Tutoring System Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
2025, Baltic Journal of Modern Computing
During the e-learning process implementation, there is a knowledge forgetting parameter that determines the remaining level of knowledge after the e-learning process is completed. To assess learner's knowledge, e-learning management... more
During the e-learning process implementation, there is a knowledge forgetting parameter that determines the remaining level of knowledge after the e-learning process is completed. To assess learner's knowledge, e-learning management systems use formative assessment, which determines the level of knowledge in each examined competence during their acquisition. At the end of completing the study programme, the learner will have a different level of education in the acquired competences included in the study programme. The results of the study are not linked to the specific level of education, but are related to the methodology of the assessment of the learner's level of knowledge and the evaluation of the implementation of the learning plan. The article discusses the development of an adaptive e-learning plan generation algorithm and its integration within the e-learning management system of curriculum, which allows adapting curriculum to the level of knowledge and learning ability of each user by balancing the acquired knowledge in each unit of time, dynamically changing the topology of the learning plan.
2025, Baltic Journal of Modern Computing
During the e-learning process implementation, there is a knowledge forgetting parameter that determines the remaining level of knowledge after the e-learning process is completed. To assess learner's knowledge, e-learning management... more
During the e-learning process implementation, there is a knowledge forgetting parameter that determines the remaining level of knowledge after the e-learning process is completed. To assess learner's knowledge, e-learning management systems use formative assessment, which determines the level of knowledge in each examined competence during their acquisition. At the end of completing the study programme, the learner will have a different level of education in the acquired competences included in the study programme. The results of the study are not linked to the specific level of education, but are related to the methodology of the assessment of the learner's level of knowledge and the evaluation of the implementation of the learning plan. The article discusses the development of an adaptive e-learning plan generation algorithm and its integration within the e-learning management system of curriculum, which allows adapting curriculum to the level of knowledge and learning ability of each user by balancing the acquired knowledge in each unit of time, dynamically changing the topology of the learning plan.
2025, World Conference on Computers in Education VI
Giving individualized guidance to a learner must rely on a learner model. Learner modelling has been little studied within education, although the specialised research field of Artificial Intelligence and Education (AI&ED) has emphasized... more
Giving individualized guidance to a learner must rely on a learner model. Learner modelling has been little studied within education, although the specialised research field of Artificial Intelligence and Education (AI&ED) has emphasized its importance. We present results from the Mayday project's observations of learning interactions suggesting that the learner models used by expert human teachers contain diverse kinds of information much of which is sketchy and conjectural. We propose a theoretical framework: the Leamer Information Space and the Minimal Leamer Model.
2025
6 Abstract—In this article, we discuss the use of prototype formative conversation-based assessments designed to measure English learners’ language skills. Conversation-based assessments are technology enhanced assessment systems that... more
6 Abstract—In this article, we discuss the use of prototype formative conversation-based assessments designed to measure English learners’ language skills. Conversation-based assessments are technology enhanced assessment systems that simulate interactions between a test taker and one or more virtual agents. We discuss preliminary findings from two studies exploring the use of conversation-based assessments to gather evidence of students’ English language skills. The findings suggest that conversation-based assessments have the potential to provide useful information to teachers and students about the students’ language skills and can be used to enhance and support English language development.
2025
As more and more digital resources are available, finding the appropriate document becomes harder. Thus, a new kind of tools, able to recommend the more appropriated resources according the user needs, becomes even more necessary. The... more
As more and more digital resources are available, finding the appropriate document becomes harder. Thus, a new kind of tools, able to recommend the more appropriated resources according the user needs, becomes even more necessary. The current project implements an intelligent recommendation system for elearning platforms. The recommendations are based on one hand, the performance of the user during the training process and on the other hand, the requests made by the user in the form of search queries. All information necessary for decision-making process of recommendation will be represented in the user model. This model will be updated throughout the target user interaction with the platform.
