GB1334740A - Teaching machine - Google Patents

Abstract

1334740 Educational appliances RANK XEROX Ltd 11 April 1972 [15 April 1971] 9475/71 Heading G5G A teaching machine comprises a teacher's control unit electrically connected to a plurality of students' response units (Fig. 2, not shown), the control unit having a number of plug-in printed circuit programming cards 32 each of which is associated with a respective response unit; buttons A to E allow the teacher to programme the cards so that an answer to a question, e.g. a written question with multiplechoice answers, is digitally stored in the form of the respective electrical states of a plurality of bit-stable devices constituted by pairs of reciprocally latching NAND gates. A student answers the question by selecting one or more buttons (A) to (E) on his response unit and then presses a completion button (20) which causes his choice to be compared with the programme selected by the teacher, the control unit being provided with a printed-circuit master card 31 for this purpose. Correct and incorrect answers are indicated respectively by illumination of lamps 22, 24 in the control unit and similar lamps, which may be rendered inoperative by the teacher, are provided for each response unit. A counter 25, one for each student, registers the correct responses. A reset button 27 may be pressed to clear all responses, except counter indications, in readiness for the next programming operation. The teacher can give students a second choice to answer an ambiguous question by momentarily pressing selective reset buttons 28. A checkout switch 29 also allows the teacher to ascertain which incorrect response any particular student gave. A suitable control circuit is described with reference to Fig. 3 (not shown).