Computers in Audio-Tutorial Biology.

Bunker Hill Community College, a comprehensive urban community college, has a very diverse student body. A deep commitment to an "open-admissions" policy contributes to this heterogeneity. One facet of this diversity is a wide range of reading skills in the student population. The purpose of this article is to describe an attempt to facilitate the learning of biology by students with poor reading skills through the integration of computer assisted instruction with a classical audio-tutorial biology course. The freshman biology course at BHCC was modeled after the audio-tutorial approach developed by Postlethwait in 1961 (Creager and Murray 1971). The BHCC course incorporates behaviorally specified learning objectives, programmed audio-tapes, printed study guides, visual aids, and laboratory experiences (Self and Self 1981). In addition to the time spent in the A-T laboratory, the students attend a one-hour, small group session each week. Peer tutors are available to students who experience difficulty in mastering the subject matter. In spite of the highly organized and carefully designed nature of the course there are some students who perform poorly in achieving the course objectives. Indepth studies were conducted to determine if variables could be identified which might suggest an objective direction for the improvement of the course (Self and Self 1981). A number of factors were investigated. A significant correlation was found between reading scores and grades in biology. In addition, it was noted that students over the age of 21 obtained significantly higher grades than did students between the ages of 18 to 20. Interestingly, it was discovered that the older students did not read significantly better than did the younger students as determined by the reading scores provided by the Learning Center at Bunker Hill. This suggested that the correlation between reading scores and grades might be a more complex relationship than was first suspected. It appeared that poor reading skills were not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle to satisfactory performance in biology. If this were true, then it seemed possible that a mechanism could be found to improve the achievement of poor readers. The biology course is self-paced within a period of one week. Theoretically, good students should come to the A-T lab, accomplish their work, and leave, while poorer students would spend much more time in the lab to master the subject matter. Observations of students over several semesters has suggested that the opposite is true. Students with low reading scores tended to spend less time in the A-T lab than did the students with better reading ability. The literature seemed to support these findings (Rothen and Tennyson 1978; Steinberg 1977). In particular, the poorest students are the ones most likely to prematurely terminate study (Holland 1977). Tennyson (1981) has addressed the problem in the area of computer assisted instruction. His approach is based on the suggestion of Glaser (1977) that students in a learner-controlled mode who receive meaningful information about their own learning development may adopt reasonable learning strategies. Using computer assisted instructional systems which provide students with continuous updated advisement information about their achievement and instructional needs, Ten-