Claims

Allowing procedural constructs (branches, rules, loops, recursion) in an authoring tool dramatically raises authoring complexity and demands debugging support

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r2 · q1
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q1 i? If an authoring tool allows branches, if/then rules, procedures, loops, parameterized subroutines, or recursion, the level of authoring complexity jumps dramatically, effectively making the author a software programmer. → Tom Murray 2015

Evidence

Tom Murray 2015

Tom Murray. (2015). Coordinating the Complexity of Tools, Tasks, and Users: On Theory-based Approaches to Authoring Tool Usability. Int J Artif Intell Educ 26:37–71. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-015-0076-6

q1 · i? · theoretical · r2

Analytical discussion of runnable artifacts and dynamic complexity in authoring tools. The article argues ITSs are dynamic systems that must be run to test, with unpredictable behaviors, so creators of tools allowing this task complexity must not overestimate user skill and must "provide real debugging and tracing tools" for the systems to be viable.

"If an authoring tool allows branches, if/then rules, procedures, loops, parameterized subroutines, or recursion (in rough order of difficulty) the level of authoring complexity jumps dramatically"

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id procedural-authoring-constructs-raise-complexity
title Allowing procedural constructs (branches, rules, loops, recursion) in an authoring tool dramatically raises authoring complexity and demands debugging support
description Allowing procedural constructs (branches, rules, loops, recursion) in an authoring tool dramatically raises authoring complexity and demands debugging support
status review
evidence_strength weak
newest_evidence 2015
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-27
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — tom-murray-2015

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