....it just takes
minimizing their errors and adapting to individual
student learning needs!
In 1998 (AI)2, Inc. culminated nearly 10 years
of development effort in the production of MediaMatrix
and our first Textbook using this delivery system for
Introductory Psychology students. This was our
internet-enabled adaptation of Richard A. Kasschau's
updated version of his popular Psychology:
Exploring Behavior.
The philosophy of our effort was simple, yet provocative.
We proposed to bring fundamental coverage of the field of
Psychology to students with the expectation of their FULL
MASTERY of its content. In 1998, a very enlightening
poster presentation at the APA convention by Jeanne S.
Zechmeister and Eugene B. Zechmeister titled
Identifying KEY "Key Terms and Concepts" in
Introductory Psychology Textbooks These
authors demonstrated that only 64 terms appeared in
common among 10 major introductory psychology textooks!
Yet, all total, the 10 books contained 2505 items deemed
to be different terms or concepts. When they reduced
their criteria to be a term's appearance in as many as 8
out their selected sample of 10 popular Introductory
Psychology Textbook glossaries, they still found only 197
terms to be commonly used within the field of Psychology!
With such variations the authors concluded that
psychology was not being taught as anything like a
singular comprehensible discipline! Rather, each author
was writing his/her own individualized representation of
the field, with very little overlap or commonality with
their competitors.
Now we ask: "Is this any way to introduce a scientific
discipline?" We think not!
So we chose a different path. We chose to remove most of
the material that would not be tested by most
instructors, but concentrated on the fundamentals that
most texts share in common. Then we chose to implement an
adaptive instructional system that encourages--in fact it
may even demand--total mastery of those fundamentals. To
that end, we are proud to have introduced this highly
innovative system of instruction for use by Introductory
Psychology students beginning in the Fall of 1999 -- all
delivered and certified via the internet. When our video
library begins to develop, watch for us on internet for
text, adaptivity, and mastery certification via our
sophisticated student knowledge mirroring system!