Describes GTE (Generic Tutoring Environment), an environment for developing intelligent courseware that is designed around a generic instructional knowledge-base using formalism. Discusses the instructional components of intelligent tutoring systems, including the instructional model, and how GTE approaches the instructional model from an…

Analyzes claims with regard to GTE's (Generic Tutoring Environment) epistemological foundations and suggests that GTE's assumptions reveal a reductionist bias through the use of formalism. Implications for courseware design and instructional modeling are discussed. (Author/LRW)

Discusses GTE (Generic Tutoring Environment) and courseware engineering and argues that GTE's theoretical knowledge base focuses on teaching as a good model for any kind of instruction and thus reduces its generic nature. Two examples of weak automation for instructional design are described that have broader knowledge bases. (Author/LRW)

Reviews psychometric approaches to problems of modeling student achievement (the student model) within intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). A number of cognitively oriented psychometric approaches, including latent-trait models, statistical pattern recognition methods, and causal probabilistic networks are described and discussed within the current…

Discusses how the reverse engineering approach can generate feedback on computer programs without the user having any prior knowledge of what the program was designed to do. This approach uses the cognitive model of programming knowledge to interpret both context independent and dependent errors in the same words and concepts as human programmers.…

From an ecological psychology perspective, a full analysis of any learning context must acknowledge the complex nonlinear dynamics that unfold as an intentionally-driven learner interacts with a technology-based purposefully designed learning environment. A full situation model would need to incorporate constraints from the environment and also…