COMPUTER ASSISTED

INSTRUCTIONS
 WHAT ARE COMPUTER ASSISTED
INSTRUCTIONS

A program of instructional material presented by

means of a computer or computer systems.

The use of computers in education started in the 1960s.

With the advent of convenient microcomputers in the
1970s, computer use in schools has become essential tool
in preschool programs, primary education through the
university level and in the coaching centres.
 WHAT ARE COMPUTER ASSISTED
INSTRUCTIONS
Instructional computers are basically used in one of
two ways:
Either they provide a straightforward presentation of
data or they fill a tutorial role in which the student is
tested on comprehension.
If the computer has a tutorial program, the student is
asked a question by the computer ;
the student types in an answer and then gets an
immediate response to the answer. If the answer is
correct, the student is routed to more challenging
problems
 WHAT ARE COMPUTER ASSISTED
INSTRUCTIONS

If the answer is incorrect, various computer

messages will guide the student about the
errors, and then the program will bypass more
complicated questions until the student shows
mastery in that area of that particular subject.
 Characteristics of CAI
 One of the most useful is its adaptability for distance
learning.
 Computer Assisted Instructions provides regular and
timely interaction with the instructor and current
feedback.
 Computer Assisted Instructions also can be used with
greater number of students than a traditional classroom
would hold.
 Computer Assisted Instructions and web-based
instruction have opened avenues of access to individuals
with disabilities that were not possible before.
 Characteristics of CAI
 Intelligent computer-assisted instruction is
programmed so that the Computer Assisted
Instructions adapts to the student's individual
needs.

 Web-based instruction is unique in that students

and / or instructors can communicate with each
other anywhere in the world within seconds via
the Internet.

 Feedback from the instructor can be obtained

immediately.
 Helping students discover problem-solving strategies
that also are applicable to non-computer situations

 Having students play educational games designed to

make learning an enjoyable experience, and

 Involving students in computerized instruction that

can be individualized for each of them.
The Structure of the CCAI Program
The program, called "CCAI" for Creativity Computer-
Assisted Instruction, consists of three main parts:

 a creativity concept module

 an idea generation technique module

 a stimulus base.

The suggestive learning process is as following:

understanding the importance of creativity,

breaking the rock of your mind,

understanding the concept of creative personality,

learning the creativity enhancing techniques.

 Advantages of CAI
 The advantages of Computer Assisted Instructions include
flexibility for students so that they can work at their own speed
at the time that is best for them.

 With web-based instruction, they can work at home, at school,

or anywhere if they are even away from facilities. Used with
distance learning, it allows students with handicaps or learning
disabilities the opportunity to learn in a less restrictive
environment.

 Also, students who enroll in courses via Computer Assisted

Instructions, including web-based classes, gain an opportunity
to learn computer skills, which benefit them in many aspects of
their lives.

 Please brainstorm other advantages in the class!!

FRAME-BASED CAI

Early CAI programs essentially imitated previously

existing instructional materials. For example, a common
CAI technique mirrors a method called programmed
instruction. In a programmed instruction text, students
read brief instructional material and then are presented
with short questions to test their comprehension.

Students turn to different pages of the book, depending on

their answers to the questions, so that each student
effectively “programs” a different path through the
material based on individual comprehension abilities.
 The CAI technique based on programmed
instruction is known as frame-based CAI. (This use
of “frame” predates the word’s use as a type of
knowledge representation.)

In frame-based CAI, a student responds to

problems presented by the computer. The computer is
programmed to react differently to possible student
responses.

