Class Notes 4/2/96
taken by Aaron McClennen
- "Providing more information will not make computers more
helpful."
- "The challange is[ ...] delivering the right knowledge in the
context of a problem or task at the right moment for a human
professional to consider."
The question is how to deal with the information on the net.
On the internet one can find 12,000 things and not one of which is
right.
Education is to get procedural knowlwdge. But this is not on the net
because it is proprietary information.
This is also counter to the old AI notion that to make one smart one
only had to add more facts/knowledge. Instant person. We sell the
body, just add knowledge.
A second question, What is the right knowledge.
For example, how does one find out what the possible tax deductions
are?
Should help be conceptual of factual.
Critics are useful for this.
- "We have emphisized AI research... including critics, agents,
assistants, adaptive and adaptable tools, information access and
information delivery mechinisms."
One can grow critics
Put the system out where it will be used. then bring it back into the
shop and reconceputualize. based on what was learned while it was
out. This of course takes time.
agents and assistants
Agents go out and do things at the users command, while assistants are
less complex.
Performance Support Systems
This can be Wizards and help files.
The question with these is what does the learner do and what does the
system do for them. Beyond that how much of what the system does is
evident to the learner.
Glass Box Scaffolding
This provides support, but it also shows the learner what the support
is.
Wizards are black box scaffolding. This become evident when you try to
take away the scaffolding and there is no help to do this.
Glass box will allow first day producitivity. Though I supposed it
will be a little slower than an expert on the system.
It is a cirruculum choice of whether to use glass or black box
scaffolding. If you don't care that the students learn something one
can use blackbox.
What is the interaction between Performance Support and Learning
Support.
- Adaptive tools, the system will change on its own.
- Adaptable tools the learner changes.
The question is information access versus finding it, or
Delivery vs. presentation.
How to present the information depends on the task. Is one trying to
solve a problem or is one just browing throught the information with
no specific goal.
- "Our goal has been to integrate working and learning and to
support learning on demand."
In a work enviroment there is no time to learn what is needed.
In the field of education, a question is how and where to change the
lack of time the teachers have to learn new things.
Integrating different fields into a cirriculum is difficult to do
tightly.
Critics are hard to get the knowledge correct, but once that is done,
actually creating them is easy.
Last modified: Wed Apr 10 18:24:47 EDT 1996