Effective learning is ensured by first presenting the material appropriately and then by providing practice. A tutorial presents the learner with information and then offers questions that allow them to check their understanding.
A drill can consolidate this by providing the learner with practice. It offers a series of questions about the new information or skill; it is not meant to teach the subject. Drills are useful mainly for lower-level skills and for those where dealing automatically with such tasks is needed.
What is a drill?
The computer administers a question, the learner answers it and receives feedback. They then answer another question. This continues until either the computer terminates the drill or the learner decides to quit. The computer is usually programmed to terminate the drill when the learner has shown they have mastered the subject. The drill is not terminated by the learner having:
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Structuring drills
Learner control should be limited to choosing the subject area. Learners should not have control over the difficulty of questions they are answering; the computer should do this.
Questions are often stored in database files. As the computer selects each question, the relevant database fields are retrieved and displayed.
Drills are usually programmed with organised queuing so that the difficulty of the questions increases as the performance of the learner improves. This means that when the questions are designed, you must grade them appropriately, and design the required programming instructions.
Drills can use flashcard queuing. If a learner answers a question incorrectly, that question goes back into the list of questions and is presented again later. Questions answered correctly are discarded.
A variation on this is variable interval performance queuing. Questions answered incorrectly are added to the queue in a number of places and are only deleted if the learner answers them correctly several times.
What are the features of a good drill?
It must keep the learner motivated. The repetitive nature of a drill inevitably makes it potentially tedious. The designer needs to keep the learner motivated by some means, such as:
- offering a reward after success
- setting the learner a goal to achieve
- creating competition against the computer
- creating competition against themselves.
Each drill should take no more than 15 minutes. To avoid monotony the questions should be presented in groups that a typical learner would be able to complete in about 15 minutes.
Introduce time pressure only if relevant,
i.e. if in real-life the learner has to make a decision quickly.
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(C) Bryan Hopkins, 2005