I__. - International Military Testing Association

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with an appropriate comment, the instructor had to know when a
student was approaching a particular point in the tutorial. In
order to know this, the instructor had to constantly monitor the
students' progress. Consequently, while the Group I instructor
sat at a desk and waited for students to request assistance, the
Group II instructor was constantly walking around the room and
visually checking on where Ss were in the tutorial. Therefore,
it may be that monitoring, and not interaction, was the basis for
Group II's higher achievement.
These results add to the results reported by Moore (1988) who
found that, even in CBT, teachers with positive attitudes produced
higher achievement than teachers with negative attitudes.
Evidently, instructor interaction can also affect achievement.‘
Whether or not the interaction needs to be tied to course content
is unknown. In this study, the instructor's comments were not
content-based. Therefore', it may be CBT instructors should
interact with students in order to maximize achievement, but that
the interactions may not need to be related to the material being
covered.
Implications
The relatively short-term nature of the tutorial used in this
experiment obviously limits the generalization of this study's
results. That limitation not withstanding, the specific conclusion
from this study is that brief instructor-initiated interactions
can increase achievement in CBT. However, instructor monitoring
without interaction may produce the same result.
Since the role of the instructor in CBT is frequently undefined,
the results from this study give some direction as to what
a CBT instructor can do to influence achievement. Moreover,
since instructor-initiated interactions are controlled by the
instructor, these interactions can be both built into the larger
learning system (which includes the CBT subsystem) and also
included in the instructor evaluation system.
A larger implication from this study is that instructor
behavior does seem to influence achievement in CBT. The results
obviously support Moore's research (1988) and McCombs (1985) suggestions.
There is simply something about having another human
around and aware of your actions that alters your behavior. Even
in the best designed, best built, and best implemented CBT systems,
instructor behavior may still influence achievement.
Rather than trying to design a CBT system which does away with
the instructor (or to design a system which essentially ignores
the instructor), CBT developers should try to find ways in which
to use instructor presence to maximize achievement.
References
Brophy, J. E. (1986). Teacher influences on student achievement.
American Psycholoqist, October, 1069-1077.
Brophy, J. E. & Good, T. L. (1986). Teacher behavior and
student achievement.- In M. c. Wittrock (Ed.), Third Handbook
of research on teaching: 328-375. New York: Macmillian.
Fletcher, J. D., & Rockway, M. R. (1986). computer-based educa-
tion in the military. In J. A. Ellis (Ed.), Military contribu-
tions to instructional technoloqy
Gillingham, M. G., & Guthrie, J. 1.
148
New York: Praeger.
(1987). Relationships
. .