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Central Institute for Distance Education Research - FernUniversität in Hagen line
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3.4.2000

Helmut Fritsch

Automatic Interaction in Distance Education ------  (1999)

Definitions:
Distance Education is an organizational form of education where
  • instructional provisions,
  • tutorial interactions,
  • monitoring of practice as well as
  • individual control of learning
    may take place via media making the simultaneous personal presence avoidable.
Éducation à Distance est une forme d'organisation d'éducation ou
  • les provisions d'instruction,
  • les interactions tutorielles,
  • les controls de practice individuelles
  • et les examens sur les qualifications assemblées
    sont possibles par les media.
Fernstudium ist eine Organisationsform von Studium wo
  • die Vermittlung der Lehrinhalte
  • tutorielle Interaktionen
  • individuelle Lernkontrollen
  • und Prüfungen
    über Medien ermöglicht werden können.

Error oriented tutoring

Mass production of teaching material on the one side is counterbalanced by the need to tutor large numbers of students - as long as tutoring and individual help are performed in the same way as in normal educational settings, distance education will not have a big economic effect on educational systems. But the possibility to design tutorial help via media, to include systems of automatic tutorial help, makes it economically much more efficient.
In classroom situations teachers know certain points in the learning process where students always have similar difficulties, good teachers not only indicate the fact that an error occurred but give remedy in form of explanations, additional assignments etc.. Such error-oriented comments, explanations, additional assignments can be collected and geared automatically to the student exactly when the error occurs- just in-time.
In early times of Distance education the Open University e.g. knew two different forms of assignments: Tutor-Marked Assignments (TMA) and Computer-Marked Assignments (CMA): It is more costly to have many TMAs and the turnaround-time of CMAs can be far more effective (even moreso if transformed on the www for instant control and feedback). The FernUniversität (Hagen) developed a system of CMAs providing the student with comments on typical errors made. Empirical research showed that a very high percentage of previewable errors could be handled this way. Also in projects of language learning instant correction of previewed errors has proven to be a very important didactical feature in the use of modern media.
The development of such systems eventually will lead to AI systems, where a students learning biography is constantly stored and evaluated and further steps for his/her individual curriculum are proposed.

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