Instructional Science 16:59--77 (1987)

Martinus Nijhoff Publishers (Kluwer), Dordmcht - Printed in the Netherlands

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Instructional design and intelligent systems: shifts in the

designer's decision-making role
WILLIAM WlNN
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, United States of America

Abstract In instructional design, decisions about which instructional methods to use am made well in
advance of their implementation. While expert teachers select methods while instruction is underway
and are well placed to adapt instruction to changing conditions, designers must try to predict ahead of
time how instructional conditions will change. This is difficult to do because design procedures are
non-deterministic and instructional theory is incomplete. In intelligent instructional systems, it is possible to shift certain aspects of decision-making back to the implementation phase of instruction. This
enables systems to adapt to changing conditions and to present information in a variety of formats, The
designer becomes less concerned with selecting methods and puts more effort into writing rules that allow systems to select methods once instruction has begun.

Introduction

Teaching and instructional design are in many ways very similar. In both, decisions about which instructional methods to use are made given the instructional
outcomes that are to be attained and the conditions under which instruction is to
occur (see Reigeluth, 1983). The great difference between them lies in when those
decisions are made (Richie, 1986, p. 7). In the case of instructional design, the decisions about which methods to use are made in advance of the implementation of
instruction. In teaching, while instructional decisions are often made during
lesson-planning, it is highly likely that decisions will also be made on the spot
by the teacher once instruction has begun.
Because both teachers and designers make instructional decisions, and because
teachers are often in a better position to adapt instruction to changing instructional conditions, it has been argued that design is superfluous and that instructional
decision-making should be left to teachers (Nunan, 1983). Whatever the merits of
this argument, there is still a case to be made for making instructional decisions
ahead of their implementation. For a variety of reasons, there has recently been an
explosive increase in the number of occasions instruction is given with no teacher
present. Such occasions include all self instruction, all instruction delivered by
means of the mass media, all home study and a significant portion of the training
that is delivered in business, industry and the military. These occasions have
called for the development of what might be called "turnkey" instruction that is
self-contained and self-sufficient, that can simply be "plugged in" and "switched
on". Such instruction has to be as effective as instruction delivered by a teacher.

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And because it also must stand alone, it has to be designed in advance with meticulous care.
Given the increasing need for instruction that is delivered by means other than
by a teacher, it is hardly surprising that the discipline of instructional design has
grown up alongside the field of instructional technology. Heinich (1970, 1984)
has observed that the evolution of instructional technology (design) from instructional craft (teaching) has required that a greater amount of effort be placed on instructional planning and development relative to that placed upon delivery. Indeed,
it has been claimed that when technologically based instruction appears to be
superior to instruction delivered by a teacher, that superiority can be attributed to
this extra effort in design and not to any intrinsic property of the technology itself
(Clark, 1983a, 1985).
There is another side to the coin, however. The technologies, like television,
slide sets and texts, that have traditionally substituted for the teacher in turnkey
instruction have not had the capability on their own of adapting to changing instructional conditions. The designer has therefore had to anticipate all the contingencies that might occur during instruction and to prepare the instruction to deal
with them.
The newer instructional technologies are characterized by a greater flexibility to
adapt. This is particularly true of the computer, which is capable not just of
branching to different inslructional sequences, but also of selecting instructional
strategies on the basis of instructional conditions that prevail at the time. When
instruction is by intelligent computer-assisted instruction (ICAI), we therefore
find that all instructional decisions are not made in advance. Rather, the system
makes decisions after instruction has begun about which instructional methods to
select on the basis of rules provided by the designer.
This discussion looks at two of the implications that follow from this for CAI.
The first is a shift in the locus of decision-making from the design to the implementation of instruction. The second is a shift in the role of the instructional designer from deciding which methods are to be used to writing rules that enable the
system to make this decision. The discussion of these two issues is constrained
by the present capabilities of ICAI. However, we will conclude with a look towards the future and discuss the possibility of creating instructional systems using
ICAI that come closer to recreating the decision-making capabilities of teachers.

