Abstract
BANDAID is an intelligent computer-assisted instruction (ICAI) system designed for students learning to program in BASIC. The major thesis is that beginning students need a friendly environment, that is, one in which information about the language and the system are immediately available. The system accepts most commands without switching levels: BASIC lines are parsed on input with very specific error messages. An editor allows corrections of BASIC lines. The program can be traced while running, and an indefinite number of HELP comments can be written for the system. Without leaving the BASIC environment, the user can interact with the CMS monitor of the main machine running the program. Although no English language comments or questions are allowed, the system is modular so that additions of restrictive dialogue interaction and guided tutoring are possible. Illustrations are presented showing the capabilities of the system. The paper also presents some of the implementation details of BANDAID. A flexible system requires implementation in LISP, so examples of how the system programmer interacts with LISP during debugging are given. Although still incomplete, the system runs satisfactorily and can be used easily by beginning students and by psychologists interested in how people learn complex subjects.
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Miller, L. Has artificial intelligence contributed to an understanding of the human mind? A critique of arguments for and against.Cognitive Science, 1978,2, 71–109.
Millward, R. Teaching a computer to teach.Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 1979,11, 102–110.
Millward, R., Mazzucchelli, L., Magoon, S., &Moore, R. Intelligent computer-assisted instruction.Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 1978,10, 213–217
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This project started in 1977 with a class of undergraduate students (Glen Kaufman, Scott Magoon, Louis Mazzucchelli, and Rebecca Moore) working on an artificial intelligence project. Although we were overly ambitious and the project barely got off the ground in one semester, the main structure of the system was defined. During the next year, only two of the students were actively involved and little progress was made. Last year, the IBM 360 at Brown was so overloaded that it was impossible to work with so large a system. However, Rebecca Moore took a few months last spring to put everything in shape, and her efforts were critical for the project. We are now at a turning point, since the new IBM 370 easily handles the large system, which is sufficiently free of bugs to make it a reasonable research tool. This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BNS 75-08439A02) to the author.
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Millward, R.B. BAND AID: First steps toward an ICAI system. Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation 12, 178–192 (1980). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201597
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201597