Hypertext is the dominant method to navigate the Internet, providing user freedom and control over navigational behaviour. There has been an increase in converting existing educational material into Internet web pages but weaknesses have been identified in current WWW learning systems. There is a lack of conceptual support for learning from hypertext, navigational disorientation and cognitive overload. This implies the need for an established pedagogical approach to developing the web as a teaching and learning medium. Guided Discovery Learning is proposed as an educational pedagogy suitable for supporting WWW learning. The hypothesis is that a guided discovery environment will produce greater gains in learning and satisfaction, than a non-adaptive hypertext environment. A second hypothesis is that combining concept maps with this specific educational paradigm will provide cognitive support. The third hypothesis is that student learning styles will not influence learning outcome or user satisfaction. Thus, providing evidence that the guided discovery learning paradigm can be used for many types of learning styles. This was investigated by the building of a guided discovery system and a framework devised for assessing teaching styles. The system provided varying discovery steps, guided advice, individualistic system instruction and navigational control. An 84 subject experiment compared a Guided discovery condition, a Map-only condition and an Unguided condition. Subjects were subdivided according to learning styles, with measures for learning outcome and user satisfaction. The results indicate that providing guidance will result in a significant increase in level of learning. Guided discovery condition subjects, regardless of learning styles, experienced levels of satisfaction comparable to those in the other conditions. The concept mapping tool did not appear to affect learning outcome or user satisfaction. The conclusion was that using a particular approach to guidance would result in a more supportive environment for learning. This research contributes to the need for a better understanding of the pedagogic design that should be incorporated into WWW learning environments, with a recommendation for a guided discovery approach to alleviate major hypertext and WWW issues for distance learning.

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An information center (IC) is described as an organization designed to help end users help themselves. ICs are expected to provide several services to end users. The services can be summarized as: consultation, distribution and trouble-shooting. The research is focused on a specific consultation activity: software selection. Providing support for selection and evaluation of software for users constitutes 91.5 percent of a typical IC's daily workload. In the last decade, ICs have proved successful in managing software resources for organizations. The initial success of ICs has increased user expectations and demand for the services offered but, because ICs are considered cost centers in most organizations, there is growing pressure for them to accomplish more with fewer resources. The research hypothesis is that the knowledge and methodologies of IC consultants, concerning software selection, as well as relevant institutional policies, can be represented in a knowledge base. A knowledge-based system ICE (Information Center Expert) to assist users with software selection has been developed and evaluated in the study reported here. The development of ICE used two main design criteria: maintainability and transportability. Maintainability was defined as the ability to support frequent updating of the software supported by an IC. This is important because new software tools are introduced in the market at a very rapid rate; to stay competitive an IC must be able continually to adapt to this dynamic environment. Transportability was considered necessary to make ICE usable in many different ICs, each supporting a different set of software. The transportability feature allows different ICs to individualize the system to meet their own site-specific needs. Validation studies were conducted to test the appropriateness of the recommendations made by ICE, using "blind" validation procedures in which scenarios (in case form) were presented to consultants. The cases were selected to represent problems frequently taken to an IC. Two sets of solutions, those offered by consultants and those provided by ICE, were then presented to experts who were asked to judge the appropriateness of each solution to a case without knowing its source. To test the comparative advantages of using ICE or IC consultants to obtain assistance with software selection a laboratory experiment was conducted. A hypothetical construct called "Consultation Effectiveness" was used, which included measures for "user satisfaction" with the process, as well as measures for the "task basis" and the "recommendation basis" for evaluating a consultation session.

Group Decision Support System (GDSS) pre-session planning is a complex task requiring considerable expertise. GDSS pre-session planning involves the selection of group participants and GDSS tools for a subsequent computer-supported group meeting. An effective plan is required to achieve a successful meeting (success measured by the time and cost necessary to reach an outcome satisfactory to group participants). This research investigates the nature of GDSS pre-session planning and the knowledge that is applied when expert human facilitators plan for collaborative work. A model of and a prototype expert system for GDSS tool selection were developed from the documented knowledge of pres-session planning. The model and system were then revised as a result of extensive consultations with domain experts. The expert system was verified by comparing human experts' recommendations with the system's recommendations (there was no significant difference between the two sets of recommendations). The usefulness of the system was tested by comparing facilitators' and non-facilitators' (with and without the use of the expert system) recommendations with those of human experts in a 2 by 2 factorial design. Results show that facilitators and non-facilitators who use the system are better able to select the tools experts have chosen than they would have otherwise. When they are not using the system, facilitators and non-facilitators perform equally well in selecting the tools experts have judged most appropriate (both groups differ significantly from the experts' recommendations). This research contributes to knowledge of pre-session planning for GDSS sessions with a particular emphasis on the tool selection process. However, further research on the development of a complete session agenda is needed.

Broadband local area network cable plant design is a time consuming work, it takes lots of computation and it depends a lot on designer's experience. In this thesis the author presents an approach to cable plant design automation, the expert system was implemented in language SCHEME, symbol manipulation was used to generate the data structure (tree) which represent the design results. Signal level simulation can be performed based on the data structure.

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