If the student’s answer is incorrect, the computer

might display remedial material and then ask another
a simpler problem for the training point of the
student.
COMPONENTS OF AN ICAI PROGRAM

Adding AI techniques to CAI results in an

effective, new instructional method called
Intelligent Computer-Assisted Instruction
(ICAI).
The goal of ICAI is the development of
instructional materials that actually analyze a
student’s performance in order to develop
individualized tutoring strategies.
 The main components of an Intelligent Computer
Assisted Instructions (ICAI) system are :

 Problem-Solving Expertise,

 Student Model, and

 Tutoring Module
PROBLEM-SOLVING EXPERTISE
The problem-solving expertise components of an
ICAI program contains the knowledge that the system
tries to impart to the student. This expertise is
represented with techniques similar to those used in
the knowledge base of an expert system.

In fact, this component can be thought of as a

specialized expert system that contains expertise in
the domain of the ICAI program. Early ICAI
programs stressed the ability to generate problems
from this knowledge base, a technique called
generative CAI.
They provide one-o-one interaction with a student as
well as an instantaneous response to the answers
elicited, and allow students to proceed at their own
pace.

Computers are particularly useful in subjects that

require drill, freeing teacher time from some classroom
tasks so that a teacher can devote more time to
individual students.
 A computer program can be used diagnostically,
and, once a student's problem has been identified,
it can then focus on the problem area.

Finally, because of the privacy and individual

attention afforded by a computer, some students are
relieved of the embarrassment of giving an incorrect
answer publicly or of going more slowly through
lessons than other classmates.
DRAWBACKS TO THE IMPLEMENTATION
OF COMPUTERS ASSISTED INSTRUCTION
There are fears, whether justified or not, that the
use of computers in education decreases the amount
of human interaction.
One of the more difficult aspects of instructional
computers is the availability and development of
software, or computer programs. Courseware can be
bought as a fully developed package from a software
company, but the program provided this way might
not suit the particular needs of the individual class or
curriculum.
A courseware template may be purchased, which
provides a general format for tests and drill
instruction with the individual particulars.

The disadvantage to this system is that instruction

tends to be boring and repetitive, with tests and
questions following the same pattern for every
course.

Software can be developed in-house that the

courseware exactly tailored to its own needs, but this
is expensive, time-consuming, and may require more
programming expertise than is available.
There are two problems :-

 Firstly, it is well known that the development of

large pools of questions for a topic is very costly
and time-consuming.

 Secondly, there usually exists a degree of variation

between lecturers in terms of emphasis, experiences
and the depth of a subject. And it is likely that the
question developer may not be the lecturer himself /
herself.
 The problem listed above highlights the lack of
control by the lecturer over the contents and the
nature of questions which will certainly lead to the
mismatch of pre-prepared questions and the contents
designed by a lecturer.

In addition, a common criticism of present CAI is

the fact that the marking mechanism of most systems
is carried out through matching users' answers with
stored answers. Hence, the result for a question can
either be correct or wrong, and it is only the final
answer that counts.
The intermediate steps, which are correct, cannot be
awarded with partial credits, unless each intermediate step
is designed as a separate question.

Another drawback of CAI system is that, it is difficult

for most of them to provide meaningful feedback to guide
students in problem solving techniques.

Since the proper feedback, which highlights the parts that

are not well understood by students is regarded as one of
very important elements in achieving maximum effect of
learning. The lack of this function was considered as a
major deficiency in the traditional CAI.
From INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEMS
to the Latest …

While computers have been used in educational

settings since the 50's. The emphasis of educational
programs has slowly but steadily moved from
teaching to learning. The objective is to show how the
education has successively benefited from traditional
information processing,
Through programmed instruction and
computer-assisted instruction, then from
artificial intelligence, to intelligent tutoring
systems and finally how it can now benefited
from the latest technologies. Finally it is also
assessing that AI techniques are still under
used in the era of refurbished technologies.
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE lCAI

Intelligent computer-assisted instruction (ICAI,

also known as intelligent tutoring systems or ITS)
grew out of generative computer-assisted instruction.

Programs that generated problems and tasks in

arithmetic and vocabulary learning eventually were
designed to select problems at a difficulty level
appropriate for individual students.
These adaptive systems (i.e., adapting problems to
the student's learning level) were based on
summaries of a student's performance on earlier
tasks, however, rather than on representations of
the student's knowledge of the subject matter.

