The 1920s:
Concepts of Objectives

Influences on this period:

• Social efficiency movement of Franklin Bobbitt (1918).
• Objectives for learning - Ralph Tyler (1922)
• 19th Amendment gives woment the right to vote (1920)
• The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. changes its name to International Business Machines - IBM (1924).

This period was dominated by matching of society needs to education and connecting outcomes and instruction.

National Professional Organization for Visual Instruction was established. (1923) This organization evolved into the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT).

Individualized Instruction plans were developed that allowed learners to progress at their own pace with minimum teacher direction. These plans included prespecified learning outcomes, which made self-pacing, mastery learning and other forms of individualization possible. These plans provided a rationale for continued development of designed instruction as opposed to traditional instruction.

Contract learning and mastery learning emerged, and the roots of job analysis and task analysis developed.

Sidney Pressey developed a machine to provide drill and practice items to students. Pressey maintained that the teacher is "burdened by such routine of drill and information-fixing". Pressey further stated that this mechanical device could:

Lift from her [the teacher's] shoulders as much as possible of this burden and make her free for those inspirational and thought-stimulating activities which are, presumably, the real function of the teacher.

More information:

• Sidney Pressey and Teaching Machines