kinds of things won't work now can you react to this and I picked up on
this from your word demanding you're talking about how demanding willernie
was you know I don't get the connection with a demanding I guess what I'm asking
is that and I sort of have a nation of whole here with Dave on my left that
there are have been suggestions that that you can only teach low and middle
level cognitive concepts and then when you're talking about synthesis or the
grand plan or having students do things which are here is to go beyond in other
words that the PSI isn't isn't good for taking the top of the ladder stuff well
of course we begin where we had to begin with the first course it was the first
course to be taught as it turned out practically the first course in the
university to be taught at that Brasilia we had to begin with the first course to
get to the second but we had a plan at that time which was larger than the
first course we intended to go by self pacing through our entire through our
entire program we were to go from first course into second into third the same
the same method the same procedures were to be used in successive courses we did
not have the proctors we had laboratory assistants our first course was a
laboratory course almost exclusively with very little reading only enough
reading to prepare for the laboratory work that was our initial course based
upon a little one that I had tricked I had rigged up that Columbia before I
went to Brasilia but the we expected to go right on through but when we got to
Arizona State we were thinking only of one course if you got the chance to try
it out that was all and they were kind enough because I was old enough to let
me try it out there pretty soon Sherman got in with his course
we had two courses going in the same term and then we began to think of the
possibility can we go farther and well we didn't go farther there we went that
far and no farther we had other stuff to do Sherman had other stuff to do and I
was I had done all I wanted to do I found out it worked after three weeks I
knew the way I was in I knew that this would work but the first three weeks
were terrible the first three weeks in the first place the first unit was a bad
one it was a I thought it was a nice one I'd been giving it out as a first
assignment for a long time and it turned out to be a very bad unit that I had
paid very little attention to and when I found that I would gone for nearly two
weeks and I only had a few people through the first unit well I was almost
ready to throw in the sponge and so was the chairman of my department and so
everyone else was looking a little bit I guess this was turned out to be a dud
well then they began to come in many of them had stayed away because it was
difficult but they found out others were getting it and they began to come in
began to take tests and then we began to get going by three weeks the end of
three weeks things are now moving I knew and I could see with a look on their
faces I could say you know know these people feel like people now and they had
gotten through that but I did lose a lot because of that bad unit quite a few
people dropped out but the greatest drop out I had was the first course I must
have lost 10 percent right off it never got never got off the ground and I had a
I had a incomplete so something like 20% I've forgotten the exact number now a
lot of in completes at the end of the course now where was I well we were we
were talking about about people who criticized yes yes I am innocent reached
the higher levels of teachers when I don't know any level that it doesn't
reach I think maybe there is one change that would take place and that would be
at the very top level when a doctoral candidate is talking with his sponsor I
don't think we need a proctor because their understanding exists
between the two and it can be a profitable arrangement between them but
I don't think it can be a profitable arrangement if you do the grading for a
hundred hundred kids and you do the proctoring yourself and you and I don't
think even a tutorial of a relationship between a first-class scientist or
scholar and a freshman or a sophomore or a junior or a senior is very productive
I just don't think they're close enough in understanding close enough and
understanding not only the problems but each other I think the the Mark Hopkins
theme is very nice and it's very touching but I don't think it's a very
useful one I think it's a waste of good intellect on the one hand and a great
frustration to the student on the other I believe that we can go on with
Proctor's up quite a distance up the line I think it's necessary
it depends though upon the understanding of the instructor how close is the
instructor to the student oh yes to say you know those who can teaching those
are those who can do and those who can't teach well I think there's some sense in
that really I don't mean I don't mean that if you know good you go to teaching
but sometimes you're very if you're closer to your student you can have more
influence you can do more toward teaching him than if you're way up here
on a pinnacle sometimes a very young instructor goes to work and the kids
love him and you say oh my lord I heard him and he is way off base here he's
ignorant there he's illiterate there and look at him he seems to be doing well
the students don't notice that this is true I think how do you think about that
yes I think there's a the intermediary of the proctors was along the geniuses
of the system I think and a lot of my work has been toward the ramifications
of that or assignments of that as I explained to you earlier even right now
with the computer work I'm doing using with me on the computer that no more
than other students and even no more than I know to teach me and other
students things Dave could you back up a minute Erica question you've come right
to the point I think we like the cover Nick's
and dr. Keller led you into it I felt very nicely which you know the work that
you have done as a suggestion of the kinds of things which are happening as
changes to or new developments in the personalized system of instruction so
we've already mentioned that rather than have somebody who had already completed
the course that it was your idea and others at about the same time to have
students from within the course and then I think you've added two important
things and would just just very briefly tell us about the videotaped lecture
concept and then explain in a little more detail for us what your what you're
planning now for the computer okay well first of all the internal bootstrap
proctors I the Keller method at first and I took people from previous courses
for several quarters and I found it very difficult to get them particularly if
it's it's the Fall Quarter because there's a summer that's intervening it's
hard to find those guys he arranged them beforehand doesn't really work because
they may forget or not show up or whatever so it's difficult to find those
