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COMPUTER-BASED POLICE TRAINING
An exercise in Computer Managed
Instruction (CMI)
Roy O.
Walker, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Police Training Institute
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
1004 South Fourth Street, Champaign, Illinois USA 61820 USA.
Mary
Michaels, Editor (1992, March/April).
Instructional Microcomputing Newsletter, pp. 8-9.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Educational Technologies Assistance Group (ETAG)
182 Armory Building, Champaign, Illinois 61820 USA.
Assume for a moment that you have just been hired as a new recruit to join the police force of a community in Illinois. Although you are eligible to join, you must successfully complete a program of study at the Police Training Institute (PTI) before you can begin work.
Monday morning. It is the first hour of the first day of class. Roy Walker, Associate Professor and police academy instructor in the State of Illinois mandated 400-hour Basic Law Enforcement Course for recruits, informs you that you will spend the rest of the day participating in the validation of a bank of 525 test items covering eighteen categories that parallel eighty hours of course work you will be taking at the University of Illinois, Police Training Institute. They are:
1. Observation and Perception:
Street Communication
2. Communication in the Police Environment
3. Crisis Intervention and Conflict Management
4. Dealing with Variant Behavior
5. Stress Behavior
6. Domestic Violence Act
7. Crowd Behavior
8. Child Abuse/Neglect Investigations
9. Child Sex Exploitation
10. Police Morality
11. Police Citizen Relations
12. Interviewing and Interrogation
13. Physical Evidence Potential
14. Packaging and Transmittal of Physical Evidence
15. Traffic Law Enforcement
16. Traffic Accident Investigation
17. Motor Vehicle Theft
18. Crime Scene Search
Sounds intimidating. However, the scoring sheet you receive gives you a road map to follow so you can identify your strengths and weaknesses in specific topics. Once you know what areas need further study, you will be given the time and access to a computer to take tutorial lessons at your own pace on those topics. In addition, you will have live presentations from instructors who are using teacher-centered techniques, giving directions and recitation, as well as reflective and directed discussion.
Tuesday morning. Today you will begin receiving live instruction augmented by a serialized execution of computerized tutorials with intermittent questioning and final examinations drawn from the same bank of 525 items. But this time you will receive right answer or wrong answer feedback on every question and see an explanation.
In this mode, the student receives questioning on objectives or sub-objectives of his or her choice. The study questions are sometimes confined to a single objective, a cluster of objectives, or a comprehensive survey over all the objectives in preparation for weekly posttests and the state training board licensing examination. These posttests and the state exam are not identical to the 524-item study pool so as not to reduce the credibility of testing by using identical questions for both study and testing.
Roy Walker's Learning Certification Module employs computer managed instruction (CMI) as part of the curriculum at PTI. The purpose is to verify that students have the prerequisites for the instructional modules and, when completed, that they have demonstrated the required level of learning.
Students must get 90% or better to qualify and generally score very well. They feel confident because the State of Illinois comprehensive mastery test which they must take requires only a 66% score to pass.
The Police Training Institute is a leader among such training institutions in the development and classroom use of computer-based training for law enforcement and corrections instruction. Over 18,000 police officers in PTI have taken forty-six PTI NovaNET lessons during the decade of the 1980's. In addition to NovaNET lessons, twenty-seven tutorial lessons written in the TenCORE language and an automated question bank of 525 items written in TenCORE CMI software have been produced.
Because this microcomputer CMI system has been constructed to eliminate the need for each author to be a self-sufficient computer programmer, much of the logic and strategies (testing, record keeping, learning resource selection) have been built directly into the system itself.
In this way, the author need only develop the curriculum materials (objectives, test items, learning resource descriptions, introductions to the students, and computer-assisted learning activities). Then the instructor enters these elements into the appropriate places in the system, indicates which strategies to use, and then uses the curriculum.
While working on his doctorate in the College of Education at UIUC in the late 1970's, Walker became interested in computer-based training on the PLATO system (now called NovaNET) at the Computer-based Education Research Lab (CERL). Over the years, Walker has had the good fortune to tap into several resources of expert advice from faculty and staff at UIUC. Allen Avner of the Computer-based Education Research Lab (CERL), an expert in evaluation and editor of the Journal of Instructional Computing (ADCIS), has offered advice in instructional design, test design, and validation of test results.
Walker has also had the continued support of Richard Dennis, professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in Education, a proponent of computer managed instruction and computer-based training, Dillon Mapother, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, and Robert Bender, Director of the University Office of Corporate and Public Service.
