LEARNING TO READ UNDER COMPUTER CONTROL

Abstract

Three general levels of CAI are distinguished: drill and practice, tutorial and dialogue. Stanford CAI reading project is tutorial, i.e., involves real time decisions to branch based on the last response or a sub‐set of previous responses. Sixteen student stations, with time sharing imperceptible to the student, have CRT and light pen, projector, typewriter and a tape cartridge audio device. Learning tasks used in teaching reading by decoding, comprehension and games are described. Coursewriter II programming language was used, in particular a macro command technique for several tasks with the same format. Preliminary analysis of comparison study data involving 100 first‐grade children showed a range of progress of thirty‐five to 170 main line problems per hour, and significantly superior attainment after CAI on several standard reading tests.