Today is Max's birthday. He was born in 1927, the same date as my brother Otto. Max and I never quarrelled, but we argued all the time. We had different responsibilities, but we met on many occasions and had fun.
We went travelling through France by car. (It was all petrol, tea, gambling and food.) We went to Wales with Brenda Merill – before she met Dick. We went to Scotland. We visited each other frequently, but without an overriding purpose. Our biggest joint enterprise came when Max introduced me to
TEACHING MACHINES AND PROGRAMMED LEARNING
Max had been interested in problems of learning since his undergraduate days at Oxford. When he graduated he was appointed as a research assistant in Oxford, where he conducted experiments in learning by rats, with special reference to their aging. I remember one Christmas Day, Max had to go down to the lab to 'run the rat maze', to maintain the routine. I went with him. If they hesitated he cursed them, but he claimed his verbal assaults could not affect the outcome of the experiment.
Later, Max went off to Sheffield University and I went to work for AEI in Rugby, a very large manufacturer of electrical products. However, I was frequently visiting Sheffield. Max introduced me to the concept of programmed learning and the work of B.F. Skinner.
Skinner was an American psychologist who said:
We do not yet know how the brain works nor how people learn. There is no experimental evidence to show how the mind works. All we can do is to shape the abilities of organism by reinforcing the individual behaviours we wish to elicit. Thus, if we want to get a pigeon to peck a pattern of colours, we reward consistently the individual behaviours which the subject exhibits. We call this positive reinforcement. Producing changes in behaviour is accomplished in small steps. This is programmed learning.
This learning was administered using a Skinner Box. This machine presented the topic to be learnt in very small steps. Often, it was boring both for the learner and for the tutor.
Then, a man named Norman Crowder, who worked for US Industries, invented a machine, the Auto-Tutor. This machine presented larger units of information or instruction at a time. Each item or frame ended with a multiple choice question. The learner pressed a button signalling his chosen answer. The machine then advanced the 35mm film. If the learner got the answer wrong the next frame would diagnose the cause of the error (e.g. 13 x 4 = 17) and re-direct the learner to the original frame. Once a correct answer was elicited the programme progressed to the next main frame. This approach was called multiple choice branching, because the machine could direct the learning along different branches.
Max felt that this approach to programmed learning had many defects. If a person got an answer wrong we did not know why. If the learner selected a correct answer, was this a lucky shot?
Max invented a learning system which avoided the pitfalls of multiple choice and also provided a means of giving assistance when the learner encountered difficulties. We called the new approach Skip Branching.
It avoided the dull, trivial frames which would bore many learners. We concentrated on testing all materials during their development.
Max now designed a teaching machine at Sheffield. The learner would study each frame of material presented on a screen by back projection using 35mm film. The learner would answer a question by writing the response on a card. The card would fall into a slot. This would cause the machine to reveal the correct answer. If the learner had answered correctly, the machine moved on to present further new information. If an incorrect answer had been offered, the learner was directed along a remedial path with questions before receiving new information. An article from the Guardian describes the function more fully.
Max's machine received acclaim among academics. I did my bit by forming with others and Association for Programmed Learning at Methuens and promoting the use of teaching machines. At this time, a number of publishers were keen to offer learning programmes in text form. By and large they were dull and lacked the rigour of teaching machines.
I was interviewed on television, where I demonstrated the machine. Max held sessions with interested organisations. I received a commitment from my company to establish a unit to make and sell machines. (Subsequently we received orders for machines from the Royal Navy and the RAF – introduced by Max.)
We established a programming design unit with Dick LeHunte as the first programmer. Max and I interviewed Dick for the new job. We devised all sorts of new tests for this new job. One of the more mundane questions was "How do you sell hot soup in cinemas?" After interviewing Dick in the Percival Guildhouse, Rugby, Max and I scored him and came to separately contrived selection decisions. We both opted to give him the job. (When we considered the selection criteria we agreed it was because we liked him!)
We might have thought we had a great future in this exciting new field. This was not to be, and I'll explain what happened in my next letter.
