Teaching electroscience using computer-based instruction

This paper outlines our experience associated with teaching college level physics and electric circuits to nontraditional students using specially designed and locally produced computer-based instruction tools. The CBI tool is one part of a significant educational experiment involving a major curriculum development effort and an attempt to integrate experiential activities from a production work environment with academic degree granting programs. This paper concentrates on just the CBI portion of our experiment in an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of that one factor in the overall experiment. Even though our CBI development plans have been very ambitious with the aim that the CBI tools will be able to stand alone without a textbook, we used a textbook as a supplement. As outlined in the syllabus for each course, the student should work on the CBI module, review the textbook, and then meet with the instructor to review the basic concepts and discuss problem solutions. We especially discuss how the role of both the instructor and the student are significantly affected in CBI compared to more traditional instructional methods. Of major concern is how to meet the expectations of students conditioned by prior exposure to the traditional methods.