Norman Crowder, a contemporary of Skinner, was working independently for the armed services on programmed instruction. He felt that a program was a form of communication between a programmer and a user.
Like any communication, the program must be directed to the individual. Unlike Skinner, Crowder was not working from a psychological perspective, but from a communications point of view. In an intrinsic or branching program, each frame presents more text than the average linear frame.
After reading, the user responds to an adjunct question, usually in a multiple-option format. Unlike Presser’s auto-instructional approach, which provides only confirmation of the correctness or incorrectness of that response, branching style optional choices lead users to optional forms of feedback, most of which is corrective? If the user makes a correct response, the program asserts the reasons why she or he was correct and moves on to new material. If an incorrect response is made, the program, at the very least, informs the user that an error was made and then branches the user back to the previous frame for another try.
The primary purpose of feedback” is to determine whether the communication was successful, in order that corrective steps are taken.” (Crowder 288) Depending upon the complexity of the error committed, the program may initiate a remedial sequence of instruction, a practice designed to eliminate the learning deficiency.
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Branching instruction adapts the sequence of the program to a limited degree to fit the prior learning and processing capabilities of the user. The term intrinsic refers to the fact that all program options are intrinsic to the program and, therefore, not dependent on any external programming device. This approach is especially adapted to machine presentation, which provides for greater levels of adaptability. Branching texts tend to be large and confusing, especially when users try to access them in a manual way.
The primary difference between Skinner’s conception of programming and Crowder’s is in the function of the response. To Skinner, learning results from making the correct response. Contrary to this response orientation, Crowder believed that learning results from the realignment of the user’s knowledge structure, and that the response is simply a means for controlling the program or machine. The larger chunks of information need to be assimilated and integrated with what the user already knows. The response, he believed, tests the level of integration. This type of programming benefits the higher-ability user, who is more capable of higher-level integration of ideas, more than it does the lower-ability user.