19.4.1 Up through the 1970s: Defining the Issues
Hardware and software have evolved at an astounding rate over the past 20 years. To put things in perspective, consider the 1970s--"Pong" was the rage (i.e., a simple black-and-white computerized table tennis game) and 8K random access memory (RAM) the norm for a PC. Computer-administered instruction developed before the 1970s was inflexible and didactic because the systems had very limited capabilities (i.e., memory capacity and computational speed) for adaptive diagnosis and feedback. Furthermore, "...the only theory available to guide instructional development was behavior theory, which poorly matched the cognitive goals of education." (Lesgold, 1988, p. iii). Over time, researchers in AI and cognitive psychology joined forces, and together provided a basis for a new generation of computer-based teaching programs. Some of the research issues that dominated the 70's are discussed below(see 5.23).
19.4.1.1 Real-Time Problem Generation. The earliest systems to incorporate some now "classic" ITS elements were programs that generated problems and learning tasks, representing a big departure from the canned problems stored in CAI databases. For example, Uhr (1969) developed a computer-based learning system that created, in real-time, simple arithmetic problems and vocabulary recall tasks. The next major advance in this area came in the form of computer programs that generated problems that had been tailored to the knowledge and skill level of a particular student, thus providing the foundation for student modeling.
19.4.1.2. Simple Student Modeling. The Basic Instructional Program (BIP) develops procedural skills required in learning the programming language BASIC (Barr, Beard, and Atkinson, 1976). It did so by selecting problems based on what the student already knew (past performance), which skills should be taught next, and its analysis of the skills required (problems in the curriculum). Exercises were dynamically and individually selected per person (from a pool of 100 sample problems); then teaching heuristics were applied to the student model to identify skills to be taught and exercises were selected that best involved those skills. Selection of appropriate exercises was based on information contained in a network called the Curriculum Information Network (CIN), relating tasks in the curriculum to issues in the domain knowledge. Thus, a programming task in the tutor was represented in terms of its component skill requirements. Based on a task analysis, BIP knew that the component skills needed for solving a particular programming problem included such skills as: initialize numeric variable, use for-next loop with literal as final value, and so forth. Moreover, each task tapped a number of skills.