The truly intelligent systems that followed were

able to present problems based on models of the
student's knowledge, to solve problems themselves,
and to diagnose and explain student capabilities.
 The development of the Intelligent CAI is an
attempt to further advance the capabilities of CAI
by applying various techniques in Artificial
Intelligence.

While educational researchers, who tried to

solve their practical problems through non-AI
techniques, mainly developed computer scientists,
who tried to explore the capability of AI techniques
in the process of learning and teaching in the CAI.
 As a result, the focus of ICAI has been more on
the technical aspects of the system. Specifically, ICAI
adopts the "Learning-by-doing" as the basic
instructional approach.

In this approach, students are required to engage

activity in the instructional process to formulate and
test their ideas and witness the consequences
resulting from the system's reaction to their behavior.
A typical ICAI system contains most or all of the
following:

 a domain expert,
 a diagnostic expert
 a teaching expert, and
 a student model.

A domain expert provides the knowledge of both procedural

and instructions that students need to learn.

The diagnostic expert uses rules to analyze student responses.

The teaching expert determines the strategy for teaching the

student based on the current state of the student model.
PROVIDING FLEXIBLE AND ADAPTIVE
USER INTERACTION
Mandl and Lesgold (1988) advances the concepts
further by emphasizing the importance of providing
flexible and adaptive user interaction, providing
different viewpoints for users to access information,
delivery of contents according to users' knowledge
and skill level, and providing updated assistance to
students according to user's learning progress.

With these expectations in mind, they developed the

Knowledge-Based Computer Instruction System
(KBCIS), which was designed as an effective
teaching-learning and examinations tool for large
accounting classes.
 The design of this system incorporates the
knowledge-based system approach, which enables
this system to store problem solution knowledge and
utilize it for marking problems of the same nature but
of different settings, and with a great flexibility. This
ability makes it possible to achieve to some degree
the above-mentioned expectations.

Specifically, this system provides lecturing

material, exercise problems, help, hints, and solution
procedures, which can be accessed by students
according to their ability and the criterion set by the
lecturer-in-charge.
 Based on a representative problem, the system is
able to generate similar problems with different
settings and parameter values, and mark the answers
from students accordingly.

Feedback for each problem could be provided if

needed. The system can access the student log to
monitor the performances of each individual student
in a class, and help the lecturer to determine the
proficiency status for each topic.
 This real time analysis also makes it
possible for the lecturer to pre-set performance
criterion to determine the status of a student,
and hence provide appropriate topic and
exercise problems.
DESIGN ISSUES OF ICAI

Designers of intelligent CAI program utilized the

knowledge of intelligent teachers. Hence the
intelligent CAI in composition would combine
knowledge representations of that subject and it
manipulates, arrange and using the knowledge
effectively.
CAI program judge the order of questioning
which is based on the previous reply and
topic. The probability of a successful answer
from the student certainly would improve the
grading of that particular student but again,
such intelligent improvements require much
memory and time to execute for the students
learning.
 INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEM

Historically, ICAI systems have been developed

in more arithmetic oriented domains with
advanced programming and more experimental
in nature than the conventional CAI.
 PRACTICES AND OBJECTIVES OF KBCIS
(knowledge based computer instruction system)

Currently, the Department of Accountancy and

Finance of University of London offers a number of
elementary subjects, each of which takes more than
two hundred students. The particular subject that uses
this system has more than seven hundred students.
Before the development of KBCIS, this subject
was taught in the traditional way. In addition to the
normal classroom teaching, tutorial classes were
provided to allow students to interact with tutors and
to practice what was taught in the classroom for
problem solving.
In order to provide maximum fact-to-face
discussion opportunities between students and
the tutor, each tutorial class has only twenty
students.

