What Mental Model Should be Taught: Choosing Instructional Content for Complex Engineered Systems

摘要

In training people how to use equipment, the choice of what should be taught about the internal workings of the equipment, the choice of what should be taught about the internal workings of the equipment is critical, both for traditional paper-based instruction, and advanced computer-base tutoring systems. Some knowledge about the internal mechanisms of equipment is often provided in training programs, especially when the equipment user is expected to recognize malfunctions, and either compensate for them, or repair them. However, many aspects of the internal mechanisms of a piece of equipment are almost certainly irrelevant to most user tasks. This paper considers the problem of selecting the mental model of the equipment that should be taught; what aspects of the equipment mechanisms is it important for the user to understand. There are two basic approaches for selecting this content for a given set of tasks and information about the equipment. One approach is that a simulation model of the cognitive processing done by the user in performing the task identifies what knowledge of the equipment is needed in the user's reasoning process. Such an approach is probably too difficult to be practical in most situations. Another approach is to use various selection heuristics to specify what content is relevant to the user's tasks but in a way that is considerably more precise than traditional instructional development methods. These heuristics are illustrated by an analysis of the pilot's Flight Manual for a jet trainer airplane. These examples suggest that applying the selection heuristics will lead to precise and efficient choices of the content of instruction.