April 11, 1995
I started my teaching career in 1951 as a graduate assistant instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by 2 years at Hobart College beginnng in 1956; I came to Lafayette in the summer of 1958 with no training as a teacher; I had simply observed my professors and my older colleagues. I was very interested in human learning, and had almost selected it as my PhD dissertation topic. "Learning" at Penn meant knowing the theories of Hull, Guthrie, Tolman, and the Gestalt psychologists in order to discredit them. The issues were classical conditioning, or rats in a maze, or human verbal learning, largely memorization of nonsense syllables. Skinner was never mentioned. But I had a friend teaching at Harvard who talked about Skinner, who wrote an article on Teaching Machines with Skinner, and who sent me a pre-publication copy of Skinner's Verbal Behavior in manuscript form -- which someone "borrowed" and never returned.
There were 4 members in this department at the end of the 1950's, 1 of whom was a clinician who would teach only clinical type courses, and 1 of whom was the department head, Marsh Brown, who taught a special introductory course for engineers only. The other 2 of us, Burt Cohen and I, shared responsibility for Psychology 1. Sometimes we alternated; sometimes we each taught our own lecture section, one on MWF at 8, one on TTS at 8; sometimes we co-taught, and sat in on each other's lectures. One day, perhaps as early as 1960, I sat in one morning as Burt lectured on Walden E, E for education -- some thoughts on how college teaching and learning could be made better, based, sort of, on ideas from Walden Two, the 1948 utopian novel by Skinner. I read Walden Two that summer and the next semester I added it to my syllabus for Psychology 1; I also replaced the survey textbook I had been using with Skinner's Science and Human Behavior, --- without even reading it first, I should add. Later, at a book stall at a conference, I ran across the Holland and Skinner programmed text, The Analysis of Behavior. Without any formal training, rather in spite of my formal training which excluded Skinner, I was becoming a Skinnerian.
Without going into details here, I managed to get Skinner to come to Lafayette, to give a public talk on Walden Two on a Friday evening; he had dinner with the department, spent the night at the brand new McKelvy House where I believe he talked through the night with students, and then spoke to my 8 o'clock Psychology 1 class on Saturday morning -- all without accepting travel expenses or an honorarium. Don't even think blackmail!
All the while, other things were going on in my life. I served on the Curriculum Committee and on the Scholastic Standing Committee; I went to meetings of all kinds at which students in academic difficulties were described as people who were "spinning their wheels," or "immature," or "lazy," or "not motivated." And the standard solution for all these problems, as it stll seems to be, was to use more aversive stimuli -- probation, no participation in college- sponsored events or in fraternities, grades of F, leaves of absence until the students grew up.
Meanwhile, faculty and the administration were working on changing the core curriculum to p.2 make it, in my opinion, more of the same, just worded differently. I was pushing for what I called meaningful change: namely, requiring freshman seminars instead of English 1-2, so that the first year at Lafayette would not be like a 5th year of high school, maybe a little more demanding, but more of the same -- sitting in class passively, listening to someone spout facts and theories, taking notes, cramming for a mid-term and a final. It was my opinion that, since freshman classes were not very different from senior year in secondary school, what would really capture the attention and the imagination of incoming students would be the freedom from parental control and the excitement of the social scene, namely fraternities. The alternative was to offer something really different academically, and to use behavior modification techniques rather than simply aversive control. Some 30 years later, the First Year Seminars are here, and I hope the faculty teaching in them are more savvy concerning the powerful role of positive reinforcement, especially if scheduled properly.
