The Uses Of Plato: A Computer Controlled Teaching System

摘要

The use of a high-speed digital computer as a central controlelement provides great flexibility in an automatic teaching system.Using a computer-based system like PLATO permits versatility inteaching logics, since changing the type of teacher merely requireschanging the computer program but not the hardware. In addition,having access to the decision-making capacity of a large computerlocated as one unit permits complicated decisions to be made foreach student. Such capacity would be prohibitively expensive to provideby means of decision-making equipment located at each studentstation. Studies of queuing that occurs with multiple student requestsshow that the system could teach as many as a thousand studentssimultaneously without incurring a noticeable delay in processing anystudent's request. The educational results thus far have been extremely encouraging.However, reliable conclusions on educational achievement mustawait the results of more thorough experiments now in progress which include larger numbers of students learning under a variety of conditions.The adaptability and usability of the system for a variety ofpurposes in education (including the behavioral and physical sciences)have been clearly demonstrated.