The 1980's:
Microcomputers and Performance Technology

Influences on this period:

• Personal computer
• Rapid adoption of instructional systems by American businesses

Performance technology (Gilbert) and the focus on identifying the gaps between actuals and optimals (Rossett) and whether the discrepancy was due to lack of incentive, lack of knowledge or skills, or lack of environmental support.

Microcomputer instruction (CBI/CBT) flourished in this decade with the emphasis on design for interactivity and learner control.

PLATO
PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation) is a timesharing system designed for Computer-Based Education. In the early 1960's Don Bitzer, a professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana, was responsible for organizing a team of engineers to design the PLATO hardware. The original goal of the PLATO project was to design a computer-based system for instruction.

The Origins of Cognitive Thought
by B F Skinner (1989)
http://werple.net.au/~gaffcam/phil/skinner.htm