/home1/wolff/dissertation/Figures/

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Authoring Tools for Investigate-and-Decide Learning Environments

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Computer Science

By

Daniel Jeffery Dobson

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

June 1998

©Copyright by Daniel Jeffery Dobson 1998
All Rights Reserved.

ABSTRACT

Authoring Tools for Investigate-and-Decide Learning Environments

Daniel Jeffery Dobson

The subject of this thesis is INDIE, a software tool for designing and implementing multimedia educational environments called Goal-Based Scenarios (GBSes). INDIE's products are simulations centered around tasks where students take the role of an expert who has to make a diagnosis, such as a geologist charged with determining if a volcano will erupt. The goals of the INDIE tool are that it be usable in many domains, be able to produce finished products as well as storyboards, allow incremental development, be able to develop a domain model separate from the interface and vice-versa, efficient for authors, accessible to non-programmers, and effective. A model-driven GBS development tool was first implemented (INDIE 1.0), but our design made it so authors had to develop complete domain models at every stage of development, making rapid prototyping of ideas difficult. INDIE 2.0 used an interface-to-model, incremental approach that let authors develop at any level of design, from storyboards to deliverable applications. Tool features that made INDIE 2.0 successful include an event/response architecture that implements interface actions, pre-specified interaction models for frequently-needed interface elements, and a simple but flexible rule-based engine to critique candidate student diagnoses. We analyzed the results of five major teams of authors that used INDIE to build applications in several domains. We found that authors (who were not trained as programmers) were able to build applications that showed nearly a ten-fold increase in complexity over those built in INDIE 1.0 without any increase in development time.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments are so much fun, but they always get written at the last minute, so they become truly heartfelt statements, if rushed and overlong.

I'd like to thank Roger Schank for providing me a place to work and acceptance to graduate school--the Institute for the Learning Sciences is indeed a wondrous place and his vision of educational software tools drove my research from day one.

Numerous faculty have provided one-on-one support, from my committee members (Larry Birnbaum and Louis Gomez) who cared for my dissertation (and me), to research faculty who have contributed to INDIE's projects (Alex Kass, Greg Saunders, Ray Bareiss, and Kemi Jona), and to the friendly ear that so many others provided (especially Danny Edelson's constructive concern, Ian Horswill's destructive science, and Brad Adelberg's calling me ``Thesis Boy''). Also, Ken Forbus was extremely nice in letting me finish this on his dime.

What seems like hundreds of grad students need to be thanked individually, but I should mention specifically Tammy ``I love dogs'' Berman, Tom Cassell, Brian Davies, Brenda Janish, Chris Johnson, Marko Krema, Kim MacPherson, Brendon Towle, and Michael Wolfe as my partners in crime. Joe Herman gets credit for not killing me, however much he was tempted to, during our years as officemates.

Many loyal ILS staffers worked on the various INDIE projects described herein, including Denise Conanan, Ben Mueller, Abby Sher, Mark Swanson, and the extremely cool Bridget Weise. Without their dedication to the cause, there would be no sick kids, malnourished pregnant women, or forged paintings by old masters.

Five musketeers from Andersen built Volcano Investigator and Clinical Monitor: Faith Fuqua-Purvis, Jeff DeSmet, Lauren Haff, Kevin Madden, and the inestimable John Sangimino.

The artists at ILS are to be blessed for making INDIE beautiful, most especially Ruth Schmidt and Anna Maria Ciarallo.

Programmers adding to the INDIE development effort include Steve Silverstein, one of the top three INDIE-savvy people on earth, and Brian Davies, whose button code is the bees' knees.

And I would be lost without Teri Lehmann, Heidi Levin, Joanne Raleigh, and Tina Turnbull.

Lastly come the three most important people to this dissertation:

• Seth Tisue, fellow grad student, was Han Solo to my Luke Skywalker, Aragorn to my Frodo, and Donatello to my Raphael--without his incredible effort, INDIE would be nothing but three megabytes of mismatched parentheses. We were always working towards a common good with humor, cynicism, and excellent hacking.

• Chris Riesbeck, my advisor, was my Obi Wan Kenobi, my Gandalf, and my Splinter. Without his unerring guidance, cool temper, and wise ways, I think I'd be in graduate school until the moon fell from the sky. And still doing lousy research.

• Sara Beth Asher, my wife, is clearly the most wonderful woman in the world. She put up with just about everything and married me despite it all. I'm still working on why.

To Murphy, Jim, and Gromit, my silicon pals
who did most of the heavy thinking on this dissertation