Albert Stevens

The goal structure of a socratic tutor

We describe the current version of the Why System, a script-based socratic tutor which uses tutoring strategies formulated as production rules. The current system is capable of carrying on a dialogue about the factors influencing rainfall by presenting different cases to the student, asking for predictions, probing for relevent factors, entrapping the student when he has not identified all necessary factors, and presenting counterexamples. The current system is incomplete because it lacks a goal structure to guide the tutorial sessions. We outline a more complete theory of the goal structure of Socratic tutors based on analysis of human tutorial dialogues. There are two top level goals: (1) refinement of the students causal model and (2) refinement of the students predictive abilities. The subgoals are diagnosis of bugs in the students knowledge and correction of the bugs. This goal-driven control mechanism governs the selection of examples and teaching strategies used by the tutor.

Misconceptions in student's understanding

Tutorial dialogues can be analyzed as an interaction in which a tutor “debugs” a students knowledge representation by diagnosing and correcting conceptual misunderstandings. In this paper, we outline