35.2 The Individual Assumption

Many hardware and software designers (as well as teachers) automatically assume that all technology-assisted instruction should be structured individualistically. One student to a computer has been the usual assumption, and computer programs have been written accordingly. A strength of the computer and interactive technologies has been perceived to be their apparent ability to deliver individualized instruction. Tailoring instruction to each student's personal learning needs has strong intuitive appeal, as students differ in aptitude, learning style, personality characteristics, and motivation. The ability of designers to adapt instruction sequences to the cognitive and affective needs of each learner, however, is limited by three factors:

1. Substantial variation exists in types of learning styles and personality traits and, although many of them are sometimes correlated with achievement, few have been shown to predict achievement consistently.
2. Little agreement exists on how to translate differences in learning styles and personal traits into instructional prescriptions. The only design rule widely accepted is that students should control the flow of information.
3. Creating algorithms to adapt instruction to individual needs and designing and producing multiple versions of lessons are both time consurning and expensive.

Thus, the potential for individualized instruction may be limited due to the difficulties associated with identifying individual differences and translating them into instructional prescriptions. In addition, individualized instruction has several shortcomings:

1. Individual work isolates students, and working alone for long periods may lower personal motivation by increasing boredom, frustration, anxiety, and the perception that learning is impersonal.
2. Individual instruction limits the resources and the technology available for individual effprt. The support and encouragement of peers and the cognitive benefits associated with explaining to peers and developing shared mental models is lost.
3. Individualized instruction greatly increases development and hardware costs. A workstation is required for each learner, which entails considerable hardware expense. Substantial development and software expcuses are required when lessons have to be designed to personalize instruction and to adapt the instructional sequence to individual processing requirements.

The difficulties associated with identifying and accommodating individual needs severely limit designers' ability to individualize instruction. The shortcomings of individualized instruction call into question the wisdom of designing individualized programs. Despite these problems, however, virtually all instructional software is designed, developed, and marketed for individual use.

In his description of the implementation of the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow, Dwyer (1994) notes that the cooperative, task-related interaction among students was spontaneous and more extensive than in traditional classrooms, with students interacting with one another while working at computers, spontaneously helping each other, showing curiosity about each other's activities, wanting to share what they had just learned to do, working together to build multimedia presentations about diverse topics, and combining their group's work into whole-class, interdisciplinary projects. The spontaneous cooperation often reported around technology both casts doubt on the individual assumption made by hardware and software designers and points toward the use of cooperative learning in technology-assisted instruction. To use cooperative learning, however, educators must understand its nature.