Thus, for a class of seven hundred students,

more than thirty tutorial classes will have to be
arranged, and about thirty number of tutors
will be required to cover the whole subjects in
the classes.
 Over the years, the Department has to
employed students with higher education or
even outside part-timer to run the tutorial
classes. In principle, the subject teacher is in-
charge of all activities of teaching as well as
the well-being of students during the class.

 Teacher in charge is also responsible for the

development of teaching and tutorial material
and the co-ordination with all tutors.
For those students who need to talk to the lecturer
after the class, each lecturer is required by the
department to provide four hours of consultation
times in each week.

Obviously, four hours of consultation times in a

week are not sufficient for a large class. Therefore the
tutors have to be available for answer the students
during the tutorial classes for their entire satisfaction.
SOME COMMON TUTORS AVAILABLE
GEOMETRY TUTOR

One intelligent tutoring system, Geometry Tutor,

provides students with instruction in planning and
problem solving to prove theorems in geometry.
Geometry Tutor comprises an expert system
containing knowledge of how to construct geometry
proofs, a tutor to teach students strategies and to
identify their errors, and an interface to let students
communicate with the computer.
 Geometry Tutor monitors students as they try to
prove theorems, instructing and guiding them
throughout the problem-solving process. Schofield,
Evans-Rhodes, and Huber in 1989 studied the
implementation of Geometry Tutor in a public high
school.

They found that by using this tutorial program,

teachers spent more time with students to solve their
problems, collaborated more with them. Therefore the
students grading depends on their effort for
successful completion of their degree.
 Web Passive Voice Tutor
 (An Intelligent Computer Assisted Language
Learning System over the World Wide Web)
 Web Passive Voice Tutor (Web PVT) is an adaptive
web-based Intelligent Computer Assisted Language
Learning (ICALL) program that is aimed at teaching
non-native speakers the passive voice of the
English language. The design of the system has
been largely based on the results of an empirical
study that was conducted at schools with the
collaboration of human teachers.
 Web PVT incorporates techniques from Intelligent
Tutoring Systems (ITS) and Adaptive Hypermedia
(AH) technologies to provide students with
individualized instruction and feedback. The system
uses a combination of stereotypes and the overlay
technique for the initialization of the student model,
which is then refined by observing the student while
working with the system.

 The resulting student model is used for the annotation

of the links to topics presented to the student. In
addition, it is also used in the process of error
diagnosis and the adaptation of feedback and advice
provided to the student.
 Teaching Rankine cycle by using Intelligent Computer-
Aided Instruction Software: -

 The Rankine cycle plays a very important role

in vapor power plants. It is an integral part in
teaching courses of engineering
thermodynamics. The cycle analysis is long and
tedious.

 It is very necessary to obtain the cycle

performance including pump work, heat added,
turbine work, heat removed, and efficiency
quickly and accurately in the classroom.
 Teaching Rankine cycle by using Intelligent
Computer-Aided Instruction Software: -

 The use of an ICAI (Intelligent Computer Aided

Instruction) software in teaching
thermodynamics is very useful. Historical
evolution and several different arranged Rankine
cycles can be demonstrated quickly in the
classroom.
 Objectives for improvements, constraints, and
consequently design, which cannot be easily
accomplished from the conventional teaching,
are emphasized. ICAI evokes the intellectual
curiosity of students and increases their interest
and design ability in thermodynamics.
ALBERT A Physics Problem-Solving Monitor

ALBERT is a physics problem-solving monitor

and coach designed to teach students how to solve
problems in one-dimensional kinematics. ALBERT
allows a student to specify the problem as long as it is
within the domain of one dimensional kinematics.
The student does this by typing in a problem just
as it appears in the textbook. If desired, the student
can make up his/her own problem. A typical problem
could contain as much as four or five lines of text
and might be as long as fifty words or more.
Although ALBERT has not seen the problem
before, ALBERT can understand it, knows
how to solve it in two different ways and can
teach the student how to solve it.

