Information Technology Reference
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occurrences and performance degradation in Session 5. This suggests that performance
stability, as evidenced in Session 4, may be a more important index of the readiness to learn
new material immediately than one single occasion of correct performance, which was
required by the design of the tutoring system on the first and all subsequent session
occurrences.
Figure 4 presents performance on the row interface and the text editor emulation
interface for all three learners across the five successive session occurrences. Markers are
omitted from the figure if all values were zero for a category. The row interface (Row-by-Row
Responses) required three iterations, but the multiple-choice test was only presented during
the first iteration. These data reveal similarities and differences among the three learners
within and across successive sessions. The figure shows that the most pronounced
improvement occurred during Session 1 for all learners. With the exception of errors in Session
2 for S-1, errors, hints, and reviews dropped to relatively low values by the third session. By
the fourth session, errors and hints were very low for S-1 and S-2, and absent for S-3. However,
incorrect test input was observed during Session 4 for S-2 and S-3. In Session 5, S-1 and S-
2 showed errors, hint selections, and reviews that were similar in magnitude to the data in
Sessions 1 and 2. Only S-3 showed no loss of performance in relationship to Session 4.
On the text editor emulation interface (Text Window Responses), all learners showed
accurate input during Session 3 and Session 4, with no errors and no reviews. Incorrect input
was observed during the first two sessions, but only S-3 selected a review, which occurred
during Session 1. Interestingly, following the review, S-3 made no errors in Sessions 2 to 5.
The burst of errors exhibited by S-2 during Session 1 indicated repeated attempts to correct
an error, which was accomplished after seven errors. During Session 5, however, S-2 showed
another incorrect entry, which was corrected without the selection of a review.
Figure 3. Detailed performance data for S-3
