Self-Paced Instruction: A Review

Abstract

Within the last five years, self-paced instruction (SPI) has been discovered by economists.1 Five years ago there were no self-paced introductory courses; today SPI is the new wave at over 80 colleges and universities. SPI represents a sharp turn in educational technology. In contrast with the capital-intensive darlings of the 60's-teaching machines and educational television-a self-paced course is simplicity itself. A self-paced course has three components: first, a set of objectives for each unit of the course which define mastery (e.g., specify in operational terms what students are expected to be able to perform at the end of that unit); second, a set of exams (SPE's) for each objective which the student is invited to try whenever he feels he has mastered a unit; third, a grader who will be waiting when the student has finished one of these SPE's. The grader marks the SPE in the student's presence as either passing or failing. If a student does not pass he or she is encouraged to return and try another exam on the same subject. Credit is given for passing a unit exam regardless of the number of unsuccessful attempts. The only capital equipment required is a room, pencils and paper. Extrapolation of the growth curve suggests that SPI will be tried in many schools over the next five years. This review is primarily to serve the needs of those potential users for both cost/benefit information and nuts and bolts mechanics. It is divided into two parts. The first part summarizes the benefits and costs of self-paced instruction in introductory economics courses at seven schools, including Boise State, Vanderbilt, Weber, University of Oregon, Oklahoma State and Northern Illinois. As the reader will see, the evidence on its educational benefits at present is inconclusive. This is disappointing, although perhaps inevitable given the necessity of several shake down cruises before a self-paced system is working smoothly and given the relatively unsophisticated methods of evaluation employed. But while the articles here reviewed do not establish SPI as the only way to fly, they do, however, provide the potential user with an excellent checklist of the options and crucial choices in setting up a self-paced course. Thus the second part is devoted to setting out the self-paced decision tree: to specifying the nodes and summarizing what appear to be the pros and cons of each branch.