Benjamin D. Wood

Ben D. Wood
1917 Columbia University graduation portrait
Born	Benjamin D. Wood (1894-11-10)November 10, 1894 Williamsburg, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	November 10, 1986(1986-11-10) (aged 92) Montrose, New York
Nationality	American
Other names	Ben D. Wood, Dr. Wood
Education	Roxbury Latin, Wesleyan, Harvard, Columbia
Occupation	Psychologist
Employer	Teachers College, Columbia University
Known for	Father of modern educational psychology
Title	Professor
Spouse	Elizabeth M. Wood
Signature

Professor Benjamin D. Wood was an educator, researcher, and director at Columbia University. He was a pioneer in learning technologies and automated testing methods in several fields.

Early life

Wood was born in Brownsville, Texas, on November 10, 1894. He had 6 brothers and 5 sisters. His father was Alexander Wood and his mother Harriot Wood. His parents moved the family from Central Texas to the 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 going to University of Texas, which normally then had an age requirement of 18.

Mid life and career

Wood attended University of Texas and graduated in 1917 with an A.B. in psychology. Wood then attended Columbia University in 1918 and graduated in 1922 with a M.A. degree and in 1923 received from there a doctor of philosophy degree. 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. He was promoted to full professorship of collegiate education research in 1938. Wood became head of Columbia's collegiate research bureau in 1927. He became an expert in the educational field and it was his career for some 33 years.

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 take 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 then memorize bits and pieces that would be lost shortly thereafter. The students always depended on the teacher for the answer, rather than finding the answer themselves. He argued and pointed out 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 1927 to 1930 that colleges and secondary schools showed poorly for academic achievement when using a prescribed course system. He preferred objective testing as a way to measure achievement that would mean the same every year with every teacher and every student. He wished testing methods that were to be specifically tailored for the students and to disregard college credits as a way to measure academic achievement, as this method had flaws that did not measure truly. He wanted the idea of a student to think a process through to learn that would cause the concept to stick with the student. He discouraged the idea to just get the answer from the teacher. When he 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 is 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. He claimed that it had taken 2000 years to appreciate Socrates' philosophy that a true learning experience comes from creative thinking and is where one gets education.

Wood, a national pioneer in personnel and testing procedure, called high school instructing and teacher's colleges antiquated. He pointed out the main goal of most teachers was to put over their course that they were instructing and to just have the student memorize the material without necessarily understanding it. He proclaimed the main purpose of a teacher should be to study the child and steer them in the right direction.

Test scoring

Main article: IBM 805 Test Scoring Machine

Wood had an interest in scoring tests automatically, instead of using many clerks to tabulate the test results by hand. In 1929 he communicated with various office-machine companies to see if they had an idea for a possible solution to this problem. IBM was the only company that showed an interest in the problem. Wood was contacted by Thomas J. Watson, the company president, in that year. The meeting he had with Watson of the scoring problem went on all day long, an unusually long time. After the meeting, Watson provided truckloads of punched-card equipment to Wood to establish Columbia's first computing laboratory, the statistical bureau of collegiate research.

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 teachers 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 semister 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. This then played a major role in the 1930s and 40s on how salaries were issued in the Southern United States, rather than based on race, religion, gender, or national origin.

File:Exam.jpg

Multiple Choice exam bubble form

Wood was involved with the test measurement movement of the 1920's that started using the results from multiple-choice answers instead of essay exams questioning their familiarity with certain text books. He was a key figure in the proliferation of standardized educational tests. 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. One of its first applications was used to endow graduate student fellowships.

Wood formed the National Committee on Teacher Examinations ("NTE") and in 1939 got 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 of 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.

Military

Wood was 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. After that he was a consultant to the Air Force Academy planning board.

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 Psychology 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.

Awards

• Awarded the Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service in 1969.

Works

He has written several magazine articles and seven books.

Degrees

• Honorary Doctor degree from Union College in New York.
• Honorary Doctor degree from Lawrence College in Wisconsin.
• Honorary Doctor degree from Colorado State Teachers College.

Later life

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 to solve the problem student reading failure. 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 how to read faster and it would be with ease then to transfer to the regular alphabet. Wood died in Smith County, Texas, on July 6, 1986.

Legacy

Wood established the Elbenwood Fund for Educational Research, the Ben D. Wood Fellowship Fund and the Institute for Learning Technologies Fund. Each year the Ben D. Wood Fellowship Fund provides a three-year full-tuition scholarship to a new doctoral student studying technology and education. A total of 12 students have been supported to date, with the thirteenth fellow currently working toward a degree in Technology in Education.

Sources

• Baker, R. Scott (2006). Paradoxes of Desegregation. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-57003-632-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

• Emmis Communications (May 1973). The Alcalde. Emmis Communications. ISSN 1535993X. 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. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)