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Programmed Learning

The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of a mode of instruction variously called Programmed Learning, Mastery Learning, or Competency-Based Learning. All were based on the notion of fixed and unchanging knowledge, right and wrong answers, to be mastered (one might say "deposited"); they proceeded by offering knowledge broken up into incremental bits, one at a time, with frequent testing for "mastery."
          Textbooks with such incremental exercises proliferated: anyone remember the English 2200, 2600, 3200 series for teaching grammar and sentence structure? I used such a workbook, the name of which I have long since forgotten, when I was a freshman, and I confess that it got me through Freshman chemistry.
          Later, in the mid-80's and the ascendancy of the first Macs, which came package with a new, easy-to-use hypertext programming language called HyperCard, electronic versions ("flashcards") of the simple question-and-answer, instant feedback programmed sequences passed for Educational Technology. More recent versions have appeared on CD, often masquerading as games (the popular "Reader Rabbit" and "Math Rabbit" series are examples of what I'm thinking about here), and on the Web, using, if not the web-as-repository model, the web-as-flashcard model of minimal interactivity.

But much more interactivity is possible on Web.