A BEHAVIORAL SYSTEMS APPROACH TO ADAPTIVE COMPUTERIZED INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

A computerized multimedia instructional system has been developed that adheres to behavioral systems principles for presenting both adaptive programmed instructional materials and laboratory simulations. This instructional software system, called MediaMatrix, is both an authoring environment and a presentation vehicle that adapts the complexity of presentations in real time to changes in a student’s current rate of progress. It incorporates an automated knowledge-generation system that tracks all interactions between the user and any instructional objects within the system. Such knowledge is used both for a research database and for an artificial-intelligence engine that constructs an estimate ofconcept association networks (Verplanck, 1992a). Such networks reflect a learner’s developing knowledge and skill base, and may be used for tutorial advising during student use.