The project entitled "Four Years of Research on the Context of Instructional Television" was commonly known as the Denver-Stanford Project.  It ran from 1960 to 1964 and was financed under Title VII of the National Defense in Education Act.

The Denver Public Schools had a shortage of teachers to teach Spanish language to fifth- and sixth graders. The Project's goal was "to determine the kind of teaching and learning context that would make for maximum learning from instructional television." (Saettler, 1990, p. 427) The project attempted to measure the effectiveness of various types of media in combination, and of various types of activities in combination with instructional television.

It was found that the most effective combination of instructional techniques was different for first- and second year students, and that small classes did better with teacher-directed activities, while large classes did better in individual activities such as programmed instruction. The strongest finding was that student success directly correlated with teacher preparation, regardless of instructional method. Parental participation was also found to promote student success.

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Last update: May 8, 2002 Comments to: Mary Miller mlmiller@arches.uga.edu Created by Mary Miller and Teresa Cruce for Dr. Thomas Reeves' UGA class EDIT 6100, spring 2002 URL=//http://www.arches.uga.edu/~mlmiller/timeline/denver.html