Programmed learning

Programmed instruction has been for more than half a century one of the most significant educational theories. After a stormy phase of its development in the 1960s and 1970s, it started to be replaced by cognitivist and constructivist theories that paid more attention to the internal learning processes and to the influence of social environment on learning. The criticism of programmed instruction, mostly stemming from unfounded fears about its complete domination of education, has already subsided. In search of theoretical roots for new solutions to educational goals in the technologically advanced age, the contribution of its principles to the development of instructional design, computer-assisted instruction (CAI) or computerized assessment and programmed instruction (CAPI), online learning, distance learning and other educational technologies is now deservedly praised in the so-called ?revisited process?. According to some authors, programmed instruction, or the behaviouristic approach to human learning, should become part of a kind of integrated learning theory and subsequently also education theory. Attempts at the so-called blended learning have already shown that the use of a particular theory or technology is in certain educational situations the most effective and that the complex learning objectives can be achieved using various learning and teaching theories within one study cycle or project.