Help, Advisors, Wizards, and Multimedia
"At the heart is the idea that people learn best when engrossed in the topic, motivated to seek out new knowledge and skills because they need them in order to solve the problem at hand." Nicely said.
It's interesting that the games industry has known this almost since its beginning - their very survival depends on engaging their audience. They have perfected many of these techniques - they monitor their users so they will know when to offer hints and help to keep the player (user) from becoming frustrated and quitting, but at the same time remaining unobtrusive enough that they do not annoy them. There is much we can learn from these approaches. Their 'hardware' interface is rigidly defined so their entire effort must go into interaction. The fact that the industry grossed $20 BILLION world-wide ($6 billion in North America alone) would imply that they're on the right track.
Although many of the ideas implemented (though likely *NOT* originated) by Microsoft are good in principle, most fall short of the mark when it comes to actual utility. Some wizards are fine, but, at least for me, the 'advisors' and troubleshooting guides have yet to result in a single problem resolution for me. I prefer the "google" approach - search the 'help' files. I think people seriously underestimate the value of searching. I also think people underestimate the impact that "Google" and others engines like it have had on the way we answer questions and solve problems. The change has come just in the last five years, and it has been profound. Mandel's chapter predates this 'revolution' and I think very few people predicted the profound changes that would happen in such a short time. I've seen it in my students. Where, five years ago, people looked to the net for information on every-day things like gardening, dog care, etc. most 'serious research' required a good university library. This no longer seems to be the case. Five years ago I thought of the internet as an enormous glossy magazine: some interesting articles and lots of ads. The ads are still there, but more and more, people are able to conduct serious research using just what's available on the net.
Much attention was paid in the article to the use of various agents for interaction. I think we will move away from our dependence on the keyboard and mouse. While they will retain their roles, the chapter by Mandel does not appear to leave room for any alternatives. This is not surprising since even as recently as five or six years ago, the computers we used simply did not have the horse-power to support other forms of interaction beyond this. The time is now ripe to consider other forms of interaction more seriously. We now have the horse-power to support it. I do believe the future of interaction will look more like this....
EDER 679.12
Computer Based Learning II
