An Experiment with TIPS: A Computer-Aided Instructional System for Undergraduate Education

Abstract

Computer-aided instruction, while admitted by many to have great teaching potential, has remained for most a phenomenon belonging to the twenty-first century. The presumed necessity of expensive machines and computers, wide-scale feasibility testing, and large quantities of scarce technical and instructional resources has been considered to relegate the day of practical, economical, and extensive use of computeraided instruction in the college classroom to the distant future. In this paper I report on a Teaching Information Processing System- TIPS for short-which applies computers to teaching in a manner which is not only economical and implementable-indeed, it has been utilized at the University of Wisconsin-but which also contributes to the effectiveness of the educational process itself. In what follows I shall present a description of the TIPS system and report the results of an experiment in which it was used in an economic principles course. I will conclude with several observations on the long-run potential of TlPS.