2025
This document presents the progress and effort made in the design of a dialog system for the virtual characters in DynaLearn. The main purpose of this system is to provide means by which the virtual characters can present relevant system... more
This document presents the progress and effort made in the design of a dialog system for the virtual characters in DynaLearn. The main purpose of this system is to provide means by which the virtual characters can present relevant system knowledge to the learners in a pedagogically sound manner. After providing an overview of the role of dialogs in interactive learning environments we present the architecture of our approach and describe in detail the functionality of its three main components: Dialog Management, Verbalization and User Modeling.
2025, International Journal of Computers and Applications
The goal of this article is to describe a user system framework that provides tutoring and testing. Because this tutoring system helps to introduce definitions and simple relations among concepts, it is suitable for classroom use. For... more
The goal of this article is to describe a user system framework that provides tutoring and testing. Because this tutoring system helps to introduce definitions and simple relations among concepts, it is suitable for classroom use. For every individual, the mode and amount of information delivered is personalized by the system order to achieve optimal information delivery, each user is characterized by a set of parameters. These parameters are used to minimize the time of the learning process. We consider only the parameters that we believe are the most significant, namely, the number of presentations that allow the user to pass a test without the need for future cycling of the same unit. The system was developed using the PHP and XML programming environment. We present preliminary classroom results along with statistical simulations of the system. Typical application domains were simple procedures from discrete mathematics, probability, computer science terminology, statistics, and elementary vocabulary. The presented implementation via the XML data structure is intended for the future WWW where servers can exchange tutorial materials developed by different authors.
2025, Artificial Intelligence in Education
The Andes system demonstrates that student learning can be significantly increased by upgrading only their homework problem-solving support. Although Andes is called an intelligent tutoring system, it actually replaces only the students'... more
The Andes system demonstrates that student learning can be significantly increased by upgrading only their homework problem-solving support. Although Andes is called an intelligent tutoring system, it actually replaces only the students' pencil and paper as they do problem-solving homework. Students do the same problems as before, study the same textbook, and attend the same lectures, labs and recitations. Five years of experimentation at the United States Naval Academy indicates that Andes significantly improves student learning. Andes' key feature appears to be the grain-size of interaction. Whereas most tutoring systems have students enter only the answer to a problem, Andes has students enter a whole derivation, which may consist of many steps, such as drawing vectors, drawing coordinate systems, defining variables and writing equations. Andes gives feedback after each step. When the student asks for help in the middle of problem-solving, Andes gives hints on what's wrong with an incorrect step or on what kind of step to do next. Thus, the grain size of Andes' interaction is a single step in solving the problem, whereas the grain size of a typical tutoring system's interaction is the answer to the problem. This report is a comprehensive description of Andes. It describes Andes' pedagogical principles and features, the system design and implementation, the evaluations of pedagogical effectiveness, and our plans for dissemination.
2025, Artificial Intelligence in Education
2025, Artificial Intelligence in Education
2025, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
2025, Journal of Automated Reasoning
2025, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
2025, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
2025, Intelligent Tutoring Systems
2025, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Various co-operative tutoring systems have been recently proposed as a continuation of intelligent tutoring systems. They encourage learning as a jointly constructed knowledge rather than a transfer of expertise from the teacher to the... more
Various co-operative tutoring systems have been recently proposed as a continuation of intelligent tutoring systems. They encourage learning as a jointly constructed knowledge rather than a transfer of expertise from the teacher to the learner. These environments can be strengthened using elicitation techniques which encourage the acquisition process from a learner point of view. In this article we present the different forms of co-operative systems and the advantages of elicitation techniques that can also handle the context in which the knowledge should be transferred. We detail three new forms respectively called learning by disturbing, teaching by co-operation, learning by over-teaching, and the corresponding algorithms of co-operative systems based on elicitation. Finally, we present the architecture of a multi-co-operative system that uses elicitation techniques together with multiple strategies of co-operation.
