Benjamin D. Wood

Ben D. Wood
1917 graduation portrait University of Texas
Born	Benjamin DeKalbe Wood (1894-11-10)November 10, 1894 Brownsville, Texas, U.S.
Died	July 8, 1986(1986-07-08) (aged 91) Westchester, New York
Nationality	American
Other names	Ben D. Wood, Dr. Wood
Education	Brownsville Area Schools
Occupation(s)	Psychologist and educator
Employer	Teachers College, Columbia University
Known for	Father of modern educational psychology
Spouse	Grace T. Wood
Signature

Benjamin DeKalbe Wood (November 10, 1894 – July 6, 1986) was an American educator, researcher, and director / professor at Columbia University. He went to High School for an extra semester so he would qualify to enter the University of Texas. He attended the college and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in psychology. He then attended Columbia University and graduated with a Master of Arts (MA) degree, going on to get a PHD in psychology. He then started working at the University, first becoming an assistant professor. He then became an instructor and an assistant to the university dean. He received a promotion to a full professorship and ultimately became head of the university's research bureau. He was an expert in the educational field, which was his career for 33 years.

Wood was a promoter of learning technologies and a leader in automated testing methods. He is the creator of the multiple choice test. Wood figured that a way of measuring a teacher's understanding of certain subjects should be scientific and that could be done by how students did on multiple choice tests. He concluded that would be a fairer method on how to pay teachers rather than what credentials they had. He helped in the design of the multiple choice form of the pencil-in bubbles used in the 20th-century and the scoring machine that automatically read these forms, saving many hours in manual clerk labor. Wood's concepts of intelligence tests were expanded to the accounting fields.

Early life

Wood was born in Brownsville, Texas, on November 10, 1894. He had six brothers and five sisters. His father was Alexander Wood and his mother Harriot Wood. His parents moved the family from Central Texas to the lower Rio Grande Valley in 1896. Wood attended the Brownsville area schools and graduated from Mission High School. At 17, he went to school for an additional semester at Brownsville High School so he could qualify for a college entrance exam for the University of Texas, which, at the time, had an age requirement of 18.

Mid life and career

Wood attended University of Texas and graduated in 1917 with a BA in psychology. Wood then attended Columbia University in 1918 and graduated in 1922 with a MA degree in philosophy, and in 1923 received a doctor degree in philosophy from Columbia University. At Columbia he became an assistant to Dr. E. L. Thorndike, in 1919. In 1921, he became an instructor and an assistant to the university dean. Wood became head of Columbia's collegiate research bureau in 1927. He was ultimately promoted to full professorship of collegiate education research.

Wood served in the division of military psychology in World War I. He was a captain in military intelligence of the Officer Reserve Corps from 1924 to 1934. In World War II he was a consultant for the Civil Aeronautics Administration in the U.S. Office of Education and chairman of the joint advisory committee on aviation education. He recommended that all college instructors teach some sort of course in aviation. After that he was a consultant to the Air Force Academy planning board.

Curious children learning from a photographer as a teacher showing logic and reasoning to allow the children to think through the process of how a camera works and how to take a good picture.

Wood's philosophy was to make education responsive to the students. As director and professor emeritus, his contention was that teachers spent too much time pressuring the students to learn exactly the prescribed information given in the curriculum courses. The prescribed courses were directed by the managers of the higher education system that had their own interest in mind, rather than the student's interest of being able to learn on their own. Wood's philosophy was to get the student to think creatively, rather than memorize bits and pieces of information that would be lost shortly, thereafter. Wood contended that ste students always depended on the teacher for the answer, rather than finding the answer themselves. He argued and claimed that schools were just turning out intellectual zombies. He alleged the concept of thoughtful curiosity was being withheld from students. He understood that certain basics were necessary, but even then should be taught to the student with logic and reasoning behind the principle. He was for teaching reform and to do away with the teaching methods then in place.

Wood found through a Pennsylvania statewide study, done from 1923 to 1930, of some 36,000 high school students and all the college students, that these students showed poor academic achievement when using a prescribed course system. Wood preferred objective testing as a way to measure achievement; that would mean the same information was taught every year by every teacher to every student. He wanted testing methods that would be specifically tailored for the students and to disregard college credits as a way of measuring academic achievement, as Wood believed these were just numbers that did not measure truly if a student could use logic and reasoning. Wood wanted students to formulate learning processes that would help the concept 'stick' with the student. He discouraged the idea of just getting the answer from the teacher. To demonstrate this, when Wood was a teacher, the method he used to teach a student was that when a student would ask a question he would rephrase it and ask it back to the student to make the student think what might be the correct answer.