Instructional decision-making
InstructionalDesign
Instructional design is a decision-making process. Its purpose is to select the best
possible instructional methods given certain outcomes that instruction is intended

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to attain, and certain conditioias under which instruction is to occur (Reigeluth,
1983). Educators have frequently expressed the hope that instructional design can
become sufficiently scientific to serve as a "linking science" between learning
theory and educational practice (Dewey, 1900; Glaser, 1976a, 1976b, 1985).
This conception of instructional design can be traced, in large part, to an essay
by Simon in his book The Sciences of the Artificial (Simon, 1981, pp. 128-159).
Here, Simon proposes that design is a set of procedures for selecting the optimum
course of action from a set of alternatives. Given a goal to attain, given information about constraints and conditions that will affect the attainment of the goal,
and given a set of relationships among the goal, constraints and possible courses
of action, the procedures of design allow the identification of the course of action
that will be optimally effective.
If design is to work as Simon says it should, two requirements have to be met.
The first of these is the existence of a set of effective procedures for optimizing
the alternatives. The second is knowledge about the relationships among goals,
constraints and courses of action. In the literature on instructional design, these
two requirements appear, at first sight, to have been met. There are numerous instructional design "models" which embody sets of procedures intended to lead to
the selection of the best possible instructional methods. (Among the "classics" are
those approaches most frequently taught to designers-in-training, proposed by
Gagn6 & Briggs [1979], Dick & Carey [1985] and Romiszowski [1981]). There
are also numerous prescriptive instructional theories containing principles linking
instructional methods to goals and conditions (Reigeluth, 1983; Gagn6 & Dick,
1983; Fleming & Levie, 1978; Merrill & Tennyson, 1977). However, both the
design procedures and the theory that guides decisions about selecting instructional
methods are problematical. This has been acknowledged by instructional designers
and theorists (Reigeluth, 1983; Clark, 1983a, 1983b) and by scholars from outside the area of design (Nunan, 1983; Barrow, 1984, p. 62).
The difficulty that one encounters with the requirement that there be procedures
for selecting from among instructional alternatives resides in Simon's notion of
"optimization". As Glaser (1976a) has pointed out, the optimization procedures
that usually work well in the "harder" sciences do not succeed when applied to situations, such as human learning, where the interacting variables are numerous and
often ill-defined. Indeed, Glaser points out that attempts to apply this type of
optimization procedure to instructional problems have only succeeded in trivial
cases (1976a, p.6).
To be fair, though, both Simon and a number of instructional design scholars
acknowledge that our design procedures do not always allow us to determine, with
any degree of efficiency, the optimal course of action. Simon has coined the word
"satisficing" (1981, pp. 36-37) to describe the selection of an action that will get
the job done while not necessarily being optimal. Most instructional design models require that new instruction be field-tested or formatively evaluated, which in

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effect concedes that the instructional methods selected during the first iteration of
the design process may not be the best.
Other ways around this difficulty have been suggested. Some scholars, particularly educational technologists, have proposed research and decision-making procedures based upon the simultaneous consideration of large systems of variables
(Beckwith, 1983; Heinich, 1970, 1984; Winn, 1975). Other have suggested that
the soft science of Psychology be "hardened" (Newell & Card, 1985) to make it
more amenable to quantification and thus to a more systematic application in the
design of instruction.
The requirement that there be an instructional theory that can inform decisions
about which methods to use presents further problems. It is clear that a number of
designers believe that a sufficiently valid and reliable theory already exists which
leads to good instructional decisions (Wildman, 1981; Heinich, 1984), or that we
are at least making some progress towards this goal (Clark, 1986). And although
Fleming and Levie (1978) qualify each of their design principles with the phrase
"all other things being equal" (which, of course, is almost never the case), designers who rely on principles like these clearly believe that they have validity and can
be applied in instructional decision-making.
However, instructional theory is not yet sufficiently well developed to be able
to guide practice with the degree of precision that many designers would like. To
begin with, not all instructional principles have been discovered yet. Those that
have been proposed tend to be concerned with sufficient but not necessary conditions for learning (Clark, 1983a). And as is generally true with prescriptive rather
than descriptive sciences, instructional principles are probabilistic (Reigeluth,
1983), meaning that the relationships among conditions, methods and outcomes
they describe hold true with a degree of probability, not with certainty. This is
especially true when the designer considers factors that are "beyond the purely cognitive" (Schoenfeld, 1983), which researchers are now saying are just as, or more,
relevant to learning and instruction than the factors that psychologists have typically studied hitherto. These newer factors include students' belief systems and
their interactions with social environments (Schoenfeld, 1983) and the ways in
which they attribute meaning and importance to the instruction they encounter
(Bandura, 1982; Salomon, 1981, 1983; Schunk, 1984).
For instructional theory to be useful to instructional designers, it must have
predictive validity. Gagn6 and Dick (1983 p. 264) stipulate that the least requirement for instructional theory should be that it describes causal relationships
between procedures used to instruct and their consequences in human performance.
This implies that the principles an instructional theory embodies must have a reasonable chance of predicting which instructional method will be the most appropriate given certain conditions and outcomes. There are therefore limits beyond
which our design procedures cannot accommodate probability. What these limits
are is difficult to determine. But if prescriptive instructional principles cannot be

