This report illustrates one way in which the technologies of testing might combine with cognitive science techniques to help steer instruction. Steering testing is brief diagnostic testing that steers, or individualizes, the course of instruction. Steering testing uses simple heuristics for reasoning about the level of a student's competence in a…

This paper describes NEOMYCIN, a computer program that models one physician's diagnostic reasoning within a limited area of medicine. NEOMYCIN's knowledge base and reasoning procedure constitute a model of how human knowledge is organized and how it is used in diagnosis. The hypothesis is tested that such a procedure can be used to simulate both…