Programmed Instruction and Interactive Multimedia: A Third

Rapid development of computer-based instructional methods, combined with the rapid evolution of the Internet and the World Wide Web, have made it technologically possible to develop fully interactive self-study materials consistent with the dreams of scholars and teachers who developed programmed instruction methods in the 1960s and early 1970s. The lessons learned from early research may be applied, but the new technology has generated new questions. One of the most perplexing of these questions centers on the locus of control. Theories of learning and instruction have provided some help, but the rapid development of the Internet and the World Wide Web have presented new problems. Three findings from a massive research literature stand out (M. S. Hanna, 1971): (1) programmed instruction worked as well as other forms of instruction; (2) programmed instruction was dramatically more efficient than traditional forms of instruction; and (3) people liked programmed instruction methods at least as well as other forms of instruction. In retrospect from the vantage of 1997, the initiatives o