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trusted to predict the conseqt~ences of using particular methods, then they are
worthless to the designer.
There is another aspect to this issue. As we remarked earlier, the activity of instructional design is usually separated from the implementation of the instructional product in time. Predictive validity therefore becomes a question of the degree
to which it is possible to separate the design of instruction from its implementation while still being reasonably certain that the designer's decisions are valid.
Scholars have reacted in a number of ways to the implications of this. Reigeluth
(1983, p. 5) claims that, even though design may not always lead to the selection
of the best best instructional methods, we still have to do it because instruction in
the public schools is inadequate. This suggests that even teachers who implement
instruction are not always capable of dealing with the unanticipated problems that
occur. Heinich (1984) argues that, because technology is more concerned with
instructional systems that work, we need be less concerned with high theoretical
accuracy in our predictions of outcomes and prescriptions of methods. In other
words, if you "satisfice" rather than trying to optimize, the low predictive validity
of instructional principles is not a serious problem.
We are left with mixed feelings about the robustness of instructional decisions
made by designers. On the one hand we see the desire for and some progress towards the establishment of a true science of instructional design in which sets of
procedures lead systematically to the selection of optimal instructional methods
and in which a mature and valid theory of instruction guides the decision-making
process. On the other hand, we note the suggestion that our design procedures cannot effect the degree of optimization that is typical in the harder sciences, that our
prescriptive theory is incomplete, non-deterministic and lacks predictive validity.
In practice, instructional designers carry on with their work without worrying too
much about these matters. The instruction they design is the best that can be produced given the present state of design procedures and instructional theory. Most
of the time, the instruction is effective, though not always optimally so. The rest
of the time, there is a chance that a student or teacher will be able to adapt instruction to the prevailing conditions. In this case, the designer relies upon decisionmaking during the implementation of instruction in order to make it as effective
as it can possibly be. It is to this that we now turn.

Instructional Implementation.
Those who consider the shortcomings of instructional design that we have noted
to be fatal typically argue that instructional decisions are best left to those who
implement instruction. This usually means teachers. For example, Nunan (1983)
claims that it is not possible to separate instructional decision-making from its
delivery. Basing his position largely on Oakeshott's (1962) critique of "rational
action", Nunan argues that simply knowing prescriptive principles is no guarantee

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of successful performance of the action that the principles require. When design is
separated from implementation, decisions can only be made that lead up to the
start of instruction. Once it has begun, each instructional event has the potential
for changing the conditions of instruction in ways that the designer was unable to
foresee. Only a decision-maker on the spot can deal with these changing conditions. Nunan concludes that the knowledge that guides instructional decisionmaking is not to be found in the theory that informs design but in the "lraditions
of practice" of teachers.
Nunan's line of reasoning is compelling. However, it would be wrong to
conclude that the traditions of practice of teachers leave no room for instructional
theory nor for instructional design. We need only look at recent research on the
characteristics of expert teachers (Berliner, 1986) to realize that the only real difference between leachers and designers is that teachers raise decision-making to an art
while designers strive to make it scientific. Through years of experience, the expert teacher has developed procedures for all kinds of planning and decisionmaking (Leinhardt & Greeno, 1986; Brooks, 1985). These procedures are made up
of internalized principles concerning what to do under various conditions. Prescriptive theory is applied by teachers, but without conscious effort. It is simply
not as visible as it is when applied by designers. Indeed, expert teachers may not
even be aware of the principles that they are applying.
Beyond the internalization of theory, expert teachers make decisions in other
ways. In his exploration of how professionals make decisions, Schon (1983) describes a procedure that he calls "reflection in action". Put simply, whenever the
expert encounters a problem for which no set of principles can provide an answer,
the expert conducts an "experiment" that, in effect, creates a new principle at the
same time as it solves the problem. The expert may not be able to articulate the
principles that guide the decisions for action resulting from this "experiment".
These, like other actions the expert performs, are likely based upon "tacit knowledge", in Polanyi's (1958) sense of the term. They exemplify what has been
referred to as "plausible reasoning" (Hunt, 1982, pp. 138-148; Collins, 19761978), which, unlike logical reasoning, is characterized by steps that are not
necessarily describable nor entirely rigorous, and arrives at conclusions that are
likely but not certain.
The conclusion we can draw from this is that the roles of designers and teachers
in decision-making are complementary, not antagonistic. Design is largely a
deliberate and conscious activity. Yet instruction prepared through the procedures
of instructional design can often be implemented more successfully if there is an
expert teacher present with the experience to adapt it to conditions that change during its implementation. The designer may rely on the teacher's experience in order
to reduce the difficulties caused by the incompleteness and probabilistic nature of
instructional theory. On the other hand, the expert teacher uses internalized
instructional principles, mostly tacitly, in order to make the same kinds of

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instructional decisions as the designer. Moreover, on those occasions where no
relevant instructional principle exists, the expert teacher uses "reflection in action"
to discover the optimal course to take. Here too the teacher is doing design namely selecting from among alternatives on the basis of given goals and conditions. Indeed, if the teacher's strategy is successful, it may find its way into the
corpus of instructional principles we have called instructional theory.