2025, Proceedings. Fourth IEEE International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces
This paper presents the first statistically reliable empirical evidence from a controlled study for the effect of human-provided emotional scaffolding on student persistence in an intelligent tutoring system. We describe an experiment... more
This paper presents the first statistically reliable empirical evidence from a controlled study for the effect of human-provided emotional scaffolding on student persistence in an intelligent tutoring system. We describe an experiment that added human-provided emotional scaffolding to an automated Reading Tutor that listens, and discuss the methodology we developed to conduct this experiment. Each student participated in one (experimental) session with emotional scaffolding, and in one (control) session without emotional scaffolding, counterbalanced by order of session. Each session was divided into several portions. After each portion of the session was completed, the Reading Tutor gave the student a choice: continue, or quit. We measured persistence as the number of portions the student completed. Human-provided emotional scaffolding added to the automated Reading Tutor resulted in increased student persistence, compared to the Reading Tutor alone. Increased persistence means increased time on task, which ought lead to improved learning. If these results for reading turn out to hold for other domains too, the implication for intelligent tutoring systems is that they should respond with not just cognitive support -but emotional scaffolding as well. Furthermore, the general technique of adding human-supplied capabilities to an existing intelligent tutoring system should prove useful for studying other ITSs too.
2025, Workshop on Emotional and Cognitive Issues at the International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Abstract. This paper provides a synthesis of our research towards the development of an affect-sensitive Intelligent Tutoring System called AutoTutor. The affect-sensitive AutoTutor detects the emotions (boredom, flow/engagement,... more
Abstract. This paper provides a synthesis of our research towards the development of an affect-sensitive Intelligent Tutoring System called AutoTutor. The affect-sensitive AutoTutor detects the emotions (boredom, flow/engagement, confusion, frustration) of a learner by monitoring conversational cues, gross body language, and facial features. It is also mindful of the learners' affective and cognitive states in selecting its pedagogical and motivational dialogue moves. Finally, the AutoTutor embodied pedagogical agent synthesizes affective ...
2025, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Authoring the knowledge base for an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is difficult and time consuming. In many ITS, the knowledge base is used for solving problems, so authoring it is an instance of the notoriously difficult knowledge... more
Authoring the knowledge base for an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is difficult and time consuming. In many ITS, the knowledge base is used for solving problems, so authoring it is an instance of the notoriously difficult knowledge acquisition problem of expert systems. General tools for knowledge acquisition have shown only limited success, which suggests developing tools that apply only to specific kinds of knowledge bases. Pyrenees is an ITS whose knowledge base is composed mostly of conditioned equations. We have developed several tools for authoring Pyrenees knowledge bases. This paper focuses on a novel and particularly powerful tool that uses bidirectional search to locate bugs in the knowledge base. In several evaluations, human authoring was significantly faster when the tool was available than when it was unavailable
2025, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
We describe a theorem prover that is used in the Why2-Atlas tutoring system for the purposes of evaluating the correctness of a student's essay and for guiding feedback to the student. The weighted abduction framework of the prover is... more
We describe a theorem prover that is used in the Why2-Atlas tutoring system for the purposes of evaluating the correctness of a student's essay and for guiding feedback to the student. The weighted abduction framework of the prover is augmented with various heuristics to assist in searching for a proof that maximizes measures of utility and plausibility. We focus on two new heuristics we added to the theorem prover: (a) a specificity-based cost for assuming an atom, and (b) a rule choice preference that is based on the similarity between the graph of cross-references between the propositions in a candidate rule and the graph of cross-references between the set of goals. The two heuristics are relevant to any abduction framework and knowledge representation that allow for a metric of specificity for a proposition and cross-referencing of propositions via shared variables.
