media. An alternative approach would consider aptitude interactions with media

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24
By -Snow, Richard E.; Salomon, Gavriel
of
a Function
in Learning Ability as
Aptitudes and Instructional Media.Prolect on Individual Differences
Instructional Variables, Technical Report Number 3.
Stanford Univ., Calif. School of Education.
Washington, D C. Bureau of Research.
Spons Agency-Office of Education (DHEW),
Report No -TR -3
Bureau No -BR -6 -1269
Pub Date May 68
Contract -OEC -4 -6 -061269 -1217
Note -28p.
EDRS Price MF -$025 HC -S150
Instruction,
Identification, Academic Aptitude, *Aptitude, Audiovisual
Grouping, Ability
Descriptors -Ability
Individual Differences, Instructional
*Educational Research, Educational Television, Individual Characteristics,
*Research Design, Research Methodology
Films, *Instructional Media, Instructional Television, Learning,
of instructional media, particularly
Little is known about the teaching effectiveness
generalized "average
film and television: Accumulated research evidence applies to a
for individual differences in
studeot; and thus to no one. There has been little concern
with the design of
The problem lies
interaction with instructional-media variables.
meaningful since deviations
experiments. In the anfrnal lab, treatment averages are
In the case of a
from the average are small and background variables are constant.
heterogeneity, and treatment
heterogeneous group, however, random division maintains
if
meaningless. Some improvement is brought to the situation
averages are therefore
should be
individuals are first separated into aptitude subgroups. Two major questions
relevant for filmed and/or
considered: 1) What aptitude variables are particularly
task requirements are
televised instruction? and 2) What media attributes under what
pitted one instructional
particularly likely to interact with aptitudes? Past research has
individual responses to those
medium against another without concern for differing
with media
media. An alternative approach would consider aptitude interactions
different kinds of students. (LS)
variables, thus pointing up appropriate treatments for
4-6-061269-1217
Contract No. OEC
Education
U.S. Office of
MEDIA
INSTRUCTIONAL
APTITUDES AND
Richard E. Snow
and
Gavriel Salomon
Technical Report No. 3
Ability
Differences in Learning
Project on Individual
Instructional Variables
Function of
as a
f,
Director
Lee J. Cronbach,
Director
Richard E. Snow, Assoc.
School of Education
Stanford University
Stanford, California
May 1968
,
& WELFARE
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION
OFFICE OF EDUCATION
EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE
THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED
POINTS Of VIEW OR OPINIONS
PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.
OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION
STATED DO KOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT
POSITION OR POLICY.
Contract No. OEC 4-6-0612694217
U,S. Office of Education
APTITUDES AND INSTRUCTIONAL MEDIA
Richard E. Snow
and
Gavriel Salomon
The research r4orted herein was performed pursuant to
a'
Department of
contract with the Office of Education, U.S.
Contractors undertaking
Health, Education, and Welfare.
encouraged
such projects under Government sponsorship are
judgment in the con-
to express freely their professional
Points of view or opinions stated
duct of the project.
Office
do not, therefore, necessarily represent official
of Education position or policy.
CY
(NJ
PrN
(NJ
School of Education
C:)
Stanford University
C:)
Stanford, California
La
May 1968
NED/Al
APTITUDES AND INSTRUCTIONAL
human aptitude and
is with the nature of
The concern of this paper
instructional practices with
instructional research and
its relevance for
bald
tt begins with the
film and tetevtsto#,
particular refereace to
of
virtually nothing is Undo*, at
truly null hypothesis:
statement of a
media.
teiehing effectivenes, of tustructionel
today, sbOUt the
be offered in
complicated ressone whieWlei,ght
There sge prohsbly mealy
The
justificatiOna ter rejecting it.
ouch a. view, and es many
44Ppert Of
supporting 'argument hall
h0000$44; AO instructive
4#40 O*04004 100
.1100lest1
.
reeearch evidence
fOrtAigt00400.WOre: 84404tAll Of the
been ctolift
thus
sorio-gentralited "Aleut* StUdent," and
accumulated to date eppties to
to no one.
it it not a
And, as usually overstated,
The argument is not new
prObleee seem
Most behavioral research
particularly constructive one.
posaible, After all,
kind of averaging and it is
Intractable without some
is more ot less justified.
under which the procedure
to specify conditions
faced the issue inter-
laboratory experimenters have
Learning theorists and
Objective is general theory,
Since their ultimate
mittently for decades.
intrii
in this pursuit to average out
they have deemed it appropriate
believe that
Many experimentalists
differences.
species, or individual,
eventually be
ignored for the present, can
such differences, though
Currently, a
established theoretic equations.
treated as parameters in
1
1
Association of
presented at the National
A portion of this paper was
Cali.-
Division, Santa Barbara,
Educational Broadcasters-Instructional
fornia, April 4, 1966.