"Turnkey" instruction
An increasing amount of the instructional designer's effort goes into the preparation of instruction that is to be implemented in situations where no teacher is
present. In such situations the designer cannot count on an experienced teacher to
adapt instruction to changing conditions during its implementation. This leaves
instruction very vulnerable to any lack of prescriptive validity in instructional
theory.
In order to circumvent this problem, there are two ideals to which the designer
might aspire. The first is that instructional theory will gain sufficiently in predictive validity for the methods that are selected to be optimally effective all of the
time. The second is that teacherless instructional systems will be endowed with
sufficient expertise to be capable of making instructional decisions during instruction as capably as experienced teachers. It stands to reason that neither of these
ideals will be reached in the immediate future. There is no doubt that the completeness and validity of instructional theory will continue to improve. But as we
noted above, it is the very nature of prescriptive theories to be non-deterministic.
So while our ability to prescribe methods on the basis of given outcomes and
conditions will get better, it will never become foolproof. What is particularly intriguing, however, is the question of the degree to which instructional systems
will themselves be capable of making decisions about instructional methods. Of
immediate interest is the degree to which ICAI will be able to select an appropriate method from a repertoire, provided by a designer, in response to the detection
of changing conditions. Beyond that is the question of whether ICAI will ever be
capable of "reflection in action", that is of discovering instructional principles for
itself and incorporating them into its repertoire for future use. In essence, these
two issues are concerned with the "simulation" of the expert teacher by a computer, and differ only in the level at which they attempt this simulation.
Any success in endowing instructional systems with decision-making capabilities will inevitably shift where decisions about instructional methods are made
from design to implementation. As a consequence, the designer's role will change
from prescribing instructional methods to developing procedures whereby the system can select them. There is evidence that these shifts are already underway.

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The Shift in Locus of Decision-Making.

The procedures of inslructional design evolved when few adaptive delivery systems
were available. The designer, therefore, was creating systems that had little ability
to adapt themselves to changing instructional conditions. However, once delivery
systems were developed that could branch on the basis of student performance,
they became, in effect, capable of making primitive instructional decisions. In
programmed instruction, in interactive videodisk, and in "generative" CAI
(Sleeman & Brown, 1982, p.1), a student's response to a question determines
what happens next in the instructional sequence (Suppes, 1967). Specific instructional principles are programmed into the system which specify different strategies
for different responses. These principles represent, if you will, a tiny subset of
instructional theory that applies only at that particular decision point in that particular segment of instruction. The instructional designer provides the principles.
But which particular instructional strategy is selected depends upon the conditions
that prevail atthe time.
While systems such as these may be able to select instructional methods in real
time, they have two limitations that make them very different from expert teachers. The first is that the rules that govern the selection of methods have to be supplied, in the first instance, by the designer. The second is that, at this relatively
low level of sophistication, where often only the difficulty of problems is varied
(Woods and Hartley, 1971), the outcomes of instructional decisions made by the
system are branches to parts of the program that act in pre-determined ways. If a
student replies incorrectly to a question during tutorial CAI, the chances are a
fixed remedial sequence will be initiated. Given a choice of information from a
menu presented in a videodisk program, what the student sees will be what the
system finds at a particular address on the disk. In each case, what is displayed is
pre-determined by the designer.
With "intelligent" CAI (Roberts & Park, 1983; Sleeman & Brown, 1982;
Cohen & Feigenbaum, 1982), we find that the second of these limitations has
been partially overcome. Intelligent systems do not operate solely by displaying
pre-designed "canned" information. Rather, they contain databases that represent
knowledge in relatively abstract form (Anderson, 1983; Norman & Rumelhart,
1975), and procedures for converting the information in the database into forms
that students can understand when it is displayed (Forsyth, 1984; Harmon &
King, 1985, pp. 34-60; Reichman, 1985). (How this is done is beyond the scope
of this paper. A variety of intelligent systems that use different types of databases
in this way have been described elsewhere [Cohen & Feigenbaum, 1982; Schank,
1984; Peat, 1985]). It is important to note that even in ICAI the rules governing
the generation and display of information from the database are derived directly
from instructional principles and are provided by the designer.