2025
While high interactivity has been one of the main characteristics of one- on-one human tutoring, a great deal of controversy surrounds the issue of whether interactivity is indeed the key feature of tutorial dialogue that impacts... more
While high interactivity has been one of the main characteristics of one- on-one human tutoring, a great deal of controversy surrounds the issue of whether interactivity is indeed the key feature of tutorial dialogue that impacts students' learning results. There are two commonly held hypotheses regarding the issue: a widely-believed monotonic interactivity hypothesis and a better supported interaction plateau hypothesis. Beyond a certain level of interactivity, the former hypothesis predicts (high > moderate) while the latter hypothesis predicts: (high = moderate). In this study, we proposed the tactical interaction hypothesis which predicts: (high + effective tactics) > (high + no/ineffective tactics) = moderate. Overall our results support this hypothesis. However, finding effective tutorial tactics is not easy. This paper sheds some light on how to apply Reinforcement Learning to derive effective tutorial tactics.
2025, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
This paper describes a supervised three-tier clustering method for classifying students' essays of qualitative physics in the Why2-Atlas tutoring system. Our main purpose of categorizing text in our tutoring system is to map the students'... more
This paper describes a supervised three-tier clustering method for classifying students' essays of qualitative physics in the Why2-Atlas tutoring system. Our main purpose of categorizing text in our tutoring system is to map the students' essay statements into principles and misconceptions of physics. A simple `bag-of-words' representation using a naïve-bayes algorithm to categorize text was unsatisfactory for our purposes of analyses as it exhibited many misclassifications because of the relatedness of the concepts themselves and its inability to handle misconceptions. Hence, we investigate the performance of the k-nearest neighborhood algorithm coupled with clusters of physics concepts on classifying students' essays. We use a three-tier tagging schemata (cluster, sub-cluster and class) for each document and found that this kind of supervised hierarchical clustering leads to a better understanding of the student's essay.
2025, User Modeling and User-adapted Interaction
When a tutoring system aims to provide students with interactive help, it needs to know what knowledge the student has and what goals the student is currently trying to achieve. That is, it must do both assessment and plan recognition.... more
When a tutoring system aims to provide students with interactive help, it needs to know what knowledge the student has and what goals the student is currently trying to achieve. That is, it must do both assessment and plan recognition. These modeling tasks involve a high level of uncertainty when students are allowed to follow various lines of reasoning and
2025, Educational Psychologist
This article is a review of experiments comparing the effectiveness of human tutoring, computer tutoring, and no tutoring. "No tutoring" refers to instruction that teaches the same content without tutoring. The computer tutoring systems... more
This article is a review of experiments comparing the effectiveness of human tutoring, computer tutoring, and no tutoring. "No tutoring" refers to instruction that teaches the same content without tutoring. The computer tutoring systems were divided by their granularity of the user interface interaction into answer-based, step-based, and substep-based tutoring systems. Most intelligent tutoring systems have step-based or substep-based granularities of interaction, whereas most other tutoring systems (often called CAI, CBT, or CAL systems) have answer-based user interfaces. It is widely believed as the granularity of tutoring decreases, the effectiveness increases. In particular, when compared to No tutoring, the effect sizes of answer-based tutoring systems, intelligent tutoring systems, and adult human tutors are believed to be d = 0.3, 1.0, and 2.0 respectively. This review did not confirm these beliefs. Instead, it found that the effect size of human tutoring was much lower: d = 0.79. Moreover, the effect size of intelligent tutoring systems was 0.76, so they are nearly as effective as human tutoring.
2025
Abstract: The level up procedure is a method for evaluating the learning gains of educational software, and tutoring systems in particular, that includes some form of embedded assessment. The instruction is arranged in levels that take... more
Abstract: The level up procedure is a method for evaluating the learning gains of educational software, and tutoring systems in particular, that includes some form of embedded assessment. The instruction is arranged in levels that take only a few minutes to master, and students level up when the software indicates they have achieved mastery. This paper reports some methodological lessons learned from applying this procedure in studies of a tutoring system that taught high school students how to model dynamic systems. ...
