TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH UNIX INSTRUCTIONAL WORKBENCH SOFTWARE.

Computer-assisted instruction offers an opportunity to reduce costs of employee training, while improving the quality of education programs. Such a system, created at AT&T Bell Laboratories, is described. The UNIX Instructional Workbench software is a complete package for creating, managing, and delivering computer-assisted instructional courses and programs. Teachers create course material with the help of Instructional Workbench software's authoring system. Those courses are placed in a database, along with all the other courses available through the computer system. Students take courses using the delivery system, which enrolls them in a course and tracks their progress, keeping tabs on the parts of a course students have completed. Administrators can monitor student progress using the Instructional Workbench software management system. Since Instructional Workbench software runs under the UNIX operating system, teachers, students, and administrators can use any program - for example, graphics, programming languages, company data bases, or statistical analysis packages - installed on the host computer.