Towards an Epistemology on Intelligent Design and Modelling Environments: The Hypothesis Testing Approach
Claus Möbus · Carl von Ossiezky University of Oldenburg · 1996
: The main purpose of Intelligent Design and Modelling Environments is to offer students the opportunity to acquire knowledge while working on a sequence of given or self-selected problems chosen from the application domain. Earlier, we developed intelligent problem solving environments (IPSEs, Möbus, 1995) for various curricula and applications. Now we extend this approach to intelligent design and modelling environments in the areas of pneumatic circuits, chemical polymerisation reactions, economic simulation games, causal modeling, and diagnosis. On the surface being very different our systems follow a common design theory: the student acquires knowledge by testing his own hypotheses. First we want to show that hypothesis testing plays a fundamental role in a cognitive science orientated theory of knowledge acquisition (ISP-DL-Theory). This theory is the basis of our systems. In a case study three of our most recent systems (PULSE, WULPUS, MEDICUS) and their relationship to hypothes...