2025
The paper deals with a control structure of the strip thickness in a rolling mill of quarto type (AGC -Automatic Gauge Control). It performs two functions: the compensation of errors induced by unideal dynamics of the tracking systems... more
The paper deals with a control structure of the strip thickness in a rolling mill of quarto type (AGC -Automatic Gauge Control). It performs two functions: the compensation of errors induced by unideal dynamics of the tracking systems lead by AGC system and the control adaptation to the change of dynamic properties of the tracking systems. The compensation of dynamical errors is achieved through inverse models of the tracking system, implemented as adaptive filters.
2025
Attaining student understanding and motivation for learning is the main challenge of virtual learning environments (VLEs). Educational games easily obtain the student's attention, which is reinforced by an emotional link established... more
Attaining student understanding and motivation for learning is the main challenge of virtual learning environments (VLEs). Educational games easily obtain the student's attention, which is reinforced by an emotional link established between the game and the learner with a high level of interactivity. This research aims to enhance the human computer interaction (HCI) of a VLE through the addition of specific features present in the architectures of serious and commercial video games. The Olympia architecture, which enables the combination of VLEs or serious games with intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs), is introduced. A new generation of learning environments that synthesise the features of both learning environments can be created. Olympia was evaluated in a particular case study focused on teaching introductory Physics to 20 undergraduate students at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus. A traditional VLE and an enhanced VLE were implemented. The differences between b...
2025, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
2025, DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals)
This paper presents a solution for conceptually modeling the instructional content in computer-assisted education. The different cognitive style of learners imposes different modalities of presenting and structuring the information (the... more
This paper presents a solution for conceptually modeling the instructional content in computer-assisted education. The different cognitive style of learners imposes different modalities of presenting and structuring the information (the pedagogical knowledge) to be taught. Conceptual organization of the training domain knowledge, with learning stages phasing, can constitute a better solution to the problem of adapting the instructional system interaction to users with different cognitive style and needs.
2025
The complexity of design and implementation of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) is caused by the lack of a clear road map or implementation methodology. This has led us to investigate the role of patterns in ITS implementation in order... more
The complexity of design and implementation of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) is caused by the lack of a clear road map or implementation methodology. This has led us to investigate the role of patterns in ITS implementation in order to provide software developers with solutions to recurring ITS design problems. In this research work, we highlight the role of adaptive patterns in intelligent tutoring system implementation. We explain how those patterns were used in building The Arabic tutor, an Intelligent Language Tutoring System over the World Wide Web for teaching a subset of the Arabic Language that combines the flexibility and intelligence of Intelligent Tutoring Systems with the availability of the World Wide Web applications. The implementation process of the Arabic Tutor was our proof of concept for the validity and usefulness of adaptive patterns in ITS implementation.
2025
This paper describes a novel way of initialising an individual user model concerning this particular user's retention capabilities. The initialisation is obtained through a simple memory game that the user has to play for some time.... more
This paper describes a novel way of initialising an individual user model concerning this particular user's retention capabilities. The initialisation is obtained through a simple memory game that the user has to play for some time. Thus the memory game is considered as an initialisation application. The initialised user model may then be used in another application, the target application, that needs to have information about the user's retention capabilities. Such application may be an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that models the student's cognitive state and the way s/he learns. In this way, the memory game application serves as a pleasant way for the initialisation of the student model which collects information concerning the memory retention capabilities of the player according to a cognitive psychology model of human memory. The game is easy, small and portable, being able to run everywhere even in mobile phones, more specifically smart phones.
