The use of a high-speed digital computer as a central control element provides great flexibility in an automatic teaching system. Using computer-based system permits versatility in teaching logics since changing the type of teacher merely requires changing the computer program, not the hardware. In addition, having access to the decision-making capacity of a large computer located as one unit permits complicated decisions to be made for each student. Such capacity would be prohibitively expensive to provide by means of decision-making equipment located at each student station. The results of exploratory queuing studies show that the system could teach as many as a thousand students simultaneously without incurring a noticeable delay for any student's request.
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