INVESTIGATE AND DECIDE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS - SPECIALIZING TASK MODELS FOR AUTHORING TOOL DESIGN

The complexities of building educational software can be reduced by re lying on appropriate tools for adapting and re-using similar, previous applications. Although researchers have been creating tools for autom ating some aspects of software design, most of these tools typically a im for generality, attempting to cover a broad class of interactive pr ograms in many domains. However, this approach may not be effective fo r building complex interactive systems, and fails to re-apply the inst ruction and design expertise implicit within prior software applicatio ns. An alternative is to provide tools which use specialized, rather t han general, task models, tailored specifically to a target category o f software. In addition, an understanding of the authoring task itself can inform the design of such specialized authoring environments. Thi s article presents a prototype authoring tool for interactive educatio nal software, called IDLE-Tool. Investigate and Decide Learning Enviro nments (IDLE) is introduced as the task model around which the tool is based, and a model of the authoring process, called Guided Case Adapt ation, is offered as an approach to employing the model and an exempla r in tandem to effectively support the design process.