Computer-assisted instruction in the liberal arts using a simple authoring system

Abstract

THIS PAPER describesDISCUSS, a combination of two computer programs currently under development at Hamilton College.DISCUSS is designed to help improve students’ reading skills and their preparation for class discussion. One part of the system,
namedAuthor, provides instructors with both graphical and textual interfaces for designing and developing automated, interactive lessons.
The lessons focus students’ attention on important questions about assigned readings and require students to write responses
to those questions. In essence, the lessons enable an instructor to have students carry on dialogues with texts through the
computer as a means to prepare them for dialogues in the classroom — student to student, student to teacher, class to text.
TheAuthor program also gives an instructor a number of tools for monitoring students’ progress through sessions and for communicating
with individual students and classes as a whole. TheStudent part ofDISCUSS presents lessons to students, solicits student responses (with Macwrite-like editing features), and saves the responses for
printing. Unlike conventional CAI systems,DISCUSS supports a variety of open-ended, discursive question types and allows for anonymous interaction among students.

The system, which runs on an Appletalk/Appleshare network of Macintosh-Plus computers with a dedicated file server, was originally
proposed by instructors from the Departments of English and Government and is now being used in courses in those departments.
The course and a recent workshop on the system suggest that it can be readily adapted by faculty in a variety of disciplines
for a variety of pedagogical purposes.