The Pennsylvania Study sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching caused Wood to urge the idea that there be an upgrade in standardization of the objectives and priorities of the teacher colleges. He argued that the first step to an improvement in higher education was to abandon the course credit system as a measuring instrument for academic progress. He pointed out how medical techniques had improved over the last 100 years and that this concept of technology improvement should be implemented in higher education.

Wood called high school instructing and teacher's colleges antiquated. He pointed out the main goal of most teachers was to go over their course material and to just have the student memorize the material without necessarily understanding it. Wood proclaimed the main purpose of a teacher should be to study the child and steer them in the right direction. He claimed that it had taken 2,000 years to appreciate Socrates's philosophy that a true learning experience comes from creative thinking and is where one truly receives an education. He proclaimed that curiosity was a 'precious gift', that should not be discouraged from a child since it is needed as part of their education.

Teaching and test scoring

Main article: IBM 805 Test Scoring Machine

Wood had an interest in scoring tests automatically, instead of using clerks or teacher's time to tabulate the test results by hand. One argument Wood had was that in the old way of doing exams was for the teacher or professor to ask a question and the student to complete a lengthy written answer. This limited the number of questions in a timed examination, and therefore, only covered a small portion of the course's material. Additionally, the instructor then had to read over and grade the student's papers individually, a very time-consuming labor-intensive process. During Wood's time at Columbia, an experiment was done in 1919 where a standardization method of testing was tried. Instead of handwritten essay answers by the student, a new method of testing was devised which consisted of printed out pamphlets. The first part had a set of true or false statements and a mark next to it which was filled out by the student. The second part was multiple choice and the student could choose from a possible three or four answers. Since the answers to either part were exact, all the clerk had to do was score the test compared to a correct master template. This required no subject knowledge on the part of the clerk. Wood contended that in a 1921–22 session, this new method saved the staff many man-hours of labor and had more accurate results.

Wood was involved with the intelligence test measurement movement of the 1920s that started using the results from multiple-choice answers instead of essay exams. He was a pioneer in the propagation of standardized educational tests beginning in 1919. Wood helped design the multiple choice form of the pencil-in bubbles and the IBM Test Scoring Machine that was used to read these filled in forms. This was the first test scoring machine made commercial available. One of its first applications was used to endow graduate student fellowships.

Wood contacted various office-machine companies in 1929 to see if they had an interest in a possible mechanical solution to the extensive time spend on scoring tests by hand. IBM was the only company that showed an interest in the problem. He was contacted by Thomas J. Watson, the company president, that same year. Wood set up an all day meeting with Watson about the scoring problem. This unusually long meeting caused Watson to send trucks filled with punch-card machines and other equipment to Wood to establish Columbia's first computing laboratory, the Statistical Bureau of Collegiate Research. The success of the laboratory inspired Watson the next year to authorize the construction of a special mechanical computer, known as the "Difference Tabulator" or the 'Babbage-Scheutz-Wiberg instrument'. It was installed at Columbia University in 1931 and was referred to as the Columbia machine. It made possible, for the first time, uniform testing of student by the scoring of multiple choice answers. Wood ultimately become a longtime consultant to Watson on testing methods and scoring techniques.

Fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice test form

1938 IBM test scoring machine

Wood is the creator of the multiple choice test. The fill-in-the-bubble testing forms have become the 20th century tradition in testing practices and been in extensive use since the 1950s. Wood defined a teacher's ability on the results of tests and was a central figure in developing standardized testing exams in the educational field as well as for the legal and medical fields. He believed in the idea that a person's ability to think was innate, rather than acquired. He considered thinking was based on knowledge of facts. From this conclusion he figured that scientifically constructed tests based on multiple choice answers would be a better way to measure a teachers ability than just paying a teacher based on credentials. He claimed that these type of tests would provide a fairer method for the pay a teacher should receive, rather than just by certificates or semester credits. His logic was that the existing system of college credits was antiquated and not a fair measure on a teachers real ability to teach. Wood blamed standardized education why a college diploma told little about a teacher's real ability to teach a pupil to learn practical knowledge.

Wood formed the National Committee on Teacher Examinations ("NTE") and in 1939 received a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to finance a set of specially designed multiple choice exams for teachers. These would measure the teachers logical mental abilities in the liberal arts field and other professional fields. The results of the tests would provide a basis for the ability of the potential teacher to teach properly. The first of these exams were set for March 1940 and hopes were for 10,000 applicants to test. Because of the costs of administering and the newness of the concept, there were less than 4,000 that did the tests. It turned out about 80% were from Northern States that took the two-day set of these uniquely designed exams. It was debated then by different professors from different colleges and universities for the next 50 years on the validity of these exams.