2025
Computer assisted learning is a common issue among the research communities globally. The benefits of such technologies are widely accepted, so more and more educational applications are being developed. However, educational software aims... more
Computer assisted learning is a common issue among the research communities globally. The benefits of such technologies are widely accepted, so more and more educational applications are being developed. However, educational software aims to be used by students for learning. Therefore educational applications have to be as attractive as possible to increase the engagement of students. To serve this purpose many researchers employ several aspects of multimedia technology to improve the aesthetics and the appeal of educational software. One very attractive and popular application area, that involves and demands advanced multimedia technologies and could be used for educational purposes, is computer games. In this paper a virtual reality game for educational purposes is described. This tutoring system incorporates a virtual reality user interface similar to that of common commercial games. The game is enriched with student modeling mechanisms that ensure the individualisation of the in...
2025, Proceedings Eight AAAI
One of the most important features an intelligent tutoring system (ITS for short) should provide, is the capability to adapt its behavior to the specific traits of the student. To this purpose, a fundamental contribution is given by the... more
One of the most important features an intelligent tutoring system (ITS for short) should provide, is the capability to adapt its behavior to the specific traits of the student. To this purpose, a fundamental contribution is given by the component aimed at building and ...
2024, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
The aim of this paper is to study the contribution of the new technologies (Search Engine Rankings, Multi-variant Optional Module Design and Multiple Criteria Analysis; Voice Stress analysis, IRIS recognition) to Intelligent Library and... more
The aim of this paper is to study the contribution of the new technologies (Search Engine Rankings, Multi-variant Optional Module Design and Multiple Criteria Analysis; Voice Stress analysis, IRIS recognition) to Intelligent Library and Intelligent Tutoring Systems. The article briefly describes use of these newest technologies in e-learning. The authors of the article have developed a voice stress database, which contains students' answers given during an examination, and a specific algorithm, which is a core of the Voice Stress Analysis Subsystem and which can evaluate a student's knowledge by giving a rather precise mark after a psychological test performed prior to the examination. A similar research of IRIS recognition technologies is being performed successfully. Practical application of the Biometrics Technologies, Intelligent Library and Tutoring System within the EURASIA Project is briefly analysed in the paper.
2024
The Educational Research and Development Unit (ERCU) of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie-Mellon University was formally established in January 1970 by a= 5-year-grant from the Ford Foundation. This report... more
The Educational Research and Development Unit (ERCU) of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie-Mellon University was formally established in January 1970 by a= 5-year-grant from the Ford Foundation. This report describes the research and develbpment activities in which ERDU was engaged from January to December 1972 for the Ford Foundation. The principal activity daring that year was the further development and programving for the Educational Assembly System. (EAS), a system that can generate information about educational materials organized in a curriculum best suited to each individual user. The data base of the system consists of 2 parts: (a) structured descriptions of edudational goals and materials; and (b) a network of work relationships. Both of these are created by various subject matter experts. The user inputs his goal, including information about the area, level, time he wants to spend, etc., and the system interacts with questions abort possible inconsistencies,-prerequisites and other relevant information. Finally the student is presented with the optimal curriculum. (HS)
2024
Intelligent Tutoring Systems are based on the knowledge-module that is holding the system's knowledge in a well-structured format. Considering the current state of the art knowledge-module representations, we lack a model that can... more
Intelligent Tutoring Systems are based on the knowledge-module that is holding the system's knowledge in a well-structured format. Considering the current state of the art knowledge-module representations, we lack a model that can represent evolving information. Representing evolving information is needed for those tutoring systems that are working with dynamically changing domains, e.g.: software science. In this paper a new combined model is presented that is based on the Ontology model and the fundamentals of Knowledge Space Theory. Our new model introduces the term of abstract time to be able to formulate an evolving knowledge graph. Our model also introduces the term of evoking-hooks that makes it possible to realize connections between external domain elements and our model's nodes.
2024
Aleksander, Ie.; And Others Artificial Intelligence and Its Potential as an Aid to Vocational Training and Education. European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Berlin (West Germany). ISBN-92-825-8303-1 88 99p.
