An efficient, portable authoring language for microcomputers

An authoring language is a programming language that is optimized in some way for the efficient production of computer assisted instruction lessons. This paper summarizes nearly twenty years of experimentation and development of authoring languages at the University of Minnesota, then presents the main characteristics of a new language that embodies many of the lessons learned over this period. The new language is called AL, for author language. Based on Pascal, it is easily transportable across most microcomputers, requires no special operating system or tools, and makes no assumptions regarding educational style or method. It was designed to maximize efficiency over the entire process of authoring, testing, distribution, and maintenance of lessons. This is in stark contrast to most CAI languages, which were designed primarily to simplify the author interface. The paper is divided into five sections. The first recounts experimentation in the 1960's at Minnesota with one of the first authoring languages, and catalogs its most important deficiencies. The second section describes a major effort to support CAI using a FORTRAN language preprocessor on a large interactive timesharing system. The third section describes how this approach was successfully adapted to microcomputers using Pascal. The fourth section describes the new AL language, which incorporates the lessons of the extensive trials with the previous efforts. The final section briefly compares AL with four other authoring languages for the IBM PC.