-
-2-
attack on the probled teems to be mounting
reluctant but relatively broad
(Gagne, 1967).
in some of these circlet
also, there is growing awareness
Among educational experimenters,
conceptualized as some Combination
technology must be
that instructional
Indi-
individual differences, Among other thingi.
of learning theory and
instruc-
the form of programmed or computer-based
vidUallied teaching, in
differences, aa
reduce the effects of individual
tion, Appears not to
that individual
Gaga: (1064), in fact, has suggested
originally hoped.
independent Variabled
ranked &doing the most itportant
aptitudes dust be
instructional film, and
In studies of
learning.
in the study of complex
Faced
ignored.
problem seem* still to be largely
television, however, the
stimulus aggregate,
understand an immensely coMpiicated
with the need to
unspecified
global treatment or as an adjunct with
usually Used as a fixed
specialists have settled for an un-
instructional objectives, medial
In, the
inadequate View of learner resPOOde,..
Atftetentiated and largely.
Instruction (liouetal,
cOnvention of the Division of AV
Moat recent annnal
presented.
nineteen reiestéh papers were
Texts, March, 1968), for example,
differences in inter-
conCerm for individual
Of these, only one included
variables.
action with instructional-media
Design
A Problem of Experimental
directedet the opera-
is not, of courset
The point of the argument
undifferentiated averages
against the uie of
tion of aVereging, but tether
The problet is rooted
arbiters of instructiOnai practice.
,as the fitiel
in the design of experiments.
educational reieerch in general,
Research OD instructional medial as
classical principles of experitental
has relied sodewhat blindly on
-3-
and the agricultural experiment
design borrowed from the animal laboratory
principles are wrong -- they are
/t is not that these design
station.
hardly obviates the need for an
absolutely essential -- but their use
Their indiscrim-
about what he is doing.
investigator to think carefully
research frequently includes an implicit,
inate application in educational
He was
plot of farmland.
A man is not a rat, nor is he a
bad metaphor.
is he in any important sense adjacent
not bred from a single strain, nor
Breeding and plot-splitting make individuals
in space to other men.
homogeneity.
Treatment ,aver-
homogeneous and random division maintains
because deviations from the averages are small in
ages ore meaningful here
variables can be assumed constant.
such groups and because most background
maintains heterogeneity.
But random division of a heterogeneous group
relative to differences
College sophomores may look alike psychologically
Relative to rats or plots however --
observed in the general population.
in the other direction -- a collection
and here a bad metaphor coin be used
Treatment
farmers' market.
of sophomores looks more like a goo or a
"tigators" or
It is like comparitig
averages here are meaningless.
the situation if individuals
Some improvement is brought to
"applanges."
"omegas"
"tigers" and alligators" or "apples" and
are first separated into
these
be meaningfully interketed within
so that average compariemns can
whole problem, but if the
This clearly does not solve the
sUbgroups.
well choien, then at least the
variables used to stratify the group are
based
kind of instructional improveMent, one
stage has bein set for a new
anything.'
there is no "one best way" to teach
on the hypothesis that
under different modes of instruction
Many investigations of learning
treatmenti, compare average
simply assign students randomly to two orators
e
o,r0oy..0-- -0-
,,-0,`, 00
.,,,
-4-
No
significant differences.
performance on some criterion, and find no
film and tele-
research literature on instructional
one familiar with the
TV vs. live comparisons and
vision needs reminding that the great bulk of
To underline the
have ended this way.
many film vs. live comparisons,
proposed here, the comments
general problem and to introduce the solution
Hilgard (19654.3)
of two prominent psychologists seem particularly apt.
stated the problem as follows:
of doing
"It is surprising that, after all these years
The payoff
effective teaching.
it, we know so very little about
It is surprising that
indeed.
of careful studies...is very slight
and teaching aids
studies of class size, discussion vs. lecture,
few differences in the
such as motion pictures and TV point to so
These studies, therefore, give us little
effectiveness of teaching.
poorly done, and even
It is not that these studies are
guidance.
effectiveness leave us
studies which show little differences in
however, to
My guess is that they fail,
with freedom of choice.
by kind of student, kind of
understand the subtle differences made
goals that are operative."
teaching setting, and kind of long-range
the solution ss follows:
And Cronbach (1957, p. 631) proposed
and
"Applied psychologists should deal with treatments
Treatments are characterised by many
persons simultaneously.