ALBERT does this by engaging the student

in a dialogue about the qualitative and
quantitative aspects of the problem. When the
student has solved the problem completely,
ALBERT's solutions are displayed for
comparison with the student's own solution.
 ALBERT records the entire dialogue with
the students for later review by the instructor.
This output reads like an interview transcript
and is useful for tracking student progress in a
class and for research in problem solving.
ALBERT runs equivalently on Macintosh
and PC computers respectively.
FREEBODY An Intelligent Computer Tutor

FREEBODY is an intelligent computer tutor that students

use to practice drawing tree diagrams.
The students draw vectors on the computer to represent the
forces acting in a given physical situation and types in a
description of each force.
FREEBODY uses the natural language system that
was developed for ALBERT. It discusses the forces with
the student in a plain English dialogue and teaches the
student how to draw vectors and describe them correctly.
FREEBODY identifies and addresses many of the
common difficulties that students have with drawing tree-
body diagrams and identifying forces for solutions.
 The program can recognize many of the
common misconceptions about forces and corrects
them through an appropriate dialogue with the
student. It can record the complete student-
computer dialogues. These data can be used to
monitor student progress and to investigate student
understanding.
It contains ten exercises. The instructor can
determine which of the exercises to present to
students for a given assignment and in what order
they will appear. FREEBODY is suitable for use at
the high school and introductory college level.
PHOTOELECTRIC TUTOR

PHOTOELECTRIC is an advanced
computer tutor that helps students develop a
proper understanding of the photoelectric
effect. This program presents students with an
electric circuit and allows them to draw a
graph freehand on the computer screen.
 The computer can interpret the graph
and use the results to design an interaction
with the student. It does not use the natural
language system that was developed for
ALBERT. However it uses a similar
dialogue system to discuss the photoelectric
concepts with a student in plain English.
TYPING TUTOR
Most Typing tutor programs are self-adjusting,
they automatically match any age, experience, or
level of dexterity. Tutors are designed to improve
executive productivity. The software is now being
used by anyone who can read the screens. This
includes people with disabilities, children with
special needs, Senior Citizens with a touch of
arthritis, and executives with no time to waste.
With the computer programs that simply print
lessons on the screen, it's necessary to select the grade
level very carefully.
STUDENT MODEL

The student model, a representation of the

student’s understanding of the domain, is an
important element of ICAI. If a student is
experiencing difficulty with certain material, the
student model analyzes the student’s performance to
ascertain the specific causes of the problem. By
identifying response patterns, the student model
determines the student’s misconceptions and
discovers the exact causes of erroneous reasoning.
TUTORING MODULE

Once the student model has determined the causes

of a student’s problem, an ICAI program decides
show to correct the problem. The component of the
program that selects the strategies for presenting
tutorial information to students is called the tutoring
module.
Various strategies may be used to ensure that
students understand both the causes of their errors
and the actions necessary to correct them. A
tutoring module generally incorporates natural
language processing techniques to communicate at
the level of each individual student.
ICAI PROGRAMS

While the use of ICAI programs currently

is not widespread, several ICAI programs have
been tested successfully in laboratory
environments. It briefly describes four of these
ICAI programs: BUGGY, GUIDON,
SCHOLAR, and SOPHIE.
BUGGY

Developed to diagnose a student’s problems with

basic mathematics, BUGGY identifies and explains a
student’s arithmetic misconceptions. BUGGY is
based on the assumption that many students who have
difficulty solving problems are not able to follow
procedures but are following incorrect procedures.
BUGGY provides a student with a series of
arithmetic problems, finds error patterns in the
student’s responses, and analyzes those patterns to
determine the cause of the errors.
GUIDON

Using the production rule knowledge base from

MYCIN, GUIDON instructs medical students in the
diagnosis and treatment of bacteriological infections.
Developed at Stanford University, GUIDON
conducts an interactive dialogue to present
symptomatic evidence that can help the student
analyze the problem. Since it is compatible with
many rule-based systems, GUIDON can be adapted
to create instructional programs for other knowledge
bases.
SCHOLAR

