COMPARISONS BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND PROGRAMMED LEARNING AS A FUNCTION OF THE CONTENTS OF THE COMPARISON TEST

Abstract

In the discussion concerning comparisons between traditional teaching and programmed learning the function of the contents of the comparison achievement test seems to have been neglected. In the present investigation the dependency of the results on the correspondence between the learned material and the test contents was measured by two different methods. In the first study the achievement test was compiled independently of the learning material. After the analysis of the correspondence in content between the test and the programme, the content similarity between the test and the learning task appeared to be the decisive variable in performance differences between traditional teaching and programmed learning. In the second study, the degree of similarity between the test and the program was prepared in advance. The results showed a linear connection between this degree of similarity and the difference between programmed‐learning and traditional teaching groups but not between the similarity and the group performances taken separately. Because of the experimental design, the programmed‐learning group showed better performance than did the traditional group. In a re‐test sixteen days later the rank order of the groups was reversed, the traditional group showing significantly better performance than programmed‐learning.