33. Learner-Control And Instructional Technologies

Michael D. Williams

Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)

This chapter has several purposes: (a) to update the literature base of learner-control studies provided in previous reviews; (b) to review the paradigms employed in CBI research on learner control in instructional technologies; (c) to focus and expand on the suggestions made or implied in these reviews that a number of individual learner differences (and by implication the mental processes they reflect) can greatly contribute to both the choices students make and to the effectiveness of those choices; (d) to explore the impact on learner-control effectiveness of both rational-cognitive processes and emotional-motivational states of the learner; (e) to propose some instructional prescriptions for the use of learner-controlled activities; and (f) to suggest avenues for future research.*

33.1 Learner Control And Computers

The thrust of discussion here involves learner control over instructional activities that are based on or delivered by a computer (including interactive videodisc, CD-ROM, and related technologies). The exploration of learner control within more traditional delivery systems-for example, the Audio-Tutorial Approach (see 22.2.2) of Postlethwait, Novak, and Murray (1972) and the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI or Keller Plan) of F. S. Keller (1974)-is comprehensively addressed in Reiser's (1987) chapter on the history of educational technology. (See also 22.2.)

I thank the University of Minnesota, San Diego State University, the Educational Communications and Technology Foundation, and Wilson Learning Corporation for supporting much of the preliminary work that culminated in this chapter.