ECAI 2004 Conference Paper

[full paper]

A Formal Tutoring Process Model for Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Alke Martens

The combination Computer Based Training systems with Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science have led to the development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) nearly 30 years ago. A common agreement has been reached about the constituents of an ITS. Nonetheless, the interpretation of the role of each component in the ITS is still heterogeneous. Together with the absence of formal methods in ITS, this leads to the situation, that most ITS' components are strongly domain dependent and not reusable. In the paper, a formal approach for case-based ITS is described. The formal model is called the tutoring process model. The model is based on the idea to support the training of at least two cognitive processes in the case-based setting. The integration of the tutoring process model as the central component in the ITS architecture has led to a homogenization of the architecture. The tutoring process model has been used as the basis of the ITS Docs 'n Drugs, a web- and case-based ITS for clinical medicine. Docs 'n Drugs is part of the medical curriculum at the University of Ulm since three years and has been used by several hundreds of students, yet.

Keywords: Computer Aided Learning, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Cognitive Modelling

Citation: Alke Martens: A Formal Tutoring Process Model for Intelligent Tutoring Systems. In R.López de Mántaras and L.Saitta (eds.): ECAI2004, Proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2004, pp.124-128.