PTI faculty who have made significant contributions toward the acceptance of computer-based training include Professors Ron Eltzeroth, Chris Flammang, Mike Hoefling, Al Johnston, Frank Manella, and Cliff Van Meter.
Roy Walker has worked jointly with these PTI instructors in the development of the NovaNET and microcomputer lessons. He notes, "These materials will one day offer options for law enforcement and peace officer trainers throughout the country. Among the factors such options will address will be student self-paced instruction and self-evaluation of learning. also, a number of administrative and training operational problems will be observed by making individualized, self-paced, computer-based training available at the local police department that can result in convenience and savings of time on the job as well as the elimination of travel expenses for off-site training."
For the microcomputer-based material, Walker is the primary subject matter expert, script developer, and programmer of the self-paced instruction that runs on the IBM platform. The microcomputer lessons discussed in this article manage an eighty-hour Learning Certification Module, requiring thirty to forty hours of computer time on reserve for student usage.
Outside of this module, Walker has available on-line a one hour CMI test on police report writing (a fourteen-hour unit) and a two-hour lesson on jail procedures also using TenCORE. He is developing a lesson on police management and another on use of force, a total of four hours requiring two additional hours of reserved time for student usage.
Mastery tests are a part of each lesson. the subject areas covered are similar to the topics in the CMI testing listed above.
These programs are intended to meet topical requirements of selected training standards of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Fairfax, Virginia, the American Council on Education, and the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board.
Computer
Managed Instruction (CMI)
TenCORE CMI is a software program specifically designed to produce a course structure with built-in testing and prescriptions that guide the student to appropriate learning activities. The menu-driven interface allows Walker to create and deliver tests, manage assignment of computer-based lessons students need to take, and monitor and report on student performance.
TenCORE CMI is not an authoring system but a course-building system. While Walker uses the TenCORE Language Authoring System to produce tutorials and drill and practice lessons, he uses CMI to identify the optimal set of learning activities required to achieve course mastery. TenCORE CMI does this by testing to determine what the student already knows and then selecting activities that teach un-mastered material.
This approach significantly reduces the amount of time required for the student to test at the mastery level. TenCORE CMI automatically administers the course on the computer and maintains daily records on student performance. Course mastery is determined by evaluating the results of topic level tests which assess mastery of defined learning objectives. Test questions associated with each objective are presented randomly or sequentially from a pool of items.
Built-in templates allow the user to create short answer, multiple choice, true/false, and matching test items. When Walker writes new test items, he uses item analysis, checks for clustering of items, and fine tunes the wording of the question stem and distractors.
Advanced answer judging facilities are sensitive to spelling, synonymous words, capitalization, and word order. The system also had the ability to end a test as soon as mastery or non-mastery is determined.
Walker analyzed the data generated by the CMI testing with Al Avner. He also analyzed data about each student - sex, years of education, criminal justice courses, highest degree, and police experience. Findings will be reported in January 1993. Over 300 students are expected to participate in this study.
He copied the data to a DBASE format so he could do an item analysis of each question. He then moved the data into Microsoft EXCEL so he could view the data in spreadsheet form. Walker has also had excellent advice from Rob Shore, a staff member of CCSO (Communications and Computing Services Office) on the use of DBASE to organize data generated from student scores. Walker also consulted with Paul Tenczar (e-mail pt@tencore.com) and Mike Rule of Computer Teaching Corporation (Champaign, Illinois USA) where TenCORE software was developed.
Walker also kept data on each of the 525 questions. He kept several categories for each question. Some selected categories are:
1. Student name
2. Student identification number
3. Date student record created
4. Date last on system
5. Time last on system
6. Number of sessions
7. Topic number and objective
8. Question type
9. Student answer
10. Correct answer
11. Student score, correct or incorrect
12. Time spent answering the question
Walker has used the CMI system as a tool to assess the knowledge of students on their first day of class. The most valid predictor of the attainment of the objectives of the eighty-hour module of lessons would be a test of the required entering behaviors for that module. Such a test would be the most valuable pre-lesson test for Walker to give, since it provides information concerning students' readiness for the instruction which has been developed; and, if they are not ready, it can be used in prescribing the kind of instruction which will make them so.
Walker states, "Students are highly motivated because they know that if they are successful at the academy they will have a job waiting for them back in their community. Students want to know the objectives (what they are expected to learn), and want a study routine to make the best possible score."
Revised
September 24, 2008
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