Evaluation of the PLATO IV computer-based education system in the community college

The following is taken from a report to NSF concerning th e evaluation of PLATO IV in community colleges .The summary chapter is printe d here in full ; further information is available from the authors at ETS .PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) is an acrony m used to describe a computer-based education system developed at the Computerbased Education Research Laboratory (CERL) in Urbana, Illinois .Developmen t of the system began in the early 1960 ' s and progressed through four stages .The fourth stage, PLATO IV, was designed to operate with 4,000 student terminal s at varying distances from the central computer as CERL .Because initial assumptions about the distribution of student terminals across sites and the simultaneous use of lessons by students at a site were not met when the system wa s actually implemented, the system has operated with approximately 1,000 studen t terminals spread throughout the United States with a few in Canada and Europe .Each student terminal consists primarily of a plasma panel on which instruction is delivered to the student and a keyset by which the student ca n interact with the system and the instruction being delivered .The aim of th e system is to provide individualized instruction to each student .During the period from January, 1972 through June, 1976, the PLATO syste m was implemented and demonstrated in a number of elementary schools, communit y colleges, military bases, and the University of Illinois .This report provide s a description of the implementation and demonstration at the community colleg e level and an evaluation of the educational effectiveness of the PLATO system in terms of its impact on participating students, instructors, and colleges .