A simple mathematical model underlying Keller’s individualized teaching method

Abstract

Keller's article entitled "Good-bye teacher. . . " [J. Appl. Behav. Anal. 1, 79-89 (1968)] was fundamental for the development and dissemination of Keller's Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), which was one of the central issues in the discussions on psychology and education in the 1970s and 1980s, and nowadays has attracted attention in the context of the increasing use of online education. Belonging to a class of approaches usually named as mastery learning, PSI and modified PSI courses (Keller-type courses) present several interesting results, such as final grade distributions where the majority of students achieve the highest grades. Here, we present a simple mathematical model underlying Keller-type individualized teaching methods, describing, in terms of average characteristic parameters, the time evolution of the distribution of students per unit of content, and that most students achieve the highest grades at the end of the course. By applying this model to a real case of an introductory electromagnetism Keller-type course, we obtained its characteristic parameters with which we showed good agreement between the predictions and observations. The model presented here results in a simple formula, which is very accessible for use by a wide audience interested in planning or investigating Keller-type or other mastering learning methods.