I believe it is common knowledge that providing feedback while teaching is very important. In particular, positive reinforcement consequent to successful performance is essential for increasing the likelihood a skill will be acquired (that a behavior will occur again). As it is my intention to teach basic Web skills via the Web itself, tutorials must be designed so reinforcing feedback is provided automatically.

A common way of designing such interactivity into Web pages is to use JavaScript. I met last week with a developer who is an accessibility expert. For many years, Rich Caloggero has worked for The National Center for Accessible Media and for The MIT Adaptive Technology Information Center. We anticipate building interactive features that, for example, would indicate to people they indeed pressed the correct keys, in the appropriate sequence, to enlarge a Web page.

It is my hope to approximate on a simple level the sophisticated feedback features that Dr. Janet Twyman, who is guiding me in this project, has had built into software for teaching children to read. From the beginning, she has stressed to me the importance of detecting and reinforcing the pressing of the correct key sequence. I will post the details of this effort as the three of us develop them.

Notes: This post is the fourth in a series about Teaching Web Page (Text) Enlargement. Please post a comment with any suggestions.