After reading through the Personalized System of Instruction and the Audio-Tutorial approach, I noticed a few similarities. The biggest similarity that I recognized was the ultimate goal of both types of approaches was the specific mastery of goals. In both theories, students are expected to learn an objective, maybe complete a task or a discussion, and then students are tested on said objective. Students can only move forward after becoming proficient. Another similarity is that both methods allow for asynchronous classes. Students are able to individualize their education and work at their own pace. However, both do have some type of structure to keep students on some type of schedule. I think in both methods, students need to be self-motivated in order to get the work completed.
Some differences that I noted were that the Audio-Tutorial method seems geared towards catching students up that were missing pre-requsites, where as the PSI approach would be great for gifted classes and special education classes. When I first read about the audio-tutorial method all I could picture was elementary school students sitting around listening to a book on tape. Now that the technology has caught up, I actually think that this is a pretty great idea. I had been debating for many years now recording my lessons and putting them online for my students to review once they got home. One of my students has told me that they use youtube to help them if they get stuck on a homework question. This seems fundamentally the same as the audio-tutorial approach. Of course, it isn't nearly as structured, but the idea is the same.
I was pretty fascinated with the concept of the PSI. How great would it be if students could work at their own paces, and have a teacher or mentor their for guidance if necessary. As a teacher that currently has 34 6th graders in my math class, I would love for the gifted students to be able to move faster, and I would love for my lower level kids to be able to work at a slower pace. However, the county has us on a pacing guide, and we have to be teaching what the pacing guide tells us to teach. Like I mentioned above, I thought that the audio-tutorial method seemed old-fashioned. I keep picturing dusty cassette players and tapes that have to be rewound each time. It makes sense since it was developed in the 1960's. However, if you replace audio tapes with mp3 files or voicethread, it becomes a very modern approach. The audio-tutorial method is set up like a traditional classroom. The teacher gives some background knowledge, the students do independent work, then the students come back together to have another discussion. The biggest difference I see is that a lot of the discovery is put on the students.
I think that some of the barriers that exist in both of these theories is cost and workload. The cost of creating individualized education plans for every student would be astronomical. I think it would be best suited to gear this towards the gifted and special education students. The other barrier is the workload. One teacher, school, even district could never have the time to create individualized learning plans for every student, even if were only geared towards the gifted/special education students. I think It would be great if there was a place for educators to collaborate so nobody would have to reinvent the wheel. I think another obstacle is getting around standardized tests. If the state requires students to learn concepts 1-100 in the 180 day school year, there isn't much room for individualization. However, if these barriers were overcome, then I feel that students would actually learn more. Too many times I feel when I have to start a new unit, many of my students aren't quite ready. They need a few more days to work on the old skill. Unfortunately, the pacing guides do not allow for this type of remediation.
I would love to integrate both theories into my classroom. We currently do some compacted units so that some of our gifted students can work on higher level skills. I think it would be great if we could come up with a PSI (guided design) for them. Additionally, maybe recording some of my lessons and putting them up on my class website would be a good way for students to go home and review the material since most parents aren't able to help with the math. I think that it woulnd't be too difficult to incorporate some voicthreads, screencasts, podcasts, or even straight youtube videos into a current class.
