MEBuilder : an object-oriented lesson authoring system for procedural skills

Abstract

Many military applications for intelligent-tutoring systems focus on the training of procedural skills. However, while there have been many successful research efforts into developing tutoring systems for specific applications, the question of developing general-purpose ones is still open. Specifically unsolved is how a lesson-authoring system, a program written to help a novice write computerized lessons, can be made both general purpose and easy to use. MEBuilder is a prototype lesson-authoring system which employs an object-oriented approach to solving this problem. MEBuilder combines automated object, task, and lesson modeling tools with a library management system to allow teachers to develop simulation-based procedural trainers on nearly any subject. Teachers create reusable objects which have a fixed and well-defined behavior. Then by using the power of means-ends analysis, MEBuilder helps the teacher build entire tasks with these objects in just one step. With these tasks, teachers use MEBuilder's workbook structure to create a lesson containing several exercises. At each step, MEBuilder's automatic error and consistency checking reduces time spent on testing and debugging. MEBuilder's library manager ensures object and task reusability. This thesis explains MEBuilder's design, data structures, and interfaces. It also presents experimental results which support MEBuilder's methods as being more efficient and authoring systems using traditional computer-aided instruction (CAI) techniques.