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Two observations can be made. The first is that decisions about what the student will see or do next can now be made once instruction has begun. Indeed it
may not now be possible, and certainly not necessary, for the designer to predict
the precise path each student will follow through the instruction before instruction
starts. In a sense, decisions about the nature and sequence of instructional events,
which have traditionally been the province of the designer are now turned over to
the computer.
The second observation is that this shift in the locus of decision-making must
be accompanied by a shift in the designer's role away from selecting methods to
developing rules from instructional principles that allow the system itself to select instructional methods. If the system is to make decisions previously made by
designers, then the designer's expertise must be transferred to the computer so that
it can be applied in immediate response to the changing conditions of instruction.
There is a further characteristic of some ICAI that must also be considered.
This is the potential of some systems for self-improvement. Self-improving tutors have the capability, not simply of selecting instructional strategies on the basis of changing instructional conditions, but of incorporating the problem-solving
strategies of students into their own repertoire of strategies when these prove to be
superior to the system's own (Kimball, 1982). Or they might be capable of altering the production rules that guide the selection of instructional strategies if certain strategies prove to be more effective or efficient than others (O'Shea, 1982).
Whatever the case, self-improvement provides a further layer of sophistication to
the computer's ability to select instructional strategies.

Characteristics of lCAl Systems.

In the preceding section, we have followed a series of developments in the decision-making roles ass!gned to instructional designers and those assigned to
instructional systems. The general trend has been for systems to take on more of
the responsibility for selecting instructional methods to suit changing conditions,
while designers have become more concerned with endowing systems with instructional theories that enable the selection of methods, and with writing the
rules by means of which systems make these selections or improve themselves. If
we now look at the characteristics of CAI systems, we observe a parallel development. This begins with systems that did little besides branch to predetermined
points on the basis of student responses to questions. Next came systems that
could select strategies on the basis of instructional principles expressed as production rules. Finally there are systems that are capable, in rudimentary fashion, of
modifying their own production rules. While this is still a long way from
"reflection in action", we can nonetheless identify a number of the characteristics
that truly adaptive systems need to have if the problems that designers encounter
when selecting methods ahead of time are to be minimized. These characteristics

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are to all intents and purposes the same as many of those that expert designers
have, and that have been transferred to adaptive systems in the manner described
above.
An ICAI system must meet two criteria. First, it should be capable of adapting
to any contingency that arises, however unforeseen it might be. Second, as a consequence, it must be capable of presenting information to students in any format.
This means that it must be as adept at expressing itself in graphics as it is in text.
There is no point in a system being able to select any appropriate instructional
method if it is impossible to present information in the manner that the method
requires.

1. Adapting to all contingencies.

There are several features of ICAI that enable it to adapt to changes in conditions
as instruction proceeds. As we have seen, these range from the ability to make
branches, to the ability to select methods from rules, to the ability to modify the
rules themselves.
The first of these, branching, is a capability that is found in the most rudimentary CAI programs and is now taken so much for granted that it will not be discussed any further.
The ability to select methods on the basis of rules that are part of the program
and not the exclusive domain of the program's designer requires more attention.
The requirements here are twofold. First, the system must be able to monitor and
detect changes in instructional conditions. Second, the system must be able to
react to those changes. Since the instructional conditions involve first and foremost the current state of the student, the system must be particularly concerned
with what the student knows at any particular time, and the kind of strategies that
seem to be working best. The system must then react by selecting strategies that
are prescribed through instructional principles, expressed as decision rules, as being most appropriate for the student at that precise point. There are many ways in
which this can be achieved. The following systems illustrate some of them.
The Minnesota Adaptive Instructional System (MAIS) has been developed by
Tennyson and his colleagues (Rothen & Tennyson, 1978; Tennyson, Christensen
& Park, 1984) to monitor student performance and to determine how many items
a student needs to practice during instruction. While the system is limited to prescribing the number of practice items, it arrives at its prescriptions in a sophisticated way. The algorithm that guides the decision-making process is based on
Bayesian statistics by means of which the probability that a student will learn a
given rule is calculated. This calculation involves, as one might expect, the number of examples the student has got right already and the criterion for mastery.
However, it also takes into account the relative disadvantages of not letting the
student proceed even though the rule has been mastered and of letting the student

