INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING SCIENCES: case based teaching

Roger Schank, director

Presented by Lee Cole, Andres Gomez, and Jennifer Snow Wolff.

Thanks to Nathalie Grue and Wouter Schenk for their contributions to the group.

For Educational Technology, Winter 1994

The following material will help you prepare for Thursday's class.
Be sure to read the two readings. The "easy to read" article in the 
professor's notes describes some of the programs that will be seen in a 25
minute video. The article handed out [Kass et. al 1993] describes one program
in more detail and in a more technical manner.

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Lee will present an overview here. He is going to tell us a story! Perfect!

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Learning Sciences Institute Video: 25 minutes
Tools you will See Described:

1. MOVIE READER
Helps teachers design software to help kids understand plot and 
development in tutorials

2. TRANS ASK
Hypermedia "Ask System" Reference and Training tool for military crisis 
planners

3. DUSTIN TOOL: A Foreign Language experience
Uses MOPS (Memory Organization Packets) for incorporating non-English speakers
into American culture (described in text).

4. SICKLE CELL COUNSELOR
Sickle Cell is a disease that is hereditary. This tutorial 
teaches students to counsel couples on having children.

5. BROADCAST NEWS
Tutorial to teach TV Journalism to high school and college students

6. Creanimate: A Biology Tutor for small children -- design your own animals!
(described in text)

7. Yello, a program to teach salesmen to sell yellow pages ads is shown
(Built using GuSS, described in hand-out)

7. Taxops and Victor are not shown. (unless we missed it -- a candy bar to 
anyone who can find either of these in the video!)

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CONFUSING POINTS IN VIDEO

ILS has not created an intelligent computer that can talk to students, read 
and understand text!!!  See page 6 in article in text to explain this.
When the user seems to be "talking" with the computer, in fact she is just
talking to herself as she chooses from a menu of pre-defined dialog options.

For example, in the journalism tutor, the student does not "write" a 
creative news story but picks from among many facts, and a kind of 
intelligent tutor comes back with canned criticism on her choices.

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VOCABULARY USED AT ILS THAT WILL HELP TO UNDERSTAND THE VIDEO:

A DOMAIN defines an area of knowledge.  For example, YELLO's domain is teaching
skills that its users will be able to use to solve problems in the domain of
selling advertising space in the yellow pages phone book [Kass et. al 1993].

A CASE is an experience or example that has been given by a human expert for
storage in a computer system.

The person who actually programs the case into the computer is known as the
SYSTEM BUILDER.

The system builder is not necessarily the same person as the human expert that
provided the case, also known as a CONTENT SPECIALIST or CONTENT EXPERT.

A STORY is a case that captures a related sequence of events in an expert's
experience.  In ILS systems, stories are generally presented in video format.

As an example, if I were to create and program my own version of YELLO, I would
be a system builder; however, since I know nothing about selling space for
advertisements in the yellow pages, I would need to consult a content expert,
which in this case would be a person with experience in that domain.  The
stories that this person would tell me, and that I would store as cases in my
system, would probably be similar to the one in the paper: "I once ignored a
person sitting in the background who then turned out to make all the financial
decisions..."

INDICES are features that are used to describe to the computer system the
circumstances under which it might be useful to tell the story to the user.
In the above example, the story would be indexed under "stories to tell the
user when he/she is trying to sell advertising space to one person while
someone else is around who appears not to be in charge."

CASE-BASED TEACHING systems help their users learn by telling them the right
stories at the right time.

The users of case-based teaching systems are placed in GOAL-BASED SCENARIOS.
Users are given a goal to achieve and are allowed to attempt to achieve it by
solving the problem scenarios presented by the computer environment.  These
scenarios are designed so as to increase the probability that the user will
make mistakes, run into trouble, or get into "dangerous" situations.  When this
happens, stories are presented that hopefully teach the user how to avoid such
situations in the future.  In this way, goal-based scenarios are used to
implement the theory of case-based teaching.

