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#3 Instructorless Classroom |
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| This six-week "completely programmed"
course in ESP (English for Special Purposes) was created by the USAF Training
Aids Research Laboratory during the mid 1950's. The materials--audiotapes,
films, study manuals, workbooks, examinations, and answer sheets--were
created by a team of four or five people in nine months. A. A. Lumsdaine
provides the photograph in "Partial and More Complete Automation of Teaching
in Group and Individual Learning Situations," originally a talk at the
first conference on the Art and Science of the Automatic Teaching of Verbal
and Symbolic Skills, held in December of 1958 at the University of Pennsylvania
and sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
According to Lumsdaine, the purpose of the course was to teach English as a foreign language to aviators "in MDAP or NATO countries where no experienced instructors could be counted on." In the 1950s, the Mutual Defense Assistance Program members included far-flung countries such as Yugoslavia, Turkey, and (obviously) Korea. Their aviators needed English to operate the planes given by the United States to "assist" against Communism. It is a little hard to imagine which NATO members couldn't be "counted on" for ESL instructors. Perhaps the USAF was thinking of Iceland or Greece. Harder to imagine why an "instructorless course" would need an "instructors manual" (see foreground). Perhaps to show some airman how to rewind the tapes. For the illustration and Lumsdaine's talk, see Eugene Galanter (Ed.), Automatic Teaching: The State of the Art (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1959), pp. 147-166. RH, March 2003 |