Programmed Instruction in Large-Lecture Courses

Interest in programmed instruction in economics continues to be strong. John Soper of Northern Illinois University reports on an evaluation of a program in which lectures were integrated with programmed instruction assignments and a series of quizzes. The quizzes were designed to stimulate student use of the programmed text, an approach which proved to be popular. A hybrid version of the TUCE was used for pre- and post-testing, and both the absolute improvement model and the gap-closing model were employed in analyzing the results. Soper concludes that programmed instruction can be an effective means of teaching large classes.