The effectiveness of several modes of educational methods such as viewing radio and TV programs, schooling, answering quizzes by correspondence upon learners' achievement, motivation for learning and so on was investigated through radio and TV experimental programs in the University of the Air in Japan. Three different groups were set. Group 1 learned through radio or TV programs in learning, Group 2 learned by answering the quizzes by correspondence in addition to the method in Group 1. And Group 3 learned by schooling in addition to the method in Group 2. As a result, in all of three groups, the most crucial factor was basically the individual intelligence which was very closely related to the gained scholastic achievement. Concerning modes of learning, answering quizzes by correspondence as well as schooling was of importance to increase students' scholastic achievement across the individual differences. Moreover, other factors were not negligible such as interests, concerns and amount of preliminary knowledge to the contents of educational TV and radio programs, although the importance of these factors varied slightly according to the groups. Finally, in terms of motivation for continuous learning, the following factors were mainly important in three groups : interests in the program contents, satisfaction at students' expectation and tiredness, which were generally thought to be affective and attitudinal.

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A structure of responses obtained from triple cross item responses combined with specicfiation matrices of objectives is transformed into typical patterns of Venn diargam by frequency of score patterns. A hierarchical relationship of the items is determined for the set of Venn diagrams, by which the item response structure is converted into the set of hierarchical orders between two items. On the basis of these data item relationship matrices are constructed, and then item structural contingency diagrams are drawn to indicate the relationship among items. The item structural contingency diagrams are divid­ ed by level of importance, and they are classified into groups of instructional items or instructional blocks with the nucleus of objective items. The sequencing of items is carried out by applying some rules to the group of items. Application of this method to several cases proved effective as a method of se­ quencing of instructional items which are mutually associated and have hierarchical orders, such as those in the learning of concepts and rules.

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This paper describes the technical problems which emerged in constructing a computer program for the management of instructional objectives and evaluative testitems. Instructional information expressed in written Japanese normally requires the use of forty-eight symbols of the Japanese syllabaric system (katakana), more than 2, 000 Japanese-Chinese characters (kanji), plus tables, figures, etc. For the purpose of facilitating their management within such a complicated system, major instructional objectives and evaluative testitems were divided into such sub-items as were considered to be elementaly components of instructional information. The structure and relationships of these sub-items were described by various statements selected from these sub-items. Describing structure separately from contentin this way facilitated in the revision, editing and reconstructing of both objectives and testitems. To check the validity of this method, approximately 600 objectives and more than 1,200 testitems for mathematics were stored in a computer system. It was confirmed thatby using this computer system, one could easily structure instructional objectives, relate them to corresponding evaluative testitems, search for desired items, and reorganize the entire structure of the subitems.

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[in Japanese]

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