When medical-surgical nursing was taught using a modular autotutorial approach to 40 second-year students at the Evanston Hospital School of Nursing, 55 per cent of the students preferred the media approach to the traditional lecture method, student/faculty ratio increased from six to one to eight to one, students found the media concept to be more effective as a learning device, students' high school performance and test records bore no relationship to their preference for learning, and there was no significant difference in retention of learning one year later by students who used the media in comparison with a group of students who learned via the traditional lecture method.