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Computers

Following the direction that we have already suggested in the last section, using computers and video together, we can go to the extreme of having the computer material be dominant material, and the video, in the sense of multimedia, supplementary. It is only with the computer that we can achieve full interaction, and therefore achieve the best possible learning results for large numbers of students. It is this possibility that gives us the best chance for fully interactive material. So this approach is the best current possibility for a new distance learning institution. See the paper on interaction in the references for a more detailed discussion on interaction.

Interaction allows individualization. The key idea is that frequent high-quality interaction enables the computer to develop a model for each student, and use this model to make many of the pedagogical decisions for each person. So learning can be individualized to the needs of each user.