Planning for teaching imposes a significant burden on teachers, as teachers need to prepare different lesson plans for different classes according to various constraints. Statistical evidence shows that lesson planning in the Malaysian context
is done in isolation and lesson plan sharing is limited. The purpose of this thesis is to
investigate whether a case-based system can reduce the time teachers spend on
constructing lesson plans. A case-based system was designed SmartLP. In this
system, a case consists of a problem description and solution pair and an attributevalue
representation for the case is used. SmartLP is a synthesis type of CBR
system which attempts to create a new solution by combining parts of previous
solutions in the adaptation.
Five activities in the CBR cycle retrieve, reuse, revise, review and retain
are created via three types of design: application, architectural and user interface.
The inputs are the requirements and constraints of the curriculum and the student
facilities available, and the output is the solution, i.e. appropriate elements of a
lesson plan. The retrieval module consists of five types of search advanced search,
hierarchical, Boolean, basic and browsing. Solving a problem in this system involves
obtaining a problem description, measuring the similarity of the current problem to
previous problems stored in a database, retrieving one or more similar cases and
attempting to reuse the solution of the retrieved cases, possibly after adaptation.
Case adaptation for multiple lesson plans helps teachers to customise the retrieved
plan to suit their constraints. This is followed by case revision, which allows users to
access and revise their constructed lesson plans in the system. Validation
mechanisms, through case verification, ensure that the retained cases are of quality.
A formative study was conducted to investigate the effects of SmartLP on
performance. The study revealed that all the lesson plans constructed with SmartLP
assistance took significantly less time than the control lesson plans constructed
without SmartLP assistance, although they might have access to computers and
other tools. No significant difference in writing quality, measured by a scoring system,
was noticed for the control group, who constructed lesson plans on the same tasks
without receiving any assistance. The limitations of SmartLP are indicated and the
focus of further research is proposed.
Keywords: Case-based system, CBR approach, knowledge acquisition, knowledge
representation, case representation, evaluation, lesson planning.