tutors sometimes so I began to say well look there's an easier way to do this
and other people at the same time I think there are in every one thing about
getting people from previous courses you didn't always get the best ones because
the best ones are so busy taking overloads that they don't have time to
now I did get a Dean they'd let me give them credit so that didn't do something
I could give them three hours credit for helping me teach this course but
nevertheless it was difficult and you couldn't always get the best ones but
you can almost always get the best ones from within the course itself so I found
that the tutors I got tried it and it seemed to work the tutors I got from
within the course were as good or better than the ones I got outside the course
they were a step or two ahead of everybody else which was really was all
that was required in fact it was fresher on their minds and the problems they had
refresher on then the students had been in it was
sort of a step closer to the students even than the people that were in the
course previously did you did you pick them at the beginning all the way
through or did you let did you alternate that there was a competition actually I
see usually in the way I do it I changed it from now every now and then just
because changing is good for you I think one reason but basically I would say I
will read the first unit for everybody yes maybe even the second unit depending
on the course and the people that get through those units first I will talk to
make sure they they really have a good foundation and there they're good
students and ask them if they want to be tutors they're not give them unit
credits for being tutors if they - or something like two thirds of the credit
of the units and the course they'll get so many units go well what I think was
one third one unit credit two thirds two unit credit something like that
depending on this portion how many units total there were in the course and so
forth and it was it worked out so if they tutored 2/3 of the units of the
course they did not need to take a final examination in order to make the rate I
figured if they tutored students on 2/3 of the course they have studied as much
as anybody would study for a final exam that is reviewing they've gone over and
over and over it again they have to be in class and/or do this they miss a
class except by excuse prior excuse then they've lost their credits I had
everything never had any problems along those lines they always show that and
that's the way I designed and it worked very well so that's the tutors any other
quite well thank well now you kind of answered the question that I didn't ask
first the question that I wanted you to to address Dave was something about your
need for why did you feel a need for and then exude you do to start adding things
to or what we would call providing new developments in PS are they one of the
things that was mentioned the original plan was to give some optional lectures
lectures have a place books have a place everything has its place if you can just
find out where it is and how to work it into your course structure and I tried
the option election they didn't seem to work too well a lot of people found out
students don't show up you spent a lot of time for praying that lecture and
maybe five out of three about twenty or fifty yeah a lot more it's kind of
discouraging it's hard on your ego you know lecturing is a big ego trip and I
miss it and it's really rough on you when you do it and they know it's your
life so I began thinking hard about that and
about that time this facility here became available in this campus and so I
explored into that and I said well why don't we just prepare some videotaped
lectures well people discourage me yeah that's canned stuff it's it had a bad
reputation people tried TV teaching some however it didn't seem to work
was it too good but uh oh well this is a new context no one's tried this before
and so low I've worked hard I spent a whole summer I've consulted with the
gentleman and we put together some 24 30 minute lectures for this to credit
senior quantum mechanics course and it really worked out quite well
got a publication out of it
the students used them on about a 50% level what's really surprised me that is
surprising I suspect it might be related to the stage at which they were they are
well along now you're in quantum mechanics in the first course there
might have been a little different there you haven't caught them now these people
are part of physics by now yeah and doctors I think yes they're young
physicists I suspect maybe the fact that I got so few to come to my candle
lecturers but when I lectured to these students they didn't show up when I
lectured with live like I know I actually I got into this in stages I got
the idea I said well look when did one of the problems with lecturing is that
that you're lecturing and that only a certain number of those students are
ready for that lecture and next week somebody else is ready for the election
is too late so I just I just had a camera come over and just take me right
there in the classroom without any special preparation or anything and then
the next week I would show that tape in another room while I was lecturing and
I'm the next subject and I found that half the students I increased the amount
of students that came to the lectures but half of them went to see the TV
tape right and come to hear me so that really convinced me that would work well
then I put all the effort into it and did the best job I could to giving
my abilities but the facilities here were terrific and they turned out to be
very high quality tape something I had one experience that is relevant here
when I first started I didn't know how to do about the lecture because I wanted
them all to be ready for the lecture so I said when you past unit 4 there will
be a lecture and I would put a sign on the blackboard this will be a lesson
from The Fountains will say give us some tricky name like that to attract
attention so people will come when you past unit 4 you can come to here elect a
lecture on a lesson from The Fountains by Descartes you know Descartes spawns
and I was going to talk about the nervous system more like do Hertz
fountains I'm afraid our tape is running over and we're gonna have to bring this
to an end and there are some other things obviously to be said about the
topic but I think if I can summarize that I think what is being said is that
there is a new way available for those who would try to use it that provides
for better learning the students like it better
and it achieves better results we are not in total agreement as to how often
or how intensively to use the method but does that fairly represent the
underlying the current situation ok the current situation and well maybe on
another tape we can talk about the future. Yes I think that would be a good idea.
Thank you very much Dr. Keller and Dr. Sherman and of course Dave.
[Music]