I was also becoming active outside the College, in the civil rights and the peace movements. I saw how powerful was the message of Ghandi and Martin Luther King in terms of obtaining commitment to a cause, and I interpreted their success in terms of positive reinforcement and behavior modification. In short, I was bored with teaching the way I had been taught, the way I and everyone else were teaching; I was sure the students were equally bored -- they certainly behaved in a bored manner. I was very disturbed to have students in Psychology 2 who had received a D in Psychology 1, and then students in Psychology 3 who had received another D in Psychology 2. Somehow in the spring of 1968, and I have no memory of how I came to do so, I read an article by Fred Keller with the title: "Goodbye, Teacher." It changed my life, really drastically for about 12 years, but permanently, perhaps to a lesser degree. In this article, which appeared in Volume 1, #1, of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Fred Keller described a course he had designed and taught, along with Gil Sherman and two Brazilian psychologists, at the University of Brasilia, and later at Arizona State. The five essential features of a Personalized course are:
Fred Keller was a colleague and close friend of Fred Skinner; Fred Keller was also the father of Anne, an advisee of mine at Hobart College some 10 years earlier; Fred and Frances had visited their daughter at Hobart twice, had been invited to supper both times at the home of my department head, and he and I had hit it off. I read "Goodbye, Teacher" and I knew immediately that this was for me. I called Fred at his home near Washington, told him how excited I was and asked if I could drive down and talk with him. He did his best to talk me out of it, but his caution was no match for my naive enthusiasm. We did talk for a couple of hours, and, even though he continued to try to dissuade me, I came back to Lafayette raring to go. I received permission from Marsh Brown, the department head at the time, and the Dean, to use department funds to pay student proctors. I wrote to several upper-level psychology majors to enlist their service as paid proctors; I selected text books; I doubled the amount of reading material and divided the text materials into 20 Units, each one roughly a textbook chapter in length; and I wrote unit tests -- 4 equal tests for each unit; I prepared Proctor Books which contained information about PSI, this Personalized System of Instruction, or the Keller Method, as it soon came to be called. I included copies of all unit tests, with answers, suggestions for using only positive reinforcement during proctoring sessions; I ran a training session for the Proctors. Fall semester began with 245 unsuspecting students and 8 Proctors showing up at 8 a.m. for class in Pardee Auditorium.
The auditorium was about twice as large as it is today, including all the area which is now Pardee 13 the class room plus the seminar room and hallway between. I described the intended format of the course to the students, gave them a course description and sets of behavioral objectives, told them there would be some lectures later in the semester and to watch the bulletin board for dates, etc. And then I told them that this was the last required class for the semester, except for the final exam and laboratory meetings, and dismissed them. What had been 245 unsuspecting students were now 245 incredulous and suspicious students. Beginning the following day, and every afternoon after for 12 years, the Auditorium was "open" for unit testing from 4 - 6 p.m.
Tests were kept in a carboard carton on the stage up front; the Proctors sat in the back side sections, a couple of seats away from the isles; tests were taken in the front sections; students studied or simply waited in the back center section for a chance to take a test -- with only 8 proctors, we learned very quickly that it was safer all around to have students wait to take a test rather than wait to have it graded. When a student finished taking a test, the test proper was returned to me and the student was sent to a proctor with his answer sheet to have it graded, a process that took anywhere from 5 minutes, up to 20 sometimes. It was a fascinating scene, as the proctors scored the objective items quickly, read the short answer questions, talked to the student, tutored the student if necessary, and always reinforced the student no matter what the score on the test. Passing a unit test required a grade of 95%; anything less necessitated coming back and taking a different form of the same test.
I began the semester with 7 units completed; on the 8th day of the semester, one student wanted a unit 8 test. The rest of that semester was hectic, trying to write 4 equal tests for each of the remaining 13 units, and keep ahead of the students. This student was shrewed: he could procrastinate in all his other courses and then cram at mid-term for a test; so, he was going to get Psychology 1 completed before mid-terms started in his other courses. The auditorium was very quiet around mid-terms; on the other hand, too many students put off taking any tests until around Thanksgiving, and then it became really hectic as 150 or so students wanted to complete the entire set of 20 units in the final 2 weeks of the term.
I did give some lectures, all to "invited" students -- I wanted to talk about some issues in animal learning; so, I waited until about 50 students had completed the units on classical and operant conditioning, and put a notice on the bulletin board that I would be giving a lecture at some specific time, but attendance was contingent on having passed Unit 8. About 15 students out of the 50 showed up. A little later I wanted to talk about some issues in intelligence; 3 students showed up, even though well over 100 were "qualified" to attend. I stopped offering lectures and began to wonder how many students would attend anyone's classes if they were not required to do so? I didn't think I was really all that bad a lecturer. What I did discover was the power I had over the students. In no other course at the college was a student sure of his grade; some faculty put +'s and -'s on midterm exams or papers, gave a final, and the grade was a total surprise to the student; some faculty graded on a curve, so studying was no guarantee of a good grade; some faculty gave only a final with no hint as to what constituted a grade of A. I guaranteed to any and every student that, if he passed the 20 units, all at 95%, and then earned a 95 or higher on the final, that he would receive an A for that part of the course. You have no idea how powerful that commitment was to the students, nor how much trouble I began to get into when my first set of grades consisted of about 85% A's out of 245 students, with some B's, and a few of everything else, including several F's and WD's. The Registrar was dumbfounded; the Dean was furious; the President called me in and we argued, for years, about the meaning of a Lafayette grade. I tried to convince him with hard evidence that every student had, in fact, earned an A on every one of the 20 unit tests and on the final exam. When word got out to other faculty members, the fan became overloaded. The Psych Department was the talk of the campus, and it wasn't positive talk. To the credit of Marsh Brown, the Deans, and the Presidents, the course lasted for 12 years and then ended, but not because of pressures from above.
