Goals+of+ILMs

There are lots of ways of seeing the ILMs:
 * 1) A complete teaching system – explanation, experimentation, testing
 * 2) Experimentation system (testing and explanations are separate). Learning is exploratory in that they can use the system to answer “what if” questions.

My thoughts are that the core of the ILM needs to be something that is interactive and better than a computerized version of a textbook or an automated testing system. Wikipedia already does a great job of presenting material. Canvas/Moodle have good testing capabilities – and are linked with grading. If we only want to present material and test it, I think we would be better off in Canvas than CSILM. In the comments, “CANVAS application” means that we could do this better in Canvas. If it is worth doing, we can certainly do it in canvas.

Maybe eventually, we’ll have the ILMs integrated into a complete learning/testing system, but for now I’d rather concentrate on something that really adds to the learning by giving the students a visual representation of the problem that they can play with.

I don’t know how much effort to place on explaining the concepts for the following reasons:
 * 1) Students tend NOT to read the explanatory material, as they want to get the interactive part.
 * 2) It is hard to know what the students already know – so the explanatory material may not be appropriate. It becomes less reusable as it is tailored to students from a particular text.

For me, the ideal ILM can be used in a variety of ways to teach several different concepts. We are RARELY reaching that goal.