my first learning blog

  

Personalised System of Instruction  or Kellar’s plan.

Individualized instruction is where students’ personal needs are placed at the forefront of an instructor’s teaching practices. Here, technology, content and pace of learning depend on the abilities of individual students in a class. Five steps to individualization in the classroom include

– Set clear and specific goals
– Make goals challenging and realistic
– Make goals dynamic and review regularly
– Let students own their progress
– Involve parents or academic advisors when necessary

Individualized instruction refers to educators using specific strategies, resources and assessments that cater to the needs of learners in their class. This process ensures that students are given guidance and flexibility in their learning process, enhancing their academic growth along the way.

Individualized instruction strategy refers to those classroom practices of teaching which recognize the uniqueness of each student learner and thus provide for adequate tutorial guidance, and other support services suited to bring about a wholesome development in the person (mind, body, and spirit).Among different strategies ,One of the main is Personalised System of Instruction  or Kellar’s plan.

 

Personalised System of Instruction  or Kellar’s plan.

Fred Keller (1899 - 1996)

Fred Simmons Keller was born on January 2, 1899 on a farm near Rural Grove, New York.

Keller graduated from Tufts College in 1926, with psychology as his major interest. He received his M.A. in 1928 and his Ph.D. in 1931, both at Harvard University. For the next seven years he was employed as an instructor at Colgate University. During this period he wrote a book on psychological history and systems called The Definition of Psychology; this paved the way for another instructorship at Columbia University, where he remained until retiring in 1964.

In the late 1940s Keller and his colleague, W.N. Shoenfeld, were instrumental in two educational innovations, which according to Michael (1996), "changed the course of behavior analysis history" . First, in 1947 they introduced a laboratory component to their introductory psychology course at Columbia University that required students to demonstrate behavioral principles using a live rat. A number of prominent psychologists have cited their laboratory experience in this course as having attracted them into the fiel. The "rat lab" was to become a standard requirement in numerous other undergraduate experimental psychology courses across the country. The second innovation was the Keller & Schoenfeld book, Principles of Psychology, published in 1950.

 

In 1963 Keller was asked to set up a Department of Psychology at the University of Brasilia. With "carta blanche" guaranteed for every aspect of the project, Keller developed what is now known as a Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) or the Keller Plan. After leaving Brazil and retiring from Columbia in 1964, he joined the faculty at Arizona State University, where he remained for three years, refining his teaching method in collaboration with his colleague, J. G. Sherman. From this emerged Keller's best known paper on the topic, Good-bye teacher... and national recognition. PSI has since been employed in hundreds of college courses with a wide range of subject matters. The data suggest that it is more effective than traditional teaching and that students like it better .

Personalized System of Instruction (PSI): An Example

Suppose you are a university student, a sophomore. Today is the first day of classes for your sophomore year. You are attending the introductory lecture of sociology course. The instructor hands out a course outline and asks the class to spend several minutes looking it over. The outline begins as follows:

"This is a course through which you may move, from start to finish, at your own pace. You will not be held back by other students or forced to go ahead until you are ready. At best, you can meet all of your course requirements in less than one semester; at worst, you may not complete the job within that time. How fast you go is up to you.

 

"The work of this course will be divided into 30 units of content, which correspond roughly to the series of homework assignments and laboratory exercises. These units will come in a definite numerical order, and you must show your mastery of each unit (by passing a "readiness" test or carrying out an experiment) before moving on to the next.

 

"A good share of the reading for this course may be done in the classroom, at those times when no lectures, demonstrations, or other activities are taking place. Your classroom, that is, will sometimes be a study hall.

 

"The lectures and demonstrations in this course will have a different relation to the rest of your work than is usually the rule. They will be provided only when you have demonstrated your readiness to appreciate them; no examination will be based on them; and you need not attend them if you do not wish. When a certain percentage of the class has reached a certain point in the course, a lecture or demonstration will be available at a stated time, but it will not be compulsory.

