An Evaluation of Instructional Strategies in a Simple Learning Situation

The paper compares three different strategies of choosing items for presentation in a simple list learning situation. The instructional task is to teach the correct response to a number of stimulus items, using a paired-associate teaching procedure. Only one item can be presented on a given trial and the total number of trials is limited. The optimization problem considered is to find the best strategy for deciding which item to present a subject on a given trial, based on his performance on previous trials. The optimization criterion is the number of items retained on a post test. Three progressively more sophisticated models of the learning process, the linear model, the one-element model, and a forgetting model, suggest different candidates for the optimal procedure. The paper is devoted to the derivation of theoretical expressions for operating characteristics of interest for each of the three strategies. These expressions, based on the most adequate model, the forgetting model, then permit direct numerical comparisons of the predicted performance of the three strategies for specified values of the model parameter. (Modified author abstract)