1971 , Volume , Issue Feb-1971

This impressive or CAÃ, system makes impressive contributions to the state of the art of CAI. It's a combination of field-proven hardware, a standard computer language, and well tested curricula. The first curriculum is an elementary mathematics drill and practice program. THAT A NEW PRODUCT SHOULD contribute substantially to the state of the art has long been a philosophical tenet at Hewlett-Packard. It's somewhat paradoxical, there fore, that one of the major contributions of HP's com puter-assisted-instruction system is that it is deliberately designed to have as few hardware and software innova tions as possible. At present the HP/CAI system consists of a mathe matics drill and practice program running on the HP 2000B general-purpose BASIC-language time-shared computer system. The mathematical concepts covered are those normally encountered in grades one through six. 'Drill and practice' means that the concepts are presented by the teacher in the classroom and the CAI system gives the pupils practice in using the concepts. The drill and practice program is written in BASIC and runs like any other program on the time-shared sys tem. As it happens, the idea of a CAI program written in a high-level language and running on a general-purpose system is very unusual; before the HP system came along, the trend was toward special hardware and software. In fact, HP's use of standard teleprinters as terminals was also quite unusual at the time the system was introduced. The advantages of standard general-purpose hard ware and software are many. To name a few, reliability is generally much better, spare parts are readily avail able, and the system can be used for purposes other than CAI. Reliability is, of course, a concern of major impor tance to the school. The system simply must work and keep working with minimal maintenance. Even more important than reliability, however, is the question of whether the curriculum is valid †" do the stu dents learn? The HP/CAI mathematics curriculum is based on that originally developed by Dr. Patrick Suppes and his associates at the Institute for Mathematical Stud ies in the Social Sciences at Stanford University. There exists a great deal of field test data which clearly dem onstrates that children receiving 5 to 10 minutes a day of CAà drill based on the Stanford curriculum show sub stantially better scores on standardized math tests than control groups not receiving the computer-assisted in struction. Although based …