Improving CAI Effectiveness with Attention to Instructional Design in Teaching Story Problems to Mildly Handicapped Students

Abstract

This report summarizes the results of a study in which a computer-assisted tutorial was compared to a teacher-assisted group in teaching multiplication and division math story problems to mildly handicapped middle school students. The same curriculum was used for both conditions; the only difference between the two instructional approaches was the medium used to communicate instruction to the students. Comparisons of scores from a pretest, two posttests, and one of two transfer tests demonstrated no significant differences between the groups; however, both groups showed a significant improvement from pretest to posttest scores. Comparisons are made with an earlier study in which neither group learned from the instruction. Results from the two studies indicate that, when sound instructional design principles are used to design CAI, the computer can be an effective instructional medium for mildly handicapped students, even for a complex skill such as math story problems.