 

"The teaching staff for your course will include proctors, assistants, and an instructor. A proctor is an undergraduate who has been chosen for his mastery of the course content and orientation, for his maturity of judgment, for his understanding of the specific problems that confront you as a beginner, and for his willingness to assist. He will provide you with all your study materials except your textbooks. He will pass upon your readiness tests as satisfactory or unsatisfactory. His judgment will ordinarily be the law, but if he is ever in serious doubt, he can appeal to the classroom assistant, or even the instructor, for a ruling. Failure to pass a test on the first try, the second, the third, or even later, will not be held against you. It is better that you get too much testing than not enough, if your final success in the course is to be assured..." 

Later on in the outline you read about how your final grade is determined: 75% is based on the number of units you complete, and 25% is based on your score on a cumulative end-of-term exam (containing questions similar to the readiness tests).

Students in the class finish looking over the outline, and your instructor begins speaking. He advises that you cover two units per week in order to take an A into the final examination, and that you should withdraw if you have not passed the readiness test for Unit 1 after two weeks into the course. He also suggests that you complete assignments during class time, the advantage being that the course proctors, and perhaps even other students, would be present and available for assistance.

Your instructor then distributes the assignment for Unit 1, which covers the first 20 pages in your textbook. The assignment contains unit objectives, expanded discussions of some of the key concepts you will read about, and 30 study questions. He advises that you read the material in such a way as to seek out the answers to the study questions. He repeatedly emphasizes the importance of the study questions - the content addressed by them forms the basis for the corresponding readiness test. He also notes that, at any point in the course, in order to receive the assignment for the next unit, you always need to pass the readiness test for the current one. And here is a shocker: a pass is 100% correct!

Finally, you are informed that the proctor will oversee you writing the test and immediately afterwards grade it with you present. Should you have answered any question incorrectly, the proctor will ask you to explain your reasoning. You will always be given an opportunity to challenge the scoring of your answers, and the proctor has the authority to revise his or her assessment based upon your oral defense.

What are you to do? The are some things about this course you like, others which you aren't quite so sure about, and yet others that you're pretty sure you don't like. Will you be able to maintain your B average in a course like this? With so few lectures, how are you to learn all this material? This course might be good for memorizing facts, but what about critical thinking? Will it consume all your time at the expense of your other courses? Will you be more likely to forget all these little bits of information once the course is over? A friend of yours is taking another section of the same course, taught in the traditional manner. You are tempted to switch sections, but you are also tempted to remain based upon something else your instructor mentioned at the end of his speech, something about students doing better under this teaching method and saying afterwards that they prefer it.

The teaching method described above is an example of the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) or the Keller Plan. It is distinguished by five features

(1)          "the go-at-your-own-pace feature, which permits a student to move through the course at a speed commensurate with his ability and other demands upon his time"

(2)          "the unit perfection requirement for advance, which lets the student go ahead to new material only after demonstrating mastery of that which preceded"

(3)           "the use of lectures and demonstrations as vehicles of motivation, rather than sources of critical information"

(4)           "the related stress upon the written word in teacher-student communication"

(5)          "the use of proctors, which permits repeated testing, immediate scoring, almost unavoidable tutoring, and a marked enhancement of the personal-social aspect of the educational process."

PSI may appear to be a new and radical approach to education, but in fact it has been around since the mid-1960s (Keller, 1968). PSI has been used at all levels of education, from elementary schools to university graduate programs, as well as in military and industrial settings . College courses employing PSI have included: introductory psychology, learning, anthropology, sociology, physics, chemistry, economics, business, mathematics, biology, nutrition, psychiatry, library science, home economics, statistics, composition, gerontology, political science, biochemistry, earth science, engineering, and philosophy

Today various educators throughout the world continue to use PSI and actively promote it. Some college instructors have "updated" PSI, by incorporating computer technology into the system.