Research on the Personalized System of Instruction

Abstract The effectiveness of PSI has been measured with several criteria: end‐of‐course performance, retention, transfer, and student attitudes. By any of these measures, PSI is more effective than conventional methods of college teaching. Recent research also suggests that PSI is an efficient method of learning for students. PSI and conventional courses apparently make equal demands on student time, even though students in PSI courses generally outperform students in conventional courses. Besides making a case for the effectiveness and efficiency of PSI, researchers have also begun to discover the reasons for its effectiveness. The key features of the system appear to be three: small steps, immediate feedback, and a unit‐mastery requirement. While mastery models of instruction suggest that these instructional features will be of most benefit to lower aptitude student, empirical results suggest that the picture is more complex. In some courses, higher aptitude students benefit most from the introduction of these instructional features, but in other courses, PSI procedures have their strongest impact on lower aptitude students.