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continue without learning the rule. In this system, monitoring the student involves keeping track of and analyzing the student's performance. The selection of
an appropriate strategy - whether or not to present another example - is derived
from this analysis.
The Geometry Tutor (Anderson, Boyle & Yost, 1985) takes a different approach to monitoring and decision-making. It teaches proofs in geomelry. Fundamental to the tutor is an internal "ideal" model of how the geometry proofs should
be generated. Attached to this is a model of the various errors that students are
likely to make as they deviate from the ideal model. The tutor monitors students
by tracing their progress through the model. As the student generates a proof, the
tutor infers which rule the student is using. If the rule is inappropriate, the tutor
takes remedial action. In contrast to MAIS, this system makes judgments conceming whether to provide remediation by comparing a student's progress with its
own "knowledge" of how to generate proofs rather than on the probability that the
student will provide a correct answer. It typifies a number of ICAI systems that
"know" about various topics, and illustrates an application to instruction of techniques used in expert systems.
While the decisions made by Geometry Tutor are guided by an ideal model of
problem-solving performance, some systems are capable of changing their models
of performance as a result of interaction with students. As he describes his tutor
for solving symbolic integration problems, Kimball (1982) reminds us that students might sometimes be better problem solvers than the tutor. When this is the
case, it would be wrong for the tutor to "bring the student down to its own level".
Thus, when the tutor recognizes that a student has used a strategy for solving an
integration problem that is superior to those in its own repertoire, it replaces its
own strategy with the one the student has used. Kimball's tutor teaches students
by means of a dialogue in which students try various strategies for solving problems which the tutor applies and evaluates. Monitoring the student is achieved
through this dialogue by means of an analysis of the effectiveness of the student's
strategies for solving the problems. This analysis determines quite simply whether the student's solution has fewer steps than the tutor's. If it does, then it is
judged to be superior and is retained for future use.
O'Shea's (1982) self-improving tutor for quadratic equations is somewhat different. It contains a theory of instruction consisting of principles that relate different strategies to the attainment of four goals: increasing the number of successful
students, increasing the average post-test score, decreasing the average time it
takes for a student to complete a lesson, and decreasing the amount of time the
computer is used. The tutor engages in a deduction procedure in order to determine
which strategies are likely to lead to the attainment of one of these goals. The tutor tries the new strategy if an appropriate one is found. The effect of the change in
strategy is monitored by testing to determine whether there is a statistically
significant improvement on any of the four criterion measures. If there is, then

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the new strategy can be permanently incorporated into the tutor's production
rules.
These systems illustrate a number of the features that effective ICAI must have
if it is to make good instructional decisions. It must be able to simulate those aspects of the designer's and teacher's expertise that have to do with selecting the
appropriate instructional action to take in the face of prevailing conditions. To do
this, it must be able to monitor those conditions very closely. It does this by
comparing student performance to what it understands to be optimal performance
and taking appropriate action. This could mean anything from deciding that the
student needs more practice, to helping the student decide which rule to use, to
modifying its own model of optimal performance. The applications that we have
described demonstrate that it is possible to get ICAI systems to monitor instructional conditions and consequently to make effective instructional decisions.

2. Displaying information in all formats

Given that an ICAI system may well have to adapt to a great many conditions, it
should be able to choose from a large variety of instructional strategies. The ability to use these selected strategies effectively depends, in part, upon whether or not
the system is capable of presenting information to students in a variety of formats. This is not intended to mean that the format of instructional displays is always determined by instructional strategies, rather that sometimes different instructional strategies can be more efficiently and effectively implemented using
different techniques for presenting information.
The usual way in which students communicate with computers is by typing
and reading text. This, combined with the fact that a large number of scholars involved in the development of ICAI are also scholars of language (see Anderson,
1983; Norman & Rumelhart, 1975; Rumelhart & Norman, 1981; Schank & Abelson, 1977), has meant that most intelligent CAI has been built to use a natural
language interface. However, a great deal of instructional research has shown that,
for some students and for some tasks, text is not the best format in which to
present information. For example, less able students are sometimes helped when
information is presented to them in diagrams and other graphic formats (Winn &
Holliday, 1982; Winn, in press). Certain students can be helped to perform cognitive tasks if those tasks are modelled for them by the "symbol system" which is
used to present them (Salomon, 1979; Bovy, 1981; Clark & Salomon, 1985).
The transfer of training can be improved if instruction employs appropriate analogies (Clark & Voogel, 1985). Recognition tasks and those requiring simultaneous
cognitive processing (Das, Kirby & Jarman, 1979) are better mastered if information is displayed using various pictorial and graphic formats (Winn, in press). All
of this points to the need for ICAI to be able to present information in nontextual formats as well as in text.

