A System for Designing Random Access Instruction for Navy Courses

Many areas of military and civilian work are becoming increasingly complex and non-routine. Cognitive Flexibility Theory is a unique approach to instruction that prepares people to effectively deal with such challenges. For critical elements of Navy training, complex content domains will be identified that are characterized both by complexity and difficulty in achieving training success. The particular learning and knowledge application demands in these areas will be analyzed to ascertain congruence with the training advantages provided by Random Access Instructional systems based on Cognitive Flexibility Theory. Instructional design specifications for Random Access Instruction hypermedia systems for use in two such training areas will be developed based on the theory. To insure generality and a wide scope of applicability, the identified training domains will be examined for commonalities in the way Cognitive Flexibility Theory would be used to develop Random Access Instruction systems. Those commonalities will form the basis for specification of features of a generic instructional design system--an "author's aid" of "shell" program that will permit trainers to develop Random Access Instruction hypermedia systems tailored to their domains and having a full complement of features based on Cognitive Flexibility Theory.