A methodology for building personalized computer-aided instructional tools

Neither standard instruction nor computer-aided instruction effectively adapt to an individual student's learning characteristics and needs. Students frequently enter instruction with a variety of naive preconceptions and acquire different misconceptions during the instruction, which may prevent them from obtaining a deep understanding of the domain. Furthermore, standard classroom instruction does not usually make effective use of assessment to improve instruction. Assessment is generally used to assign grades, and typically no feedback is used to inform instruction. As a consequence, teachers are not aware of how much knowledge their students actually possess and usually have limited knowledge about the learnability of domain concepts, as well as the effectiveness of different instructional strategies.; In this dissertation these challenges are addressed by developing: (1) a new instructional strategy, called Dynamic Multiple Assessment (DMA), and (2) a methodology for building a new class of computer tools based on the DMA method called Personalized Computer-Aided Instructional (PCAI) tools. DMA is a method of instruction based on a symbiosis of assessment and instruction. DMA provides dynamic assessment of the whole instructional process and actively detects and corrects misconceptions. A PCAI tool is a multimedia environment that consists of a palette of assessment and instructional tools used by the instructor to perform assessment and provide personalized instruction following the DMA method of instruction. PCAI tools are used to perform student, domain and instructional technique modeling. The feedback collected is used to enhance instruction. A PCAI tool is implemented as a decision support system (DSS) that assists the instructor in making the educational decisions by organizing all the DMA assessment and instructional tools and providing certain helper tools, such as a student, domain and instructional technique model editor. PCAI environments facilitate learning, understanding and transfer of knowledge using dynamic assessment to tailor instruction to a particular learner.; I demonstrate the advantages and effectiveness of the PCAI methodology by using it to create tools for teaching alternating current to engineering students and recursion in C++ to computer science students. Both PCAI tools significantly outperformed other forms of instruction, such as standard instruction and a multimedia environment.