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In the mid 1960's, the effectiveness of a project by the American Institutes for Research designed to improve ATT's first-aid training, led to the emergence of a new type of graduate program which focused on the design of instruction to meet the demands of training in areas such as the medical education, the military and industry, where training time was limited but competence was critical. Dr. Garrett was one of the first graduates of such a program (Florida State University, Educational Research and Testing). Although her initial interest in that program was assessment, classroom teaching experience had resulted in a lot of questions about variables related to learning such as why did some students, with seemingly similar background knowledge, learn faster than others. As FSU mentors such as Dr. Les Briggs and Dr. Bob Gagne (both involved with the ATT first-aid project) posed questions related to 'How instruction can be geared to the meet the demands of different types of learners?' Dr. Garrett's interests soon broadened. One of her first graduate classes was a career-changing experience: When she was given a number and asked to type it at a computer terminal, the words 'Hello, Judy Garrett, how are you today,' appeared on the screen. From that time on, she saw computer-assisted instruction as one way to accommodate students who learned at different rates, but computer-technology had not yet evolved to the point where it was feasible to use. Dr. Garrett was originally hired in OED to help faculty develop self-instructional materials to accommodate the needs of different learners. But as applicant pools declined in the early 1980s and the emphasis on recruiting educationally disadvanted and underrepresented minority students increased, Dr. Garrett's concerns shifted to how best to meet the needs of increasing numbers of academically underprepared students. Peer tutoring was one solution, but as curricular demands increased, the number of students willing to tutor declined, so the demand for tutors quickly exceeded the supply. Fortunately the emergence of PC-based programs such as WebCT for developing web-based instruction provided a solution to the increased demand for tutors in a time of rapidly decreasing supply. By using WebCT with its assessment capabilities, as well as its capability of incorporating video and audio from programs such as Power Point and Flash, Dr. Garrett has worked with tutors such as Dr. Kevin Whaley (COM) and Drs. Alicia Cullen and Jamie Messenger (COP) to transform face-to-face tutorials, formerly limited to only a few students, into tutorials available to any student at any time, thereby greatly expanding the scope of the tutoring program. Not only has Dr. Garrett used web-based instruction to expand the tutoring program, she has used it as a tool for teaching metacognitive skills and for conducting research on the impact of such skills on achievement. Phone: 501 686-5720; FAX: 501 686-7053 If you have questions or comments about this page please Office of Educational Development
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