The two sets of dimensions
diMensions; so are persons.
should design treat-
together determine a payoff surface...We
but to fit groups of
ments, not to fit the average person,
Conversely, we
students with particular aptitude patterns.
correspond to (interact
should seek out the aptitudes which
with) modifiable aspects of the treatment."
An Alternative
fully
explicate the proposed alternative more
Some illustrations will
The
then be treated in more detail.
and proVide implications which can
in which some aptitude variable
traditional academic prediction paradigm,
in a single instructional treatment, serves
is correlated with achievement
variable is positively
In Figure 1, the aptitude
as a starting point.
Individuals with higher aptitude
related to learning in treatment Tl.
Most
do individuals with lower aptitude scores.
scores learn more than
-5-
has been limited to
prior work which has coniidered aptitudes at all
Insert Figure 1 about here
a
au
because we
tut this finding iS not particularly helpful
this outcome.
selecting students who will learn more, we
are net simply interested in
Suppose, how-
the learning of everybody.
are interested in increasing
designed
instructional treatment (r2) can be found or
ever, that another
differently, even negatively, related to
in which the same aptitude is
de eapecially well.
learning -- that its, where low aptitude studtnts
The two
disordinal nteraction.
Figure 2 shows what has been called a
An
the average of each,
regression lines intersect, in this case, near
But it is
difference.
overall comparison would yield no significant
Iasert Figure 2 about here
_amp
11.111
eivide the group
quite clenr that if we use the aptitude variable to
and assign the two subgroupo to different instructional treatments, we
Note that, to
of each kind of person.
can greatly improve the learning
only necessary that the regression lines for
use such a finding, it is
disordinal) somewhere within the
the two traatments intersect (hence, are
Note also that,
obtained ranges of the aptitude end criterion variables.
the regressionslopes rather than the correlations
to find the intersection
alone must be studied.
ignoring the aptitude
Had we gone on trying to improve treatment Tl,
been obtained, but it is
interaction, some average increase might have
-6-
likely that some students would still have been better eff in a differ-
tf, isstedg* *I seek to improve WI treatments with
ent treatment*,
tpWellio rehrahte to the fohotioning of the aptitude vailibie, then tt
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or irresponsible, seem to profit
that do eot interest then, and as flighty,
Again, there is a tendency
more from live than from filmed demonstrations.
toward reversal at the other end of the aptitude continuum,
-7
this point; they represent
Such findings are merely suggestive at
With these considerations, however,
only scattered unreplicated hunches.
search for other rela-
there seems to be sufficient reason to justify a
There are two major questions to be answered:
tionships of this kind.
relevant for filmed and/or
1) What aptitude variables are particularly
2) What media-attributes under what taks require-
televised instruction?
There is no
interact with aptitudes?
ments are particularly likely to
direct the work nnd there
theoretical framework currently available to
While a
the subject.
has been no general review of the literature on
Hoban and Van Ormer (1950),
number of studies reviewed or abstrscted by
(1964) have included aptitude vari-
Allen (1960), and MacLennan and Fleid
Inter-
previously mentioned.
ables, most suffer from the inadequacies
for the most part, unantici-
actions which have been found previously were,
Some evidence is
pated outcomes of studies designed for other purposes.
literature would require
available, but an adequate accounting of this
to dredge out
reanalysis of reported and unreported data, in most cases,
.
While a general review of the literature
all of the relevant contrasts.
rough summary and some
is clearly beyond the scope of the present paper, a
guidelines may tentatively be offered.
Aptitude as an Input
characterized in
Upon entering instruction, ar. individual may be
reflects the prior history and develop-
terms of an aptitude pattern which
The term "aptitude" refers to any individual
ment of that individual.
with respect to learning,
difference variable which functions selectively
students and some
that is, which appears to facilitate learning in some
interfering with learning in
instructional treatments while limiting or