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The Keller Plan (also called The Personalized System of Instruction) is an instructional method introduced by Fred Keller, J. Gilmour Sherman, and other researchers in the 1960s.1) This individualized learning method was oriented on improvement of high school learning.
Keller's idea was to make higher education teaching more adjusted to individual needs. His method was first introduced in 1962 in order to help establishing a Department of Psychology at the University of Brasilia and design a course for the students. After additional modifications, the key aspects of his method can be described as follows:2)
Still, as this a behaviorist learning model and Keller is a reinforcement theorist himself, he also notes that the teacher himself decides on the content that is being taught and reinforcement means he employs. Modularization separating the content into a number of slammer units can also be considered to be a form of shaping, or forming desired behavior bit by bit.
The practical meaning of Keller's model consists of implementing above measures in practice. An example of this is a hand-out describing Keller's teaching methods applied to the first-semester course in General Psychology in 1967.
Criticisms of Keller's method include4)5):
Keller, Fred S. ‘Good-bye, teacher...’ Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 1, no. 1: 79-89. 1968.
Fox, Edward A. Keller Plan. Retrieved July 7, 2011.