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As Christopher (1985) has remarked, the relationship between artificial intelligence and computer graphics is still in its infancy. However, improvements in the
hardware and software for generating high-quality computer graphics has been accompanied by software that can create graphic displays from databases in real time
in ways that could be used in ICAI. For example, Weyer and Boming (1985)
describe an electronic encyclopedia, information in which can be displayed both as
text and as graphics. However, the most rapid developments in high quality computer graphics have occurred outside instructional applications. Examples are the
creating of graphic images from raw data gathered from satellites (Aranoff &
Jones, 1985), the use of computers as "knowledge-based design assistants" to architects (Kaiay, 1985) and, of course, the extensive use of graphics in computeraided design (CAD). To give two examples, the technology exists in CAD systems to create complex schematic diagrams dynamically (May, 1985), and highly
realistic images of automobiles which make the creation of models to guide styling decisions unnecessary (Warn, 1985).
For ICAI to be capable of executing the instructional strategies it selects, it is
imperative that systems have this same capability for displaying information as
text, graphics and pictures. This requires the development of instructional systems, using the techniques developed for CAD, architecture and so on, that can
generate textual and graphic displays in real time from databases containing
knowledge in propositional formats. This will not be easy, for it presupposes the
existence of a "syntax" for graphic images. Only a few attempts have been made
to establish formal grammars for non-linguistic information (see for example
Fleming & Levie, 1978, pp. 74-77; Doblin, 1980; Waller, 1981). These are quite
primitive and are not specifically designed to permit the display of information
from databases. Them is therefore a need to devise an adequate syntax of graphical
communication and to apply it to the design algorithms for the generation of
graphic displays in real time and in response to changing instructional conditions.
We are presently working on a system for the generation of graphic displays in
real time from propositional databases. The prototype allows a user to interrogate
a database and to receive replies either as text or as a diagram. The system consists
of a quasi-natural language interface that permits the user to add to the database or
to ask questions, and a simple parser that translates user input into propositional
format for incorporation into the database and that interprets users' questions.
Graphic responses are provided through procedures based upon a simple syntax:
Concepts (the nodes in the database) are shown as labels in boxes and predicates
are represented by labelled lines linking them; superordinate concepts are placed
above subordinate concepts on the screen; causality or agency is shown by placing
concepts in order left to right across the screen; attributes of concepts are placed
within the box beneath the concept's label. Even with a syntax of just these few
rules, and with a limit of seventy propositions in the database, the system provides the user with a satisfactory level of control over which information is presented and how.

72
As we saw to be the case when ICAI selects instructional methods, the capability of ICAI to display information in a variety of formats falls far short of what
the teacher might be able to do in the classroom. Reflection in action, as far as
graphics are concerned, would require the system to come up with an appropriate
graphic on the spur of the moment, in the same way that a teacher improvises
drawings on the blackboard in order to illustrate points as they arise. ICAI is not
yet capable of doing this. On the other hand, as we have seen, systems exist, or
are under development, that go a lot further than merely selecting prepared screenfuls of information. A system can certainly be given information in a format that
can be translated into displays of all kinds during instruction. As far as graphics
are concerned, what is holding us back is a well-developed syntax from which
rules can be developed to effect this txanslation. As this syntax develops, the capabilities of ICAI will increase dramatically.

Future Developments
We have reached a point where the current limitations of ICAI are beginning to
constrain our discussion. However, it is important to look ahead to what instructional designers can reasonably expect to have to deal with in the future. The capabilities of computer technology are changing so rapidly that what may presently
seem far fetched could be reality sooner than we expect. The most obvious thread
to follow from the discussion so far is the degree to which the expertise of the
designer and of the teacher can be transferred to ICAI systems. So we turn our attention to promising trends in the development of expert systems that might have
implications, in the future, for instruction.
We have already encountered instructional systems that "know" domains. The
Geometry Tutor knows how to generate proofs and the tutors for integration and
quadratic equations have their particular expertise. Expert systems outside the
realm of instruction are probably better known than these. MYCIN (Shortliffe,
1974) acts as a consultant to physicians on the subject of infectious diseases and
how to treat them. SOPHIE (Brown, Burton & Bell, 1975) is an expert on electronic trouble-shooting. PROSPECTOR (Duda & Reboh, 1984) helps geologists
find likely sites for mineral deposits. Expert systems like these have been in existence for a number of years, and their characteristics are generally known.
Looking ahead to the role expert systems might play in instruction, we
encounter a number of interesting speculations. For example, Rushby (1986)
describes a possible future for combining an expert system with interactive videodisk. In his scenario, students will be able to interact with pictures "while they are
happening" rather than simply reacting to questions asked after pictures have been
presented in some pre-determined way. In order to attain this goal, Rushby foresees the capturing of subject experts' knowledge by means of a questioning process, and its incorporation into the rules that drive the system. The system can