2024
The Semantic Web has opened new horizons for Internet applications in general and for e-learning in particular. Although many authors have proposed the usage of ontologies in different aspects of e-learning, such as adaptive hypermedia,... more
The Semantic Web has opened new horizons for Internet applications in general and for e-learning in particular. Although many authors have proposed the usage of ontologies in different aspects of e-learning, such as adaptive hypermedia, personalization, and learner modeling, data reuse and system interoperability are still open issues. Only systems that completely rely on Semantic Web standards and technologies present a mean of addressing these problems. In earlier work, we presented tutoring system named Protus (PRogramming TUtoring System) that is used for learning Java programming basics. It uses principles of adaptive hypermedia and content recommendation for course personalization. Redefined architecture for Protus, supported by several ontologies is proposed in this paper. This architecture extends the use of Semantic Web concepts, where the representation of each component is made by a specific ontology, making possible a clear separation of the tutoring system components and explicit communication among them.
2024
Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are special classes of E-learning systems designed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches to provide adaptive and personalized tutoring based on the individuality of students. The student model... more
Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are special classes of E-learning systems designed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches to provide adaptive and personalized tutoring based on the individuality of students. The student model is an important component of an ITS that provides the base for this personalization. During the course of interaction between student and the ITS, the system observe student’s actions and other behavioral properties, create a quantitative representation of these student’s attributes called a student model.
2024
When dealing with a natural language interaction about a formal domain, a number of phenomena occur. They include interspersing natural language with formulas, various degrees of formality, and conveying the logical structure of an essay.... more
When dealing with a natural language interaction about a formal domain, a number of phenomena occur. They include interspersing natural language with formulas, various degrees of formality, and conveying the logical structure of an essay. Capturing these phenomena, to some extent, is necessary for providing relevant tutoring feedback. In this paper we discuss these phenomena, the extent to which we process each of them in the Why2-Atlas tutoring system and directions for future work.
2024
Training of operators has become an important problem to be faced by power systems: updating knowledge and skills. An operator must comprehend the physical operation of the process and must be skilled in handling a number of normal and... more
Training of operators has become an important problem to be faced by power systems: updating knowledge and skills. An operator must comprehend the physical operation of the process and must be skilled in handling a number of normal and abnormal operating problems and emergencies. We are developing an intelligent environment for training of power system operators. This paper presents the architecture of the intelligent environment composed by computer based training components labeled as reusable learning objects; a learning object repository; a concept structure map of the power plant domain, a tutor module based on course planner, an operator model based on cognitive and affective components and operator interface. The general aim of our work is to provide operators of complex industrial environments with a suitable training from a pedagogical and affective viewpoint to certify operators in knowledge, skills, expertise, abilities and attitudes for operation of power systems.
2024
The Structurpd'Planning and, Debugging Editor (SPADE) is e,a new kind of interactive programming-environnent in which, computer programs are generated by explicitly articulating planning decisions. ,The design of SPADE is based upon... more
The Structurpd'Planning and, Debugging Editor (SPADE) is e,a new kind of interactive programming-environnent in which, computer programs are generated by explicitly articulating planning decisions. ,The design of SPADE is based upon the:devel4nent of a grammar of plans from a taxonomy of, basic planning techniques. The utility of this approach to.program definition is that a recozdof planning decisions, called the plan derivatiolk, provides guidance fort subsequent modification or debugging of the glogria. Moreover, this grammatical approach to planning allows the development o4 h taxonomy of bugs, as particular kinds of errors in,aellying the planning * Reprodictions'aupplied by EDRS'are the best that can be wacte # from the original document.