Created at BBN as part of an ongoing research

project, SCHOLAR provides instruction in South
American geography. SCHOLAR uses a semantic
network for internal knowledge representation,
where each node in the network contains
properties of a particular geographical unit. Using
a mixed initiative natural language interface,
SCHOLAR can either respond to student
questions or initiate a line of questioning on its
own.
SOPHIE

Another ICAI program developed at BBN,

SOPHIE (SOPHisticated Instructional Environment)
actually consists of two programs that create a student
learning environment. SOPHIE-I simulates an
electronics lab in which the student initiates
interaction to diagnose faulty electronic equipment.
SOHIE-II adds an educational game and provides
frame-based CAI techniques that offer the student
preliminary instructional material.
 Grammar Checkers

Grammar checkers (e.g. Grammatik) are designed for

native speakers and they typically point to problems
believed typical of native speaker writing (e.g. too much
use of passives). They are usually very confusing to
language learners and are not recommended for an
ESL/EFL context
 Software
There are a wide range of software available, based
on Intelligent Computer Aided Instructions: -

LISP
LOGO
Multimedia Toolbook,
Hypercard
Authorware Professional,
Icon Author,
Guide
Plus,
Windows Help
 Text Analyst
Making correct decisions often requires analyzing
large volumes of textual information. Researchers,
analysts, magazine editors, venture capitalists,
lawyers, help desk specialists, and even students are
faced by various text analysis tasks.

The software does the following actions by using ICAI :

 Distill the meaning of a text in a concise form

 View accurate summaries before plunging into full
documents
 Efficiently navigate through large text bases
 Perform natural language information retrieval
 Cycle Pad
 The Rankine cycle is the theoretical model for most
steam power plants. Usually when the Rankine cycle is
analyzed in the traditional way (using steam tables or
Mollier charts), much time is required for table or chart
searching and calculations.

 Since the Rankine cycle may use different working fluids,

different combination of devices, and cover a wide range
of pressures and temperatures, developing a program or
a software to provide accurate analysis for all Rankine
cycles is difficult.
 Contd..

 Soft wares that are restricted to a few schemes are

available and usually easy to handle but lack of the
flexibility and a coaching facility required for many
complicated arrangement and unique designs.

 A software which is fast, flexible, intelligent and easy to

use is necessary. In order to weigh up the problem a
new ICAI software. Cycle Pad, for teaching Rankine
cycle analysis is used.
 Web Passive Voice Tutor

 Web Passive Voice Tutor (Web PVT) is an adaptive

web-based Intelligent Computer Assisted Language
Learning (ICALL) program that is aimed at teaching non-
native speakers the passive voice of the English
language.

 Web PVT incorporates techniques from Intelligent

Tutoring Systems (ITS) and Adaptive Hypermedia (AH)
technologies to provide students with individualized
instruction and feedback.
 Applications

 Computer-assisted instruction makes use of multimedia

software in the learning process including text, video
technology, graphics, sound, and Internet technology.

 Computer-assisted instructions are heavily used in the

growing field of education.

 Instruction using Internet protocol makes use of

technological features that traditional computer-assisted
education does not, such as hyper linking, synchronous
and asynchronous conferencing, real-time audio and
video, as well as 3-D virtual reality.
 Latest Development in ICAI
 Medical robotics and computer assisted surgical
technologies span the broad areas of science and
engineering to create intelligent tools which can be
applied to clinical instruments.

 Robotic technologies, navigation systems, and computer

assisted tools can improve existing clinical procedures
as well as provide innovative new approaches to clinical
problems.
 Latest Development in ICAI

 Dr. Delp established the Digital Human Laboratory at

Stanford to focus on the development and testing of
human movement simulations. These simulations are
used to study mechanisms of neuromuscular diseases,
and medical devices to guide the performance of surgery
and educate engineers, medical students, and surgical
residents.