‘Teaching Machines’ Needed to Educate Growing Population

Originally published in December 1958

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“Can teaching be mechanized? B. F. Skinner, professor of psychology at Harvard University, believes that it must be, if the rising worldwide demand for education is to be met. He has designed and built a number of ‘teaching machines’ which not only present material to the student (as do conventional audio-visual teaching aids) but continually test the student on the information. Skinner and his associates have used machines of this type in teaching part of a course in human behavior to nearly 200 Harvard and Radcliffe College undergraduates.”

Scientific American, December 1958

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