An essential element in completing the visual educational material learning process is confirming that the students are able to recall and reconstruct what they have already learned before they go on to the next step. Therefore, for students, effective visual materials are those which enable them to easily recall valuable, needed information. For teachers, the materials must be designed so that the students are able, through simple stimulation, to recall this information. In this experiment on program improvement, the stimulated recall method was used with a video program prepared for a technical college biology course. A VTR-Aided Instruction (VAI) system 106 subjects were divided into three classes. The cooperatively developed at the Hakodate Technical College was used. Mostly chemistry majors, the experiment was conducted in two phases : 1. The students' responses were recorded by computer as they watched the program. 2. One week later, the students were shown a "recall program" consisting of "key pictures" taken from the original program. This was done in order to discover which scenes had the strongest impact and how easily the students could recall the program's contents. The key pictures were selected based upon how effective they might be in stimulating recall. The students' responses were also recorded as they watched the recall program. The following conclusions were reached : 1. Initial Viewing a. The students were interested in the results and products of biotechnology, for example, a super-mouse or twin calves. b. The students were not interested in those parts of the program showing charts or graphs which explained today's biotechnology or involved theoretical explanations. c. The students considered those scenes which showed new plants and medicines and/or the production processes behind their development as more understandable. d. The students did not understand those scenes concerned with theoretical explanations of DNA, bio-reactors or bio-sensors. 2. Stimulated Recall a. Immediately after watching the original program, half of the students could correctly match pictures with key words. At this point it was even possible, based upon language alone, for the students to recall the appropriate picture, b. Using key pictures one week later, 80% of the students were still able to accurately recall the pictures. However, they made more mistakes when shown key pictures consisting of charts or graphs than they did when shown pictures taken directly from the original program. In light of the above, the following tasks remain : 1. What are the theoretical explanations behind these results ? 2. What kinds of pictures can best be used for introducing students to the current situation in the field of biotechnology ? 3. Which are better for helping students recall a program, pictures or words ? 4. If theoretical explanations are included in the printed textbooks, then what should be the role of visual materials ?

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One of the important points in learning mathematics is being able to understand and make use of technical terms related to mathematical notions. Mathematical notions can be efficiently acquired through primary exercises on attributes and national functions, as well as on the relationships between the various notions. Realizing this, the authors developed a standalone CAI system incorporating both drill and practice modes. It uses a tutorial model incorporating hierarchies of mathematical notions related to the problems being studied. This system makes it possible to generate individual learning processes according to the student's year in school or level of understanding. Preparing courseware with this system is done by simply using specific rules to input data related to the notions, their hierarchies, the problems to be studied and the notions associated with those problems into an instructional informational file. The system includes an editor for making the instructional informational file and an executor for controlling the tutorial mode courseware.

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