73
then select the images it displays as if it were the expert whose knowledge it now
has.
Perhaps even more intriguing is machine learning. We have seen in Kimball's
(1982) and O'Shea's (1982) self-improving tutors examples of this in a rudimentary form. There are, however, more sophisticated applications. Forsyth (1981,
1984) describes BEAGLE, which creates decision rules inductively from a database. The rules consist of Boolean expressions that enable items to be classified
into categories on the basis of their attributes. BEAGLE learns iteratively. Rules
are evaluated against data and rank-ordered according to their appropriateness. The
lowest ranked half are then discarded and new rules are created by combining a pair
of rules chosen randomly from those that remain. Eventually, a superior set of
rules evolves. The system has been shown to be effective for classifying heart patients on their admission to hospital. Forsyth states that his ultimate aim is to
"produce a database that learns" (1984, p. 165).
The biological flavor that runs through Forsyth's description of BEAGLE is
not entirely coincidental. He acknowledges the influence of Holland (1975) who
proposed "genetic algorithms", based upon the ideas of Darwin and Mendel, that
are intended to enable machines to adapt to their environment in the same way
that living organisms do. How these algorithms work is beyond the scope of this
discussion. However, they have been incorporated into a system developed by
Smith (1984) which learns to make bet decisions as it plays poker that are judged
to be comparable to those made by a human player.
One cannot do justice to systems as complex as these in just a few sentences.
However, even this brief description provides an idea of what they can do. It is in
expert systems such as these, whether they consult, teach, or learn, that the potential lies for achieving "reflection in action" in ICAI. This is because the expertise
the designer has for developing the rules that lead to the selection of instructional
strategies can now be transferred to the system that implements the instruction.
Once an instructional system is capable of learning rules in interaction with its
environment, the potential exists for it to modify or even invent instructional
principles as it goes along. The capabilities of the projects that we have described
in this section are still primitive when compared to the capabilities of an expert
teacher or of an expert designer. And in many instances, the tasks the more experimental systems are designed to complete are trivial when compared to the tasks
involved in instruction. However, it is fairly safe to assume that the discrepancies
that exist between human and computer-based tutors are discrepancies of degree
rather than of kind, and that, based on past experience of rapid change in the capabilities of computers, these discrepancies will be rapidly and dramatically reduced.

74
Conclusion
Our examination of the design and implementation of instruction and ICAI has
documented a shift in the locus of decision-making from the design of instruction
to its implementation. This means that we are beginning to restore to instruction
what it lost when it was taken out of the hands of expert teachers to be delivered
through technology-based systems. This shift has been enabled by the development of intelligent systems that can branch on the basis of student behavior, that
can interpret the rules that the student is using to solve problems and thereby provide appropriate guidance, that can provide information in all necessary formats,
and that can, to a degree, alter the instructional principles that drive them through
a variety of interactive processes. At the same time, the role of the instructional
designer has shifted from making decisions about which particular instructional
methods to use with known conditions, to packaging instructional principles in a
way that can be understood by a computer so that unknown conditions can be
dealt with once instruction has started. Our look at possible future developments
suggested that these characteristics of ICAI might well evolve to the point where
an intelligent expert tutor could interact with students in many of the ways expert
teachers do.
This is not to say that instructional designers will no longer have a role to
play. The development of prescriptive theory and its transfer to intelligent instructional systems requires an enormous amount of skill and effort. And instructional
designers are the best placed and the best qualified to carry out these tasks. Perhaps
more vulnerable than the designer is the teacher. If content expertise and reflection
in action can indeed be built into ICAI systems, and if such systems become
widely adopted by public schools systems, then the role of the teacher will surely
change. But these are two very big "ifs", and changes this radical have always taken a long time even when they have been possible from the point of view of the
technology. In the mean time, it is likely that the greatest strides in ICAI along
the lines suggested above will take place outside the traditional structures of public education in the same way that technological innovations have done in the
past.
The projects we have described are but a few of the many that are making ICAI
a viable instructional tool. The mere numbers of projects suggests that ICAI is
inevitably going to be a common feature in places where instruction occurs. To
prepare, instructional designers must realize that their days as plotters of prescribed courses through instruction are numbered and that their future lies in the
creation of instructional theory and in building ICAI systems around the principles that this theory contains. If this shift in role can be achieved, then students
will enjoy the best of two worlds: instruction that is meticulously designed; and
instruction that is implemented with an adaptability to changing conditions that
up until now could only be provided by a teacher.

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Acknowledgement
The author wishes to thank Martin Backler for his comments on an earlier draft of
this paper.
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