SIMON - A Simple Instructional Monitor

An instructional monitor is a program that tries to detect, diagnose, and possibly help overcome a student's learning difficulties in the course of solving a problem or performing a task. In one approach to building an instructional monitor, the student uses a special task- or problem-oriented language expressly designed around some particular class of problems. Correspondingly, the diagnostic programs in this special-purpose type of monitor system often utilize information that is specific to the kind of problem being studied. The SIMON system represents a different approach. The student addresses SIMON in an easy and very general programming language rather than a special task language. Using SIMON, students construct programs for systems or processes that can represent vastly different situations from mathematics, biology, physics, engineering, or elsewhere. The student tests his program against a "true" program provided to SIMON by an instructor. At the student's request, SIMON tests his program against its "true" model to determine if it works. If not, SIMON points out cases where the program fails and, if requested, informs the student which variables he has chosen that are inappropriate to the process.