In the case of YELLO, the goal is for users to sell as much advertising space
as possible for the next edition of the yellow pages.  The scenarios which
YELLO presents to its users include the example given in the paper we read
[Kass et. al 1993], where the user "talks" with the Swains.

ILS does not only construct case-based teaching systems; they also construct
TOOLS -- systems that allow programmers of case-based teaching systems (i.e.,
system builders) to create new ones more easily by automating much of the work
(e.g., GuSS is an ILS tool for building case-based teaching systems such as
YELLO).

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COMPARING PEDAGOGY:

In Thursday's class the previous presenters will be invited to say which of 
the following principles their educational environment have in common 
with Schank's case-based reasoning. Look over this list, and decide if your 
educational environment was driven by these principles or not.
 	I will have a matrix to fill out in class. 
..............................................
principles & features of instructional program
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Learning Pedagogy
* Learn by Doing
* Simulated "real world" problems
* Activates prior knowledge

Motivation
* Student Initiated learning
* Learning should be fun
* Uses Failure & Conflict to motivate

Student control
* Rate controlled by student
* Group learning situation
* Exploratory learning

Curriculum
* student must complete all Material 
* Student is free to "not learn" 
* Declarative knowledge must be learned

Testing
* Tests evaluate student progress
* Student defines goals

Programming Principles
* Content specialist controls content
* Programmed by a programmer
* Student does programming

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EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS we will compare to above list:
.....................................
* The Traditional Classroom
* Constructionism (Papert)
* Microworlds (Resnick/Papert)
* Intelligent Tutors (a la Anderson)
* Intelligent Tutors (a la Govindaraj)
* Interactive Learning (Soloway)
* Case-based (Schank)


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QUESTIONS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION:
We will break up into 5 small groups. Gov, Mimi, Lee, Andres, Nathalie will 
each join a group to facilitate. The group will pick a spokesperson to 
report back to the whole group. 
We should have 15 minutes to talk in our groups and 15 minutes for the 
groups to report (3 minutes each). Jennifer will keep time. If we run out, 
we can post our ideas to the newsgroup. Your group can pick one of the 
following quesitons and answer it. If you have another question, bring that 
to your group.

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QUESTIONS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION:
..............................................................................
1. Schank believes that learning declarative facts is a waste of time, 
because we forget all of it soon after the test. 
Q:::  Can you think of a domain or profession where declarative fact 
learning is necesarry? 

2. Schank believes that all declaritive facts and skills can be incorporated 
into learning one "real-life situational experience." 
Q:::  Can you think of a domain where all necesarry skills could not 
incorporated into one motivational learning situation?

3. Schank believes that we should disepnse with tests and install the 
"Nintendo Rule of success". If you are at the Ninento level 12, then you've 
completed 1-11. 
Q:::  Can you think of any educationally valid reason that we need grading 
and ranking that is provided by testing, other than social ones?

4. Schank believes the "secret" to designing his tutorials is figuring out an 
introductory situation where the learner will initially fail or not succeed, 
thus creating the motivation to find the answer by using the tutorial. 
Q:::  Can you think of any type of learner or situation where this would be 
aversive or not work?

5. Many of the educators we studied are advocating restructuring the 
schools and the way we teach. (Papert, Soloway, Schank) 
Q:::  Are some of these situations we have studied simply better because 
of a new pedagogical method of teaching or is the computer simulation 
really the key variable? Can they be separated? 

6. One of the reasons for multimedia/ simulations/ microworlds is to 
bring the learning experience closer to real world learning, via visual, 
audio and spatial cues.
Q:::  If there is no possible damage or harm in learning in the real world 
(.i.e. flying a plane) Then what is the advantage of the computer simulation 
over ACTUAL real world learning? Is there a saving of material costs? 
human cost? Would we be better off spending our development money on 
training teachers and buying materials for people to use in the classroom? 
(Put aside the fact that you want a career in designing on computers)

7. Schank thinks that learning should be fun.
Q:::	Can you think of any situations where learning should NOT be fun?