2024
A computer-based system-the Educational Assembly System for Student Executed Educational Design (EASSEED)-is used to generate individualized curricula for students with varying needs and goals. It combines advances in management and... more
A computer-based system-the Educational Assembly System for Student Executed Educational Design (EASSEED)-is used to generate individualized curricula for students with varying needs and goals. It combines advances in management and computer technology to define the processes of curriculum development and thus coves toward an explicit operational description of a normative theory of curriculum development. EASSEED functions by directing students to instructional materials, the completion of which fulfills the goals set by the student. The system is organized into content and structure modules; the former direct the student to materials related to achieveable goals while the latter decompose broad goals into progressively more tiaaageable sub-goals until a level is reached at which a suitable instructional material is available. Goals are processed by the system's semantic net; all terms in the system are located in the net and pointers lead the student to higher order, equivalent, and implied terms. The system provides the basis of computer constructed education, for it can be used as a course prerequisite, supplement, or substitute, for course design and subject area definition, as a resource evaluator, and for generalized program support. (LB)
2024, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
It is difficult for instructors of CS1 and CS2 courses to get accurate answers to such critical questions as "how long are students spending on programming assignments?", or "what sorts of errors are they making?" At... more
It is difficult for instructors of CS1 and CS2 courses to get accurate answers to such critical questions as "how long are students spending on programming assignments?", or "what sorts of errors are they making?" At the same time, students often have no idea of where they stand with respect to the rest of the class in terms of time spent on an assignment or the number or types of errors that they encounter. In this paper, we present a tool called Retina , which collects information about students' programming activities, and then provides useful and informative reports to both students and instructors based on the aggregation of that data. Retina can also make real-time recommendations to students, in order to help them quickly address some of the errors they make. In addition to describing Retina and its features, we also present some of our initial findings during two trials of the tool in a real classroom setting.
2024
In this article, we present a recommending system of educational resources based on the footprint of learners on a distance-learning platform. Today, all learners follow the same learning path and therefore have access to the same... more
In this article, we present a recommending system of educational resources based on the footprint of learners on a distance-learning platform. Today, all learners follow the same learning path and therefore have access to the same training content, although their information needs are different. The proposed approach offers learners the opportunity to adapt their training path through a mechanism of recommended activities that are most relevant to them. This approach consists in automatically analyzing the interaction footprints of learners. Based on these footprints, our system automatically offers personalized recommendations (courses, course sections, activities, documents, etc.) to learners. The originality of this approach lies in the fact that the learner remains in control of his training itinerary, by increasing the information available to help him or her to build his or her training path. In this article, we present the results of the implementation of our system developed...
2024
Boredom and disengagement have been found to negatively impact learning. Therefore, it is important for learning environments to be able to track when students disengage from a learning task. We investigated a method to track engagement... more
Boredom and disengagement have been found to negatively impact learning. Therefore, it is important for learning environments to be able to track when students disengage from a learning task. We investigated a method to track engagement during self-paced reading by analyzing reading times. We propose that a breakdown in the relationship between reading time and text complexity can reveal disengagement. A discrepancy (or decoupling) between attention resources and text complexity was computed via the absolute difference between reading times and the text's Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, a measure of text complexity. As expected, decoupling varied as a function of text complexity. We also found that text complexity differentially impacted decoupling profiles for different types of participants (i.e., high vs. low comprehenders, fast vs. slow readers). These results suggest that decoupling scores may be a viable method to track disengagement during reading and could be used to trigger interventions to help students re-engage with the text and ultimately learn the material more effectively.
2024
Plan recognition techniques frequently make rigid assumptions about the student's plans, and invest substantial effort to infer unobservable properties of the student. The pedagogical benefits of plan recognition analysis are not always... more
Plan recognition techniques frequently make rigid assumptions about the student's plans, and invest substantial effort to infer unobservable properties of the student. The pedagogical benefits of plan recognition analysis are not always obvious. We claim that these difficulties can be overcome if greater attention is paid to the situational context of the student's activity and the pedagogical tasks which plan recognition is intended to support. This paper describes an approach to plan recognition called situated plan attribution that takes these factors into account. It devotes varying amounts of effort to the interpretation process, focusing the greatest effort on interpreting impasse points, i.e., points where the student encounters some difficulty completing the task. This approach has been implemented and evaluated in the context of the REACT tutor, a trainer for Operators of deep space communications stations.