"There are more people in the world than ever before, and a far greater part of them want an education," writes Professor B. F. Skinner, in a recent issue of Science magazine. "The demand cannot be met simply by building more schools and training more teachers. Education must become more efficient."

In a low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit basement room in Sever Hall stands a row of machines which may someday supply such efficiency. They are updated models, constructed by Professor Skinner, of the teaching machines devised in the '20's by the inventor Sidney L. Pressey. The teaching machines facilitate automatic testing of information and intelligence.

These contraptions are now under study and development by members of the Psychological Laboratory in Memorial Hall. The work has been financed by two annual grants from the Fund For the Advancement of Education, and its purpose is an "investigation of the place of teaching machines in the employment of college-level teaching resources."

Professional adversary of Dr. Henry A. Murray and his doctrine of Jungian humanism, the Psychological Labs operate under the contention that the simple mechanical methods of stimulus and response--successful in the study and control of lower organisms--may also be applied successfully to men. The teaching machines, in their manner of operation and in their intent to remove some of the human contact between teacher and student, definitely lie in the Cambridge Street camp.

The intention of the research, as Professor Skinner has stated in his report to the Fund, is on "controlling the variables of which learning is a function." By setting up suitable "contingencies of reinforcement," Skinner says, the particular modes of behavior can be directed by the particular type of stimuli. The consequent behavior proves to be predictable over long stretches of time.

Machines Guide Responses

The student is "taught" in the sense that his responses to certain problems and situations are guided and formed by the machines. The actual machines are simple. They consist of a small control box, something like the transformer of a toy electric railroad, with buttons that advance, hold or return verbal information. This information, called the program, is printed on disks, tapes or cards. One frame, or question-answer unit, appears to the student at a time,

In one rudimentary version of the machine, the student answers by manipulating printed figures or letters. His arrangement of the figures and letters is compared by the machine with the correct answer, in code. If machine answer and student answer are congruent, the machine automatically proceeds to the next frame. If they do not agree, the student's answer is blanked out and he must answer again; the machine will not proceed until the right answer has been set down.

Obviously such a process lacks the flexibility needed for more complex problems, where no absolutes of yes and no are possible; the simpler machines are suitable for teaching spelling and arithmetic in the primary grades, and are now being tested in these areas.

A more subtle and complex model makes is possible for the student to compare his answers with the printed correct response which the machine shows to him. In this type the information is printed in thirty radial frames on a paper disk. The disk is inserted, and once locked inside cannot be removed for examination (or cheating) until all the answers have been completed. The portion of the frame in which the correct answer is written is concealed until the student writes his own answer on a paper strip, visible through another opening.

Correct Answer Revealed

When he has answered, he moves a lever and the cover concealing the answer falls away. If his answer is the right one and corresponds, he moves the lever horizontally. In doing this he punches a hole in his answer strip, ineradicably noting that he thought his written answer correct. This same motion advances the machine to the next frame, and at the same time changes the position of the disk so that the correctly answered frame will not appear again if the student goes more than one full circle on the disk. Even if the answer is incorrect, the lever advances the machine to a consequent frame. When the disk spins without a step, all questions have been answered and the assignment is done.

The Programming of the material seems to be much more complicated than the construction of the machine. Through programming, "specific forms of behavior are to be evoked and, through differential reinforcement, brought under the control of specific stimuli." It is the step-by-step organization of the knowledge to be inculcated; and the frames are chosen and arranged in the way which will fully exploit the advantages of "immediate feedback," or direct determination of an answer's correctness or incorrectness.

Professor Skinner makes an example of the rudimentary type machine in teaching a third or fourth grade pupil to spell the word manufacture. "The six frames are presented in order, and the pupil moves sliders to expose letters in the open squares."

1. MANUFACTURE means to make or build. Chair factories manufacture chairs. Copy the word here: