Use of CTSS in a Teaching Environment

Abstract

Computer time-sharing offers many interesting possibilities for use in teaching computer technology. It might be expected that with proper hardware and software, students using time-sharing as a teaching machine could acquire proficiency in the fundamentals of programming more easily than using batch-processing. To test this hypothesis, the M.I.T. Department of Civil Engineering divided a freshman programming class so that half the students used batch-processing methods, and half used the Project MAC time-sharing system to do the same work. This paper describes the experiment and its tentative results.