Audio Tutorial Method

First off a major issue I have with this article is when it was published. 1979? Now I respect this for what it is but seriously 1979? Is there nothing else since then?

Okay, now that we're clear that I'm not impressed with the timeliness of the article here we go on my impressions of the content. First off it seems to me like it almost as much a commentary on meta-analysis as it is a comparison of A-T. Secondly I'm not uber impressed with the selection criteria that were used to find studies to summarize. I think lumping some data together while excluding some data sets is problematic. Finally I'm not convinced, with the information presented, that they could accurately reject the null hypothesis, I think the deviations and effect size were too small.

Before I talk about what I think about A-T I wanted to reveal the results of an ERIC search on A-T. Doing an advanced search for the keywords "audio" and "tutorial" including all publication years resulted in 411 hits. Performing the same search limiting the results to the year range of 1990-2009 resulted in just 30. Moving the limit up to the year 2000 dropped it to only 13 results. So maybe the reason we're reading an article from 1979 that almost says A-T doesn't work is that...it didn't work.

HOWEVER- technology has changed tremendously in the past 30 years and so now we may be experiencing a time when A-T is more successful. Students today are "plugged in" so maybe it would work better now. I could see many possible uses for this type of learning, especially in technical fields. I also see where this fits in with technologies like Elluminate where discussion can be facilitated.

Bottom-line- Would I use A-T in my classroom. Surprisingly- Yes. BUT I teach Career and Technical Education where step-by-step approaches are sometimes necessary for tasks that students need to learn. I could see where things like Flash-based programs could be used to teach students how to say, create an irrigation system where they could "hear" from a customer and the lay out the system needed and then "test" it, with the software prompting correct choices kind of like a teacher would.

Who knows- maybe it's an idea whose time has finally come?

Keller Plan

The piece by Davis is an interesting introduction to web-based instructional delivery as it encompasses many of the multimedia delivery techniques. However it also represents a system that requires an extraordinary amount of effort on the side of the instructor, requiring a tremendous amount of pre-designed modules and tests. For the normal 9-12 teacher this would present a problem in terms of the time needed to prepare a course but for post-secondary instructors who have fewer classroom responsibilities it may be a more viable option.

As a 9-12 teacher I see where I could use aspects of this method, maybe for individual units of instruction or for units that are common among multiple courses. The development time that is needed is the biggest issue for me. The other issue is that in our current educational system students and teachers alike don't really have the luxury of moving at their own pace in most cases. Students would have to be held to a fairly tight pacing guide for large units to ensure that they complete the required modules in the time allotted.

On a side note- I was wondering how this method compares to the NovaNet application used by some school districts? I'm not too familiar with it but this seems somewhat similar in application.