◆PSI: Personalized System of Instruction◆
PSI is an abbreviation of Personalized System of Instruction. PSI is a form of Mastery Learning, which was proposed by F. S. Keller in the 1960s and practiced especially in higher education. Just after PSI started, handouts were used as self-instructional materials. Nowadays, materials can be distributed on the Web, thanks to the diffusion of the Internet. Chiharu Kogo is one of the researchers who advocates that, used as an e-learning model, we have much to learn from PSI as an instructional model. He is a researcher at Waseda University, who has been putting his ideas and theories into practice. He is the same age as I am and a good colleague of mine for a long time.
I once visited Waseda University to see Kogo's lectures and to interview him on using the PSI method for the promotion of e-learning. The details of which were presented in the 8th session, "Learner-centered design and the future of ID in e-learning (lecturer: Suzuki)" of "Human Informatics and e-Learning," a graduate program of The Open University of Japan, which was first broadcast from 22:15 to 23:00 JST on Sunday, May 28th, 2006. Let's take a look at the Web-PSI-style materials available on his website.
An Experience of Using Web-PSI-style Materials
(Kogo Laboratory of Waseda University)
Note: Available on the above Web site are Statistics learned at a Hamburger Shop (2004), Statistics learned at an Ice Cream Shop (2003), C Language learned with a Clumsy Cat (2002), HTML Style Sheet learned with an Amusement Park Director (2001), Technical Writing learned with a Afro-haired Senior (2000) and IT Basics learned with Tsucchi (2000). Since one program (15 sessions) corresponds to two credits in a semester, I advise you not to devote too much time to these programs. Unfortunately, they are all written in Japanese, but you may get a sense of it by looking at them.
In order to learn the basics of PSI, let's read the following paper (under Required Readings). This is a master thesis submitted to one of e-learning graduate schools in Canada. You may be interested in how a master thesis looks like, as an example to get an image of what you will be writing to complete your master's degree. You are more than welcome to examine the entire paper for that purpose, although format may be different from that required by Kumamoto University. However, to get enough information only about PSI, you don't have to read the whole thesis. Read only a section of its literature reviews, about 4 page long. After reading this part, you may come to a deeper understanding of what you have seen on Kogo's Web site.
Required Readings
Related Resources
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Educational Technologies at Virginia Tech (2006). Personalized System of Instruction (in Popular teaching models of DesignSHOP)
[Available online]
http://www.edtech.vt.edu/edtech/id/models/psi.html
Note: Short description of PSI, some examples from college courses, and related links.
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University of Manitoba (2008). Computer-Aided Personalized System of Instruction (CAPSI)
Note: Various undergraduate courses are being taught using the CAPSI system at this Canadian online university. Video introduction (6.41 minutes)
CAPSI: What It Is and How To Use It is available at:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~capsi/video/capsi_intro.rm
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References
(Only two references are carefully chosen from among various papers, but both are written in Japanese unfortunately. You may want to try a machine translation service on the Web to see how much of the Japanese paper can be absorbed.)
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Chiharu Kogo,"Evaluation of a 5-year Practice of PSI Based on Web Materials"
(Collection of Papers Presented at the 17th National Convention of the Japan Society for Education Technology, 2001) [In Japanese]
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Chiharu Kogo,"Application of PSI to College Classes"
(Computer and Education, 1999), Vol.7, pp.117-122 [In Japanese]