One of the earliest of applications of Wood's testing programs was sponsored by the American Institute of Accountants for the accounting field and measured students ability to become Certified Public Accountants or junior accountants. It measured interest, aptitude, and achievement capabilities and the results made available to accounting and business firms.

Wood pointed out that his testing techniques of the use of multiple-choice answers provided a scientific way of measuring a person's intelligence. He claimed that his testing techniques were 'all embracing' – the individualized field multiple choice tests covered all aspects of the subject given in college. This then made it a fairer way of seeing what the student learned from the course than just answering a specific question or fill in the blank questions.

Wood advocated the use of typewriters for children as early as possible as an excellent tool for learning writing quickly, which he demonstrated in 1930, in a three-year experiment with over 14,000 school children and 400 teachers in 50 elementary schools in 12 American cities. The children were divided into two groups, one set had typewriters and the other did everything just by writing. The experiment details and results were published in a book. One thing the experiment showed was that children could learn to type before they were able to develop writing skills. Children usually had trouble coordinating their fingers at an early age, therefore developed a dislike for writing. However, those that started with a typewriter were observed to get a head start in self-expression. Those that learned the use of typewriters had a much higher output of written material and quality of work than those that wrote by hand. Wood claimed that typing was 'glamorous' to school children. He said that the group of kids that used the typewriters were much improved in spelling, grammar, and arithmetic. He acknowledged that this group formed good habits in concentration and had a mindset towards neatness, compare to those using a pencil. Wood recommended putting typewriters in the hands of kindergarten children through the sixth grade. Wood observed that kids as young as five years old could grasp the concept of typing; seven and eight-year-old children learned complicated punctuation with the use of typewriters. By the time this group was nine years old, the children in the experiment learned how to normally type like an adult with the correct positioning of the fingers.

Later life and death

Woods retired in 1960 from Columbia College, but maintained an office nearby for another decade. In his office could be found two key books, the Bible and Shakespeare – both in Spanish because they were used when he taught in Brownsville, Texas, where Spanish was the primary language and English was the secondary language. Wood spent much time during his retirement trying to solve the problem of student reading failure. To this end, he tried to implement Sir James Pitman's phonemic initial teaching alphabet. He said the 44-character system was merely an extension of the Roman alphabet. He claimed this system enabled children to learn to read faster, and it would make it easier for them to transfer to the regular alphabet. In 1969, he was given the Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service. He received a honorary doctor degree from Union College in New York, from Lawrence College in Wisconsin, and from Colorado State Teachers College. Wood died at the age of 91 of a heart attack on July 8, 1986.

Legacy

Wood established the Elbenwood Fund for Education Research, the Ben D. Wood Fellowship Economic Fund and the Institute for Learning Technologies Fund. The Ben D. Wood Fellowship Fund provides a 3-year full-tuition scholarship each year to a new doctoral student studying the technology field and medical education. Twenty-six students have qualified through 2009.

Committees and societies

• Member of Phi Beta Kappa.
• Member of the American Polar Society.
• Member of the curators of Stephens College.
• Director of Eastman's teaching film experiment.
• Member of the New York Academy of Sciences.
• Member of the American Psychological Association.
• Chairman or director of 20 national education committees.
• Director of the American Council of Education test service.
• Member of the New York state board of regents' examining board.
• Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Member of committee of personnel of the American Institute of Accountants.
• Director of Commonwealth Fund research on measurement of achievement in college courses.

Works

Wood wrote several magazine articles and seven books during his lifetime.

• Measurement of College Work (1921)
• Measurement of Law School (1924)
• American History Test (1926)
• Classroom Motion Pictures (1929)
• Higher Education in Pennsylvania (1938)
• Global Geography Textbook (1945)
• Geography of the World (1949)

Sources

• Baker, R. Scott (2006). Paradoxes of Desegregation. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-57003-632-3.
• Branscomb, Lewis M. (7 May 1997). Confessions of a Technophile. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-56396-118-2.
• Emmis Communications (May 1973). The Alcalde. Emmis Communications. ISSN 1535-993X. Ben D. Wood, 1917, New York, the creator of the Multiple Choice test, has many educational firsts to his credit. His landmark developments as an educational reformer have won him lasting fame and appreciation.
• Goldstine, Herman H. (2 September 2008). Computer from Pascal to Neumann. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-2013-9.
• Schwartz, Daniel L.; Arena, Dylan (2013). Measuring What Matters Most. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51837-6.