Fred Keller called me near the end of the first semester, just about when the final crunch was on; he said he was curious, but I think I heard him smile when I told him some of my problems. There was to be a paper session at MPA in April, in Chicago, would I care to give a paper reporting on my course? So, I spent my Christmas vacation, which in those days was about 10 days, writing a description of Psychology 1 at Lafayette. The paper session was really special: there were 5 papers, one with 2 authors; Fred Keller made the 7th person in the room. The other 4 papers were all like mine, glowing descriptions of a PSI course at some other institution; all 4 were courses in the analysis of behavior. The course at Lafayette was the first and only survey course using PSI anywhere in the world. This did not last long, within the next two years, hundreds of courses were developed, not only in psychology, but in practically every discipline -- physics, engineering, English, languages, mathematics. Word began to get around, and I had about 800 inquirie.
On September 6,1971, at the APA convention in Washington, D. C., there was an afternoon session devoted to honoring Fred Keller. It was held in the ballroom of the convention hotel, a room that seated about 3,000 people. There were 4 speakers, to be followed by Fred Keller, who would respond to the other talks. I was speaker number 4 and I have never been so nervous. When I reached the podium and looked out, it was standing room only. I looked down to alleviate my fear and saw Fred Skinner in the second row, giving me a friendly nod and wave. So, I gave my talk, titled: "Problems in the Implementation of a Course in Personalized Instruction."
I broke the topic into 4 parts: Problems arising prior to the actual conduct of the course; Problems arising as the course becomes operative; Problems arising as the course becomes known; and, Problems in education perhaps solvable by behavioral analysis. The first 3 speakers had described their success using PSI in their various courses. My talk turned out to be more controversial. When Fred Keller responded to the four talks, my memory is that he worked mine over. But what was initially seen as an attack on PSI, which it was not -- I was a convinced salesman for the method -- very quickly became popular, especially among PSI users, including Fred Keller. I received over 300 requests for copies of the talk. What was already happening, and would happen even more in the near future, was the proliferation of PSI courses by people who did not understand behavioral analysis, people who threw courses together for the wrong reasons. And the reputation of PSI was beginning to suffer as more and more "failures" appeared.
Fred himself was very popular and had many more speaking requests than he could fill. He began to ask others to take his place, and I think I gave about 20 talks in a 2-3 year period, all over the country, many of them as a stand-in for Fred. I went to every PSI conference except the first one which I did not know about, chairing paper sessions at most of them, as well as giving talks. I became a consulting editor for the Journal of Personalized Instruction. Two collections of "Germinal" and "Seminal" papers were published and each contains a paper of mine.
In 1975, the publisher of the one of the best selling introductory texts in psychology asked me to write PSI materials for its revised edition. I invited a young colleague to join with me, and together we wrote a Student Study Guide and an Instructor's Manual in PSI, the first ones to appear. A year later, almost every publisher had similar materials, almost all of them written by people who knew little or nothing about PSI or behavioral analysis. PSI's reputation was damaged severely over the next few years by the greed of the publishers.
In the spring of 1976, a group of 25 "experts" in PSI was assembled, split into 5 groups of 5 people each, for the express purpose of writing a book on PSI: The State of the Art. We began by writing back and forth to one another (no e-mail in those days) and then by convening in Austin, Texas in late summer to write the book over the weekend. Believe it or not, we did. It was a most stimulating long weekend, probably the most productive 72 hours of my life.
