Guidance and feedback can be provided to users either during their exploration of Web materials or afterward by critiquing the artifacts of their exploration. Since most educators have critiqued products in hard copy or oral form (such as reports, essays, tables, and other knowledge representations), let's examine how on-line guidance and feedback can be constructed with the Web.
Most links on Web pages are shown by highlighted and underlined text in which the text itself serves as a descriptor for the topic of that link. Users of Web pages will tell you, however, that often these descriptors or the links they represent turn out to be misleading or even irrelevant. This may be partially due to the lack of relationship denoted in the link's name or descriptor. A more meaningful system would be to use words such as "example", "non example", "justification" or "relationship" when teaching concepts or principles, "definition" or "mnemonic" when teaching facts, and "shortest path" or "alternative path" when teaching a procedure. These terms provide reasons for learners to choose them based on the type of information they will receive when they branch to those sites.
A second method to provide both guidance and feedback can occur when users are required to make an informed choice among alternatives after engaging a segment of instruction. If these choices are designed to determine appropriate or inappropriate responses by the learner, pages linked to their answers can be used to either reinforce the correct response or, if an incorrect response is chosen, explain the rationale and guide the user to a more appropriate answer or other remediation.
A third, more complex method uses CGI (Common Gateway Interface) codes to provide learners with detailed information and alternative choices. With CGI scripts, information students place into on-line forms, radio buttons, or check boxes can be compared to preset answers in a database or text file. Feedback can provide individual students with a deeper explanation of their choices and active links which guide them to additional information. These CGI scripts can also be written to capture variables from students, hold them in database fields, and access these fields at a later date. This not only allows the guidance and feedback to become more intelligent (based on individualization), but allows users to leave off and pick up an extended instructional sequence as their scheduling needs may require.
San Diego State University
CSU Instructional Technology Initiatives
Office of the Chancellor
The California State University
page authors:
Donn C. Ritchie
Bob Hoffman
Respond to forum: DCDPBL Faculty Develpoment Institute Forum
All contents copyright (C) 1996, SDSU. All rights reserved.
Revised: March 9,1996 by D Lewis
URL:
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/clrit/WWWInstrdesign/GuidanceNFeedback.html