NovaNET Applications within Innovative Course Design for Preservice Teachers

During the past decade, computerized simulation and six related CBI lessons on the NovaNET (formerly PLATO) instructional delivery system have been pioneered into an early childhood preservice teacher education program at a large southeastern university.1 Related research has shown that this mode of instruction is highly effective in undergraduate teacher education. Approximately 450 subjects (experimental and controlled) have already taken five CBI lessons or responded to an attitudinal survey related to computers in education. These lessons were carefully selected because of their relationship to the scope and sequence of a prerequisite curriculum course to student teaching. Positive results related to integrating CBI into one section of a curriculum course over seven years, have inspired the expansion of this mode of instruction to three to four other sections of the same course. Implementation of CBI into other areas of the early childhood curriculum is also optimistic.