Semantics and Pedagogy in Authoring Educational Technology: Confronting the Mismatch between Researchers’ Expectations and Users’

Abstract

As technological approaches to instruction become more widely available (and expected), developers have turned to authoring tools as a solution to two classic problems: (1) how can software be produced more easily and rapidly; (2) how can teacher practitioners and instructional designers create sophisticated, technology-enhanced curriculum materials without relying on computer programmers and researchers? Research in educational technology has led to constructivist and situated-inspired paradigms such as Anchored Instruction and Goal-Based Scenarios, yet few authoring tools have emerged that would help a designer create examples of these paradigms. Recently, however, researchers have been engaged in creating authoring environments that adhere to explicit models of instruction and that assist/cajole/coerce users in adhering to those models. One early result from these experiences has been the variation in the degree to which tool users are willing to adhere to the suggestions of the authoring tool. As a consequence, users create artifacts that may lie beyond the expectations of the tools’ creators. Some issues to explore in this regard are: How can the semantics of a tool be effectively expressed? What is a “Goal”? A “Scenario”? A “Project”? How can we scaffold tool users in creating materials that both fit their needs and are aligned with the instructional models and goals of the creators of the tool? What should a tool “know” about instruction? It’s domain? How flexible should a special-purpose tool be? How “special-purpose” should we be aiming for?