A computer-assisted instruction system (called SMITH † ), has been developed. SMITH relieves the course author of the burden of computer programming, thus greatly reducing course preparation time. The author writes his normal instructional text, divides it into frames (suitable for screen presentation), and describes each frame in terms of the topics it covers. He may also establish precedence and some other relations between frames. From then on SMITH structures the material and displays it to each student in a tutorial mixedinitiative mode, tailoring the presentation according to the student's characteristics, performance and requests. SMITH is, in fact, an instructional information-retrieval system, provided with a teaching strategy. This new type of system, which may be called IRO-CAI (for information-retrieval oriented CAI), employs special purpose algorithms in order to make intelligent use of minimal content information provided by the author. In this way it is possible to provide CAI in an efficient and adaptive manner without demanding an unrealistic time investment from the author.
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