Authoring FRA

FRA was designed as a multiple-scenario system, with each case building on the previous one. FRA provides an authoring tool to let management experts write new cases. The FRA developer outlines a process for construction, which can be summarized as:

1.

Develop the information file material (i.e., the financial reports the student will examine).

2.

Develop the expert demonstration.

3.

Develop the recommendation report, which consists of defining what set of ratings the student will have to give the company asking for the loan.

4.

Write rules for expert coaching.

Of particular interest are the recommendation report generator and the critiquing rules. The recommendation report is constructed with a kind of interface builder, and in [Foster 1996] authors are encouraged to write generalized, reusable structures for the report generator to save time and effort.

The expert coaching rules are similar to INDIE's rule-based critiquer: ``If the current situation is X, then give advice Y,'' where X can be what the student has entered in the recommendation report, what prior actions the student has taken (e.g., what documents has he or she looked at, what calculations were requested), or even elapsed time looking at various documents (something entirely missing from INDIE). The advice FRA can give is a text dialog that pops up, or else pointers to a relevant ASK video.