THE ROLE OF EPISTEMOLOGY IN INSTRUCTIONAL-DESIGN

The Generic Tutoring Environment (GTE) is an authoring environment for the development of courseware. Claims with regard to GTE's epistemolo gical foundations are analyzed and explored. GTE's assumptions are the reby shown to reveal a somewhat reductionist bias, which is to say tha t GTE has placed emphasis on computational approaches to instructional modeling. Nevertheless, pragmatic concerns with regard to GTE's utili ty and effectiveness are of interest to the developers and to other re searchers in the fields of courseware design and instructional modelin g. In general, GTE is seen to be both ambitious and powerful. While GT E does not truly provide an epistemology of instructional design, it d oes provide a powerful framework within which effective tutors can be efficiently generated.