[Bil Lewis <LEWIS@NLM-MCS.ARPA>: Re: Learning Z vs Zmacs]
dae...@ucbvax.uucp
Michael,
I find myself interested & rather suprised by what you've said
wrt Z & EMACS. The idea of going from novice to FLUENT in 20 mins.
is incredible, esp. when you mention the existance of like 30+ commands,
mode switching & non-stream orientation. Futher, you talk freely about
many functions which I have specifically avoided in the project described
below. Thus I wish to know more.
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As part of a Computational Linguistics project at U Penn
where I was last year I did a series of experiments involving teaching
novices to use EMACS (Modified Gosling's VAX-EMACS) under very controlled
circumstances. The objective was to collect transcripts of people
communicating in an EXPERT-NOVICE situation & make observations on
modes of failure.
Experimental layout:
o 1 hr. of supervised training (this is a computer, this is
a file, here's how we start EMACS, These are the keys for:
Up, Down, Left, Right, Page, insert, delete, & exit),
o The novice was given a specific task to do (Fix this text),
informed that it was designed to make them learn new commands
& concepts ("If you find yourself having to do the same
thing ten times in a row, there's an easier way to do it.")
o EMACS was divided into two windows, the 5-line bottom window
being a TALK subjob to another terminal behind which a relative
expert sat. The expert sat in another room and read a book
untill the novice asked a question.
o The novice was expected to know the 15 or so commands taught
the first day (This was on a Concept-100 terminal, so all
movements were on arrow keys.), and expected to learn another
5-10 commands on each of three subsequent app. 1 hr. sessions.
o Absolutely every unused command was disabled. (This proved
essential, in the test runs I left a couple things in and ,
by god, they found them.)
o Subjects were all highly self motivated, most of them being
students in CS or Linguistics. They were (of course) all quite
successful in learning what they were after, a nice side
effect. (The one drop-out was a secretary who was told she HAD
to learn to use the computer.)
o Experts were ex-subjects who spent an extra half-hour with me
going over everything they had done & needed to know for the
task. How THEY explained anything was their problem.
The thrust of my project was analysing the transcript generated
(nice thing about the experiment, the transcript was free. If you've ever
tried recording a verbal transcript...), and even with a mere ten subjects
I got PLENTY of material.
Linguistically I learned quite a bit (including the fact that I
am not cut out to be a linguist), so the experiment was an unqualified
success. More, I learned a fair amount about teaching, setting up and
running experiments involving humans.
What's of significence here, is that I thusly possess a great
deal of experience in teaching editors under very tightly controlled
conditions, both acting as expert & observer.
Specific observations included such things as:
o A well defined task with a limited number of clearly
stated objectives IS essential, and will cut learning
time by at least 2. (Included in this is repetition,
"Not another paragraph to justify! Oh well, --M-C-J--")
o It is my OPINION that a task that allows the novice to
'discover' commands is superior to a lecture (motivation
& all that).
o Given any opportunity to misunderstand, the novice will,
AND SO WILL THE EXPERT. If informed before hand that the
other person is INTENTIONALLY going to search for an alternate
meaning to a statement, things improve vastly.
o If you don't let them know something is difficult,
they will probably just do it & never realize it's hard.
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Now, none of these observations are at all specific to any
editor, nor is the experimental setup (other then the fact you can't
create subjobs in most editors). So it would be very interesting to
compare such experiments across editors. I would be very interested
in knowing what experience others have had who have done any type
of well-controlled teaching of an editor.
-Bil
(Michael: I should be passing by New Haven a few days from now,
any chance I could visit? I would love to see Z for real & get a chance
to exchange thoughts.)
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