This paper describes the development of a digest generating system for articles submitted by many authors concerning a topic on the' Internet. To save the time required to read all articles related to a particular topic, the authors designed a system which is able to produce a digest of articles found on bulletin boards on the Internet., In order to make the digest, three methods for selecting keywords automatically from related articles using natural language processing techniques were proposed. Using these keywords, a digest of the series of articles for discussing a topic was generated. These three methods are termed: the common method, the subject-reasoning method and the combination method. The common method can generate a digest by picking up commonly used keywords between adjacent articles, the subject-reasoning method uses keywords picked up by reasoning from the frequency distribution of words through all articles related to the topic, and the combination method is the combination of the first two. These methods were Implemented to support discussion on the Internet. An experiment was conducted to compare the digest generated by this system with a digest produced by human judgment, which was composed of sentences selected from articles. Results showed that the system generated digest closely resembled the one based on human judgment in almost all the topics. The authors concluded that the present system is useful for supporting discussion on the Internet.

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Based on Matsuda's instructional activity model, an instructional design system was developed in order to help students in pre-service teacher training courses learn instructional design methodology. In addition, a math textbook database was developed for the system. The database contains information on "counting numbers of cases" cited from ten different textbooks for high school students. As the Matsuda model shows, an instructional plan can be written in a set series which includes five elements—the prediction of a class situation, the instructional aim, the lesson contents, the communication method, and the prediction of the results. With the developed system, users search and select lesson content from the database and select the other elements from menu items. Searching by either an instructional objective or a key word makes it possible for users to comprehensively understand the teaching materials and examine various types of plans. An evaluation experiment of the system showed that users could make an instructional plan in about two hours and were almost completely satisfied with functions of the system. However, many users requested the function of a free description and a reference to the examples of learners' misunderstandings as well as real images from textbook pages. Furthermore, analysis of each instructional plan made by the users revealed that they described the instructional aim and prediction of the class situation insufficiently. Thus, reinforcement of the evaluation function is important for further improvements.

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This research was aimed at developing and enhancing student ability to learn how to learn. This ability is very important in the coming information society since it allows students to positively cope with changes in required skills in academia and learning environments. For this purpose, the author proposed a set of learning materials created using a structured text-design method, and suggested how to use them in the classroom. The curriculum was tested in four actual classes. Positive and negative outcomes from the trial were reported on.

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Drill shells to assist the development of CAI with HyperCard were developed. Several shells were prepared for CAI courseware development, with such features as random ordering of the answers for multiple choice practices, shuffling of the practice items, and deletion and reordering of the items based on the correctness of learners' responses. In Experiment 1, college students evaluated courseware, some of which utilized the drill shells, while the rest used only regular links among cards by clicking buttons. Analysis of a questionnaire, that adopted Keller's ARCS motivation model and Gagne's nine events of instruction, suggested that the students felt the courseware with drill shells was better than the ones with regular links only in practice phases, which matched the intended effect of the drill shells. One of the drill shells, "Correct-Disappear Drill", was then redesigned and expanded, based on the students' suggestions and drill control mechanisms suggested in the literature. Experiment 2 was conducted to examine the usability of the shell for college students to develop their own courseware. It was found that first-time users successfully made and test-ran their own courseware in 30 minutes by utilizing the drill shell.

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This study proposed three types of classroom information used by a teacher, and the reconsideration of a process for planning lessons. The proposed classroom information consisted of three kinds of information : 1) determinant information for ways of implementing successive lessons, 2) feed-forward information for the next lesson planned, and 3) feedback information for improvement of the lesson. As a case study, this study explored how to use classroom information by comparing an experienced teacher with an inexperienced (second-year) teacher. The results were as follows : 1) there was a difference between the experienced and inexperienced teacher in using determinant information for successive ways of implementing the lesson ; 2) there were no basic differences between them in using feed-forward information for the next lesson plan ; and 3) there was no difference between them basically in using feedback information for improvement of the lesson. While the inexperienced teacher referred to teaching skill based on feedback information, the experienced teacher referred to construction of the lesson based on feedback information. It is thought that these differences were due to personal teaching theory, the quantity of episodic knowledge on lesson, and their usage. Finally, the descriptive model of using classroom information by a teacher was proposed and the relationship between using classroom information and teacher growth was discussed.

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