Review of Behavior on a Disk from CMS Academic Software: instructional programs for teaching teachers

The programs on BOAD represent a set of useful simulations and demonstrations of learning phenomena that successfully convey important practical and theoretical information to students. The most successful modules deal with shaping and the selective effect of positive reinforcement on behavior. The range of examples is sufficiently broad to convey the generality of these learning phenomena, but the graphics and particular examples are better suited to the college classroom (for which they were developed and in which they have received extensive field testing) than to the general public, where some users might be distracted by working with simulated animal "subjects" or bored by the simple graphics. There is a separate application on the disk that drills students on behavioral vocabulary, a useful resource for helping to assure that behavioral issues are discussed using consistent terminology. Although a single disk is initialized for a single user so that individual progress can be tracked accurately in printed reports, the cost of a disk is so low that no student who needs to learn about teaching would be discouraged from purchasing it. In truth, this is the best deal in instructional software I have seen yet.