MILE (McMaster Interactive Lesson Environment) began, as many software programs do, as a solution to a specific problem. Produced at McMaster University, by Geoffrey Rockwell, Joanna Johnson and Rocco Piro, the software was first used--by a Philosophy instructor--as a means of teaching Critical Thinking, and the first versions of the MILE software were dedicated to that purpose. MILE, in particular, was conceived as computer-aided learning from text files that an area specialist could create quite independently. Perhaps because of these origins, the software itself is most useful for presenting students with multiple choice questions that facilitate the teaching of terminology. Teaching grammar and composition skills with it, as I was charged to do as part of my course, Writing in the Electronic Age, meant that I would be given the task of making the software adaptable to my own discipline, in ways that were clear and useful to students.
MILE was produced with an early version of Asymetrix Toolbook. Originally, in 1994, when we began, the idea was that an instructor would be able to create a script using either multiple choice questions or True and False. Then the program would process that script. The first versions of the MILE software had both a lesson form and a test form. That is, we attempted to use Toolbook both for self-teaching and for testing. Ultimately the test form was superseded by a program called WebMILE, more suitable to that purpose because, on the web, it was easier to gather student responses, sort through them and grade them, especially given the need for privacy that such testing demands. For a demonstration of WebMILE, go to WebMILE
MILE was influenced to a fair extent by its predecessor, a software program entitled mcBOOKmaster. This program used fill in the blank questions for the most part. Later versions of MILE incorporated new templates that enabled instructors from different disciplines to use different exercises in the software. There was, for example, a line matching exercise developed that would allow an instructor to build an exercise that let students choose which definition of a word they found acceptable by drawing a line to one of the choices. There were also exercise templates that allowed instructors to devise exercises that gave students the opportunity to put information in the correct order, or to label diagrams, and get instant feedback about the accuracy of their labels. There are also plans for mini-lectures involving "talking heads" (though this latter innovation is still in the development stage). The aim of these short verbal instructions is two-fold, to personalize computer teaching to some degree and to reinforce learning through sound as well as through sight. MILE also includes a number of other resources, including a glossary, a reference file, and a dictionary.
For the purposes of Writing in the Electronic Age, my project using the MILE software, the most useful exercises were multiple choice questions that focussed on grammar points essential to good editing, on some formulaic aspects of composition, such as the recognition of an effective thesis statement, and on the recognition of important terminology related to grammar. Like most first-year courses, Writing in the Electronic Age depends to a great extent on students' ability to use the terminology of the discipline wisely. The software enables me, as the instructor, to assume knowledge of simple aspects of language like parts of speech and parts of the sentence without having to bore those students who knew the terminology before they entered post-secondary education.
We decided to incorporate software into the writing course to take the focus of students' work and anxiety away from grammar and towards the study of language, and towards terminology that would help us discuss how students were writing. There is precedent for this way of thinking in Mina Shaughnassey's work. It is her contention that grammar should be taught to bring out a "shift in perception which is ultimately more important than the mastery of any individual rule of grammar" (129). My use of the MILE software convinced me that students became better able to think about language as language, a shift in perception that made them better able to teach themselves and others how to communicate more effectively.