A computer-aided instruction program for teaching the TOPS20MM facility on the DDN.
Tae Woo. Kim · Calhoun: The Naval Postgraduate School Institutional Archive (Naval Postgraduate School) · 1988
We constructed an Intelligent Computer Assisted Instruction (ICAI) program to tutor the usage of the TOPS20-MM, an electronic mail facility available on the Defense Data Network (DDN). Learning by experience is one of the best ways to learn something. The main strategy of tutoring in this thesis was to provide an environment simulating the actual facility that guides the student while he/she tries to perform given tasks. Means-ends analysis, a classic technique for solving search problems in Artificial Intelligence, has been used to figure out the right command to perform a given task. Basic commands, e.g. a command for viewing a message number 7, will be taught first, then the tasks like "Send a message to the people mentioned in message number 3" will be issued.