Progress in Programmed Instruction.

Abstract A programmed instruction contains a teaching machine with a series of small and carefully planned steps by which the teacher's message is revealed, with the requirement that the student makes a response at each of the steps, and with feedback in the form of immediate information about the response expected of the student. The article presents a study on the use of the programmed content of first college course in accounting designed by the author. The program was tried to be made a complete substitute for the textbook exposition and for most of the routine, mechanical work normally carried on in the first semester of college accounting. The programmed material accounted for improved recognition of the needs of people having responsibilities and the often-tentative ways in which accounting data can assist them. According to the author, programmed instruction is important because it provides a means for experimentally improving instruction. The study points to the achievement of advances as the program is experimentally modified and to tentative confirmation of the hypothesis that programmed instruction is effective as a means for teaching introductory material.