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I advocate a group-based computer-assisted approach to the training of skills. Does this make sense to you? Select a skill of interest and show the pros and cons of such an approach as a training vehicle. What feedback tools would be needed?

Trajectories are obviously of central importance in sports such as golf and tennis. But the idea of a trajectory can be extended to apply to all objects in motion, including human behavior. Can you accept this opinion? Present arguments for and against it.

Question

In my view the context of a skill (or skill group) has to be primary in order to study the skill effectively using simulation. Would you concur? Choose a skill of interest and list the reasons that favor such a view and those that don't.

What role does creativity play in skill development? Is it a necessary condition for learning?

How does skill affect technology and how does technology affect skill? Develop any possible historical interaction between them.

Consider some of our many inventions (needle & thread, shoe laces, the printing press, the steam engine, the telephone, radar, ...). What conditions led to their development and what changes in skill did they bring about?

I've listed a number of properties that I think characterize what we mean by information. What properties would you delete from the list and what would you add?. What's the difference between information and noise? What sense can be made of Imaginary Information and how might it be used in proofs?

Perception is an active process, which means that in some way we draw on context material for basic constructions and create our own experiences from them. This raises the question how we learn about the objective worlds, i.e., about the external world and about ourselves. . Give it some thought and see how you might answer the question.

Accepting the fact that perceptions are motor skills, meaning that movement is always involved, develop the motor aspects of several examples of the skills.

Any program for the diagnostic study or training of skills draws value from the simulation of the social setting in which the skills are performed. But such a program is confronted with a number of issues. One basic issue is representation theory, whose aim is to understand the nature of real-world modeling, because the "facts," as we call them, depend on the representation. Another issue is to define the real environment of the skills and formulate its driving forces. You need to depict its relevant dynamics. How would you describe the action?  What models would you use?

Man has always searched for ways to enhance or enable behavior, drawing on a wide range of technologies. Why do you think this has happened? Show how the aids help.

What are the characteristics of the performer and the setting, and how do they interact with each other? The details have to be spelled out, and this involves a lot of science. 

The quality of any skill depends on the health and fitness of the person performing the skill. How does illness affect the quality of the skill? Or the utility of specific training techniques? In particular, how are reading skills affected by illness? How can the processes be simulated? 

In any organization, the quality of individual skills depends on the properties of the behavioral environment as well as the characteristics of the individual. In a poor environment, interactions could produce social or physical constraints that make it difficult to perform skills effectively. What conditions of the environment best foster performance of the skills? What changes either in the individual or the environment would improve the situation? 

Skills are problem solving tools and are dictated by intended results. For the skills to achieve their goals, the actions have to be causal in nature -- you have to be able to produce the results. That is, the actor has to be able to make appropriate movements in physical space and time. How are these conflicts to be reconciled? How can the performer's actions be both free and determined? How can the actions be modeled? 

Quantum mechanics theory differs markedly from the classical views of the real nature of the world. How are the differences to be reconciled? In what way does quantum theory affect the representation of the skills environment? What role does observation play in the representation? 

When performing skilled acts, the performer makes decisions in light of events occurring in the operating environment. Every moment is a potential decision point. Decisions, in turn, have real consequences in their environment. So there's an interactive loop between the decision-maker and the physical environment. How do the personal and environmental aspects occur in real life and how are they to be integrated in the simulation? For instance, how are the possibly complex interactions between individuals, such as might occur between care givers and care receivers to be identified and represented? 

To be a useful ground for learning, the make-believe system has to be structured in depth, sufficiently detailed to allow for appropriate action alternatives. This means that the dynamics of the problem situation have to be well delineated. How can we ensure that the simulation has enough detail for its aims, that the necessary ingredients have been included in the package? How do we identify the critical factors? 

We pattern our worlds via models, or theories. Do the models devised for a particular context -- such as the stock market, a game of sports, or a medical problem -- answer the questions posed in the situation? Does the information generated by application of the models answer the question? In other words, are you asking the appropriate questions to produce the correct information?  

Behavioral environments invariably involve ambiguity of some sort. How might we contend with the ambiguity in our modeling? 

We know that the dynamics of the operational or skills context are normally expressed in the form of equations of state. To be informative, these equations have to be meaningful. But what can we mean by them? How are we to understand them? 

We know that equations of state are time-dependent -- they tell us how things behave over time. How can they be expressed to facilitate computer processing? 

In the real world, there are many simultaneous reactions among participants, and there is usually a great deal of feedback from diverse sources. How can the new representations take these interactions into account? How might such complex interactions be understood? How might they be organized and programmed? 

What role does the social structure play in the skills environment, and how do we deal with personal and social values?  With cultural values?

What changes, if any, have to be made in the construction of the make-believe environments to be able to use them on the Internet? What changes in our training procedure might be required to use the Internet as an effective instruction vehicle for skills? 

Contradiction seems to be a natural part of normal life. How can contradiction be built into simulations? Does contradiction have a role to play in the deduction of theories constructed to represent the real world being simulated? 

Preparing a study or training program for use on the Internet has to account for characteristics of the network, much as designing a train has to consider the tracks on which the train is to run. What problems will be encountered in the development and how can they be resolved? 

How can you design simulation programs to make it possible to examine your personal skills?

If not properly supervised, recreational vehicles can create severe environmental problems, both on land and water. How do you design the recreational facilities to maximize their use, yet preserve the environment?

It is possible to use stand-alone with Web techniques (using CD-ROMs to deliver high-density graphics and the Web to provide specialized or personal data). As the network improves, of course, it will become more and more productive and more cordial toward learning, generally. How then do the characteristics of the Internet affect the design conditions?

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