Drills

1
Drills
2
Drill and Practice

• Provide repeated exercises and individual
  feedback on a designated learning objective.
• good for basic skills/knowledge where rapid
  student response is desired

3
Drills vs. Tutorials

• drills are not intended to teach
• drills assume that the learners have previously
  been introduced to the content
• must be preceded by a tutorial, simulation, or
  non-computer based activity (e.g. reading books)

4
General Structure
Introductory Section
Select Item
Question and Response
Closing
Feedback
Judge Response
5
Instructional Factors

• Introduction
• Response Types
• Item Generation
• Item Selection
• Feedback
• Motivation

6
Introduction

• Title Page
• Instructions
• complete
• eternal availability
• Objectives
• Initial student control

7
Response Types

• Text Entry
• Mouse Click
• Click-and-Drag
• Key Press
• Joystick movement
• Screen Touch

8
Item Generation

• How are items generated?
• Selection
• items are pre-constructed by the author and put
  into a list or library
• drill program selects an item from the list
• Algorithm Generation
• an algorithm produces the items
• usually involving math / scientific calculations

9
Item Selection

• theory Principle of Repetition (Miller, 1956)
• to enhance memory recall
• 2 forms of memory (Long Term and Short Term)
• newly-acquired info ? Short Term Memory
• goal move information from ST to LT

10
Item Selection

• Item Selection Techniques
• Sequential
• Pre-ordered during programming/authoring
• Random Queuing
• items are randomly selected from a list or
  randomly generated

11
Item Selection

• Item Selection Techniques (cont.)
• Organized Queuing
• queue ? ordered list
• items are ordered according to a certain
  algorithm
• techniques
• Flashcard Queuing
• Variable Interval Performance Queuing

12
Feedback

• When giving immediate feedback, make it a short
  confirmation
• Keep feedback positive
• Youre right!
• You got them all!
• Sorry, thats incorrect.
• Thats not right. Try another one.

13
Feedback

• With indication that the response is incorrect,
  point out correct response
• What is the Tagalog term for house?
• Answer
• Thats not right. Silid means room. The
  Tagalog word for house is bahay.

Silid
14
Motivation

• Competition
• Competition against other students
• Competition against the computer
• Competition against oneself
• Competition against the clock

Motivational Quality
15
Motivation

• Multiple Modes and Display Variety
• Multimedia and Hardware Variance
• Goal Setting and Scoring
• Adjunct Reinforcement
• Reward System
• Drill Session Length
• 30 to 45 minutes only

16
Things to Consider

• May be boring or inappropriate
• May involve lots of errors in primary steps
  leading to discouragement.
• If feedback is delayed, learner may practice
  something which will later have the unlearned
  (rarely an easy process).
• Computer DP may be written with computer in mind
  rather than learner or content.
• Motivation and interest may be helped with a game
  format, BUT competition is not universally
  appealing