If these lectures were recited by humans in a class-room would it make any difference to your ability to understand them? Probably not.
What about your ability to learn them? For this kind of course and level of difficulty (first year college; general arts and sciences or liberal arts) "learning" is mostly a matter of committing to memory after understanding. Committing to memory is helped by having other students with whom you can interact. <[email protected]> serves this purpose.
Robert D. Nye writes in "The Legacy of BF Skinner" (page 35) that "These devices present programmed material in mechanically or electronically controlled ways. A unit of material is displayed, the learner is required to make a response that shows understanding of the material, and feedback is given regarding the correctness of the response (if the program being used is a good one, the learner almost always will respond correctly)."
Nye's comment is similar to the earlier-presented slogan of automated teaching that "The student is always right". You should be able to understand with the continuous flow of material through a teaching machine, without confusion. If you are confused, please make a note of it on <[email protected]> and the teaching machine "program" will be corrected for the next upgrade.
If you feel inhibited by revealing your confusion, use an anonymous web mail account (eg [email protected]) to subscribe to the IMP discussion group. (By the way, "program" is in quotes because the way the psychologist uses the word "program" and the way the computing scientist uses that word differ somewhat. This will be taken up in a later lesson).
Nye lists the following additional advantages to the Skinnerian Teaching Machine:
(1) Keeping the learner busy - there are no long delays during which the learner must sit still and wait for more information;
(2) Allowing the learner to move along at his or her own pace;
(3) Permitting complete mastery of each unit before the next one is presented;
(4) Providing immediate reinforcement of correct responses by letting the learner know he or she is correct.
Only advantage (4) is absent from these roboprofessor lectures. However, by discussing what you have learned with other learners on the IMP list, you get immediate SOCIAL reinforcement (eg praise, shared interest, etc).
Other advantages cited in Nye are:
(5) Teaching machines relieve teachers of having to be "drill masters";
(6) They remove the need for aversive control (eg the threat of receiving low grades);
(7) They reduce needless competition among students.
Nye says, "It was his (Skinner's) belief that tremendous potential exists in the use of techniques based on programmed instruction. One of the most difficult problems is designing good programs - that is, breaking down various complex subjects into small, yet meaningful, units. This often is a tough job." (page 35).
PSYCHOLOGY
Since this course covers much of general introductory psychology, you should avail yourself of a good psychology dictionary and a general introductory text, of which there are many. Two on hand here, without giving them any particular recommendation are the texts titled "Psychology" by Wade, C. and Travis, C., 1993 and Wortman, C.B., Loftus, E.F, Weaver, C., and Atkinson, M.L., 2000.
In JP Chaplin's Dictionary of Psychology, we read that "psychology" is defined as "the science of human and animal behaviour". Wade and Travis say, "We define psychology as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes and how they are affected by an organism's physical state, mental state, and external environment".
Wortman et al. say "Psychology, broadly defined, is the scientific study of behavior, both external observable action and internal thought".
I would say that a good, succint definition is "the study of human and animal behavior", with the understanding that "behavior" is a term which may be used broadly to include mental processes. Psychologists oftern refer to "cognitive behavior" or "perceptual behavior". It was Plato the philosopher who is credited with first giving us the broad categorization of the subject matter of psychology to incorporate cognition-thinking, affect-emotion and motivation.
MACHINE PSYCHOLOGY
Machine psychology is not widely rcognized as a concept by psychologists. However, if psychology is taken to refer to animal and human behavior, the extent to which machine behavior simulates or substitutes for those activities is reasonably called machine psychology. Computing and robotics students will also see the value of the terminology because of the limitation of the AI concept. A machine which simulates human emotional-facial behaviors is better regarded as a broader expression of machine psychology rather than AI. Teaching machines substitute for more more than the intellectual aspect of human teaching. They also deal with affective and motivational aspects of education as Nye's points above illustrate.
REINFORCEMENT AND PUNISHMENT
Reinforcement has to do with the stimlulus conditions which increase the future probability of response.
Punishment has to do with stimulus conditions which decrease the future probability of response. A teaching machine which confuses the student is inflicting punishment or pain and discouraging future learning. The "no pain, no gain" slogan applies neither to physical education nor academic education. Strain, however, is not pain. "No strain, no gain" would be a better slogan.