Carolynn Moore Stanley Smith and R. A. Avner University of Illinois Urbane. IL 61801
Facilitation of Laboratory Performance Through CAI Description of the Instructional Materlal Several formats of instruction were used in the lessons to provide the student with the opportunity t o experience the cognitive asoects of laboratorv experiments before attemptina
mance of~ students chemistw ~ ~ in the ~ ~ laboratorv ~ ~ In early informal studies (2, 7) students whb had been exposed to high-quality audiotapes on an individualized basis which covered lahoratory procedures were additionally given simulations of lahoratorv situations via CAI prior to standard ~
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alone, students also~expos~d l o C ~ ~ s e e m eboth d to have a better understanding of what the laboratory experiments demonstrated and to make more efficient use of laboratory resources. However, such results might occur simply because of the added exoosure to the information in the CAI simulations, the novelty of CAI, or the anmated diagrams used. Thus, more formal studies controlling for these extraneous factors were necessary. Two sets of CAI materials were prepared. Both contained the same information in virtually identical displays, hut one set reauired that the student participate in the presentation 11). giving nm.tructerl respmses of a s( ri that only a r i m putrr-ttnwl instru~~ticm~l >\.stemcould pngcwi. 7'heothc.r i v t allowed the student to advance upon giving the simpler sorts of responses typical of a programmed text or slide-tape presentation. These matched lessons thus controlled for the possibility that effects seen earlier might have been due to the novelty of using CAI or the impact of animated graphics.
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dents are first given an introduction to the reac