In the spring of 1980, I took a sabbatical leave, entrusting my PSI course to a couple of replacement faculty members. When I returned, I decided very quickly that it was time to stop offering the course, for several reasons. One major reason was the course was in shambles; it had not been conducted well. A second reason was that it was necessary to write a whole new set of tests since the security of the current set had been compromised. I had already revised my tests twice before, as textbooks were revised, and I was not looking forward to ending my sabbatical leave by spending the summer writing a fourth set of tests. The third reason was the existence of a lot of friction within the department. Several junior colleagues had been upset for several years with PSI; they wanted to teach introductory psychology, but not my way. One semester in a previous year, in response to persistent request, the department scheduled two introductory sections of Psychology 1, and the registrar assigned the students to the two sections in equal numbers. By this time, the Admissions Staff were using PSI as a major selling point. I ran my section as a PSI course and my colleague ran hers as a more typical lecture- discussion course. It turned out to be a major mistake as students in large numbers requested permission to switch sections -- from hers to mine. The final reason was that Marsh Brown was going on sabbatical for the fall and I was to be acting department head, a chore I had performed once before and knew how demanding it was. Then I became a real department head from January of 1981 until June of 1993, much too busy to use PSI again. One year there were 4 courses operating in the PSI mode, all under my care: Psychology 1 each semester with a total of about 450 students and Psychology 2 each semester with a total of about 300 students, both with laboratory portions; Psychology 3, Perception, in the fall and Psychology 4, Individual Differences, in the spring, both with labs, and fortunately with only about 30 students in each. I had my proctors for Psycholgy 1 and 2, but I graded all the tests for Psychology 3 and 4, in the PSI manner.
I'm afraid that many people viewed the end of PSI at Lafayette as the result of failure of the system. In my opinion nothing could be further from the truth. Students went into upper level courses knowing more than they had in previous years; not only had all of them passed Psychology 1 with A's, they had not procrastinated most of the semester and then crammed for a mid- term and a final, only to forget 90% of the content within 48 hours. Jim Kulik and two colleagues at Michigan wrote an article published in Psychology Review, using meta-analysis, documenting unequivocally that PSI was the only innovative method ever to lead to better performance using standard measures of learning, both short term and long term.
Henry Pennypacker managed to get the entire set of general education courses taken during the first two years at the University of Florida in PSI format. Florida's admissions policy was that anyone who had finished high school could enroll at the university. By the end of the first year, the typical drop-out rate was up around 80%. Under PSI, that dropped to about 15%. This meant that the university now had many thousands of students wanting to continue with upper level courses. PSI was discontinued after two years.
Even more important, the study habits of many students were improved; students had to discipline themselves to keep on target; no one called them up to see where they were or why they weren't taking tests. And, most important, they had been through Psychology 1 and Psychology 2 with little or no aversive control. My proctors, almost without exception, were excellent. They learned the material far better than the students; they learned how to reinforce their colleagues; they learned how to ask questions, how to probe; and, most importantly, they learned how to "fail" a student on a unit test and be thanked in return.
PSI in its pure form is no longer in existence at Lafayette; it is no longer as popular and widespread anywhere as it was in the 1970's. The Journal died for lack of funding; there are no PSI conferences these days. But some features of PSI still exist, even at Lafayette. You can look for them yourselves in your current courses. In my courses, for example in Psychology 203, there is a set of behavioral objectives for the course. There used to be sets for Psychology 101, 102, 304, Learning, and Perception. If students take the time to read the objectives, they know exactly what they have to be able to do at the end of the course. And all my classes, tests, and laboratory assignments are geared to those objectives.
I do not have unit tests, with multiple forms and opportunities to take and retake; there are p.6 no student proctors. But there are 4 hour exams and a final in the course, each one worth only 10% of the grade. The first exam is open book, open friends, take home and is a final exam on Psychology 102 material. It isn't possible, but I try to get all students in 203 to a point of real mastery of that prerequisite course. The next 3 hour exams have make-ups, with the chance to raise a poor grade. Students pretty well understand one- way ANOVA's before we start more complex ones; by "understand" I do not mean what most people do; I mean that they earned a grade in the 90's on the first or second try. Lab reports are handled in the same way -- two drafts going to WA's and a final one to me for grading, with the chance to re-write and earn an average of the two grades.
In all cases, I am not concerned with the grade but with performance: that is, with behavior. The students are more concerned with points, so I use points as reinforcers. I will leave it to the students in the course, past or present, to tell you whether there is any aversive control in my course, other than 8 o'clock lab meetings; but I will maintain that there is no aversive control intended. Student feedback from the PSI courses was almost 100% positive -- almost everyone -- students, proctors, and I -- enjoyed the experience, and comparisons made by students with other courses were embarassing. Pardee Auditorium was a room filled with excitement, intellectual excitement, and with good will and pleasant relations among everyone. Why should learning ever be anything else?