Dangers of PSI

Abstract

PSI (personalized system of instruction) has produced very significant changes in classroom instruction in higher education. A great deal of research evaluating PSI and its component parts has been generated. Study questions and proctors are two essential features of the system. This paper raises concerns regarding both of these features. STUDY QUESTIONS AND LEVEL OF CONTENTIn a vicious, if not particularly useful, attack on the PSI approach, Meek (1977) argued that (at least for the humanities and social sciences) the PSI approach does not even attempt to teach important goals. He attributes this failure to the demand by advocates of PSI that instructors use clearly specified and measurable course objectives. Meek says that:The primary goals of such courses should invole an attempt to develop the ability of the student to think critically, to sort, to order, to choose among, to evaluate, and to interrelate competing ideals and ideas. The student must learn how to learn, how to evaluate ideas and data, and how to relate information acquired to her or his own values and those that are present in the larger society. (p. 115) low-level content in PSI courses often lies not in using objectives, but rather in not using them.It is true that the PSI approach forces the instructor to determine in advance what the students are to learn in the class because quizzes must be available for those who progress rapidly through the course. It is also true that communicating this "what the student is to learn" information to the students before they take a quiz is an important feature of the approach. According to PSI proponents this can be done by using study questions rather than objectives. Whereas some PSI courses employ behavioral objectives, proponents of PSI generally tend to downplay behavioral objectives in favor of study questions. Contrary to what Meek says, this paper challenges that PSI courses which do not use behavioral objectives and rely solely on study questions are much more likely to teach low-level content than those that employ objectives. Study questions are much more likely to be "book-specific" or "book-bound" than objectives are. That is, unless the student has read the book from which the study questions were written, he or she often is not likely to be able to answer them correctly. Because quiz questions are typically only a variation of the studv auestions, quizzes also tend to measure low-level con-, .Most would agree that these are important goals. And most tent. For in a a few ago One of the would agree with Meek when he says, "It is basic nonsense leaders of the PSI movement indicated that ure should not to talk about the degree of cmastery, of such goalsn (p. 16).feel bad if we could not remember the answers to quiz quesBut it is also very certain that Meek does infer that he is cations from year to year. He said he had to look up answers pable of measuring the degree of mastery of these goals evto questions on an old quiz himself. This was for an introery time he assigns a student a grade. ducto...

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“…These early data showed that any criticisms of PSI in failing to teach higher-order skills were not specifically applicable to PSI, but instead were broadly applicable to university courses in general. Caldwell (1985) stresses that instructors who wish to teach higher-order objectives must explicitly define those objectives during course development and not simply teach textbook content.…”

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“…Augmenting this course material are "several study questions criterion-referenced to the instructional objectives" (p. 30). Although the relative strengths and weaknesses of PSI have been discussed for decades (see Bender, 1987;Caldwell, 1985;Calhoun, 1976;Fell, 1989;Keller, 1974;Keller, 1981;Keller & Sherman, 1982;Sherman, 1992), technology advances, such as the development of the WWW, have created new opportunities for the application and examination of PSI interventions.…”

“…Both Caldwell (1985) and Meek (1977) criticized the use of self-paced instruction across curricula. Although well suited for linear and sequential materials, self-paced instruction cannot teach the kinds of complex thinking and problem-solving skills necessary in certain aspects of all disciplines.…”

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“…First, the thoroughness and sophistication of work done in one phase pays off at some future point. For example, if little effort is put into carefully looking for higher and more complex learning outcomes during the analysis phase, it is likely that the course may tend to emphasize only memorization type outcomes of the type identified by critics of PSI (Caldwell, 1985). Second, within each phase of ISD there are many procedures important to the success of the overall model.…”