Methods of teaching - Computer assisted instruction
- 1. Computer Assisted Instruction(CAI) By Dr. I. Uma Maheswari iuma_maheswari@yahoo.co.in
- 2. Modes of CAI • Drill and Practice • Tutorial • Dialogue / Conversational • Games • Simulation • Databases • Narrative / Presentational
- 3. Drill and Practice • A series of exercises is presented to a student by the computer. • The student gives a response. • The response is processed by the computer and accordingly new activity is designed. • Exercises can be created by the computer by avoiding repetition. • The items can be selected randomly from the list and presented.
- 4. • Sometimes the series is presented as it is. • Also endless exercises can be provided. • As a response to the exercise, the programmed either asks the student to try again till it is right or provides a chance or just states the right answer. • The responses are also analysed to mark the success or to assert the need of more study.
- 5. • The questions in the drill and practice are (1) fill in the blanks, (2) which is the odd man out, (3) correct or wrong (4) answer in a word / sentence, (5) multiple choice. • Activities like drawing, measuring and arranging objects are also possible on computer. • Generally, typing of long answers is avoided in CAI
- 6. Tutorial • The topic to be studied is divided into a sequence of short sections called frames. • It bears a close resemblance to the programmed learning sequences. • The computer can be used to determined students’ needs and preferences and to decide how to branch through material.
- 7. • The material can be more complex without adding to the students’ burden. • The computer can be programmed to branch any number of alternative pages in text where there are many different routes. • Each learner can be diagnosed at every small stage and be led to a new path according to his/her need.
- 8. Dialogue / Conversational • These are based on the teaching learning method used by ‘Socrates’. • Both the teacher and the learner take an initiative to start the teaching learning process. • They can ask each other questions and answer them.
- 9. • These types of tutorials are based upon model of teaching learning process and require very complicated and time consuming programming. • Writing most of these systems are research laboratory work and they are not widely used. • Also these are not practically cost – effective instruction systems.
- 10. • In dialogue tutorials the computer is engaged in learning about the learner. • Deep questioning techniques and multifaceted analyses of the responses given by the student can help in building complex interactive dialogues.
- 11. Games • Stimulate a real life system by following a set of rules, which approximate the behaviour of the real system. • The experiments may be time – consuming, expensive, difficult or sometimes dangerous too.
- 12. Advantage of simulation • It avoids the difficulties and complexities of real by using idealised conditions. • It overcomes the prohibitive costs of laboratory or field work based experiments. • The time normally demanded by an experiment can be foreshortened. • Dangerous experiments can be experienced in safety. • Experiment, which would normally be impractical can be attempted. • The level of complexity can be increased slowly. Variables can be added at every stage.
- 13. Databases • One of the modes of learning is learning through exploration of resource material and library utilisation. • The power of a computer to store, retrieve and process information is used to help the student as he browses through the material. • As in the library a book or a resource material can be found using subject code, author, index or title index. • Unlike books, materials stored in a main frame computer can be made available at all the terminals at a time.
- 14. Narrative / Presentational • The computer screen is used to present material to the student in a form sometime referred to as an electronic blackboard. • Along with normal verbal approach, movement and animation can be used with colours and music. • Simple presentations can easily be developed by teachers to introduce learners to a new information., eg a teacher can develop slide show using MS Power Point or even develop web – pages using Front Page.