One of individualized teaching methods used and documented in the 70's was Fred Keller's Personalized System of Instruction (PSI). Several papers about this methodology were published, providing an extensive empirical evidence of PSI's positive results. Nonetheless its employment has declined staring in the 80's. Among the reasons for this decline, we may emphasize the greater effort required to the development of such courses using this methodology as compared to other methodologies and the provisioning of a systematic feedback on students' performance, as well as the criticisms on Keller's behaviorist approach. Despite being critical to learning, the stimulus to student's active posture, respect for individual learning rhythm, the formative assessments and the provisioning of systematic feedback to students still take place outside the classroom. One strategy to counter such deficiencies is individualized instruction. In this paper, we propose several modifications to Keller's SPI seeking a feasible methodology to be applied in an introductory course of electromagnetism for students of Physics of Universidade Federal do Pará. Among these modifications, we highlight: (i) the use of weekly assessments, but not in every lecture; (ii) the correction of assessments and feedback providing made by teachers and not teaching assistants; and (iii) the partial maintenance of the expositive classes. Despite the modifications inserted, based on an evaluation which included measurable benchmarks, we have indications that the application of this methodology yielded several of those positive results common to the implementation of Keller's SPI.
physics teaching; individualized instruction; Fred Keller; electromagnetism
