The Use of Time-Shared Terminals in a Human-Learning Course

Lawrence University in Wisconsin has developed a means whereby time-shared terminals may be effectively used in a small college. The manner in which the terminals are employed in an introductory psychology course is indicative of their general usefulness. The time-sharing system consists of a PDP-11/20 computer (RSTS system) with 8K of core storage and nine terminals. From 50 to 60 underclassmen can take the course in human learning at one time. The time-sharing system is used primarily in the laboratory portion of the course, performing the functions of 1) generating stimuli, 2) running experiments, and 3) running computer simulations for experiments dealing with visual searching, concept learning, continuous memory, and paired-associate learning. Evaluation shows that students feel the computerized labs are enjoyable and that they learned more because of the simulation models and the combination of data collection and simulation. Due to the absence of a suitable control group it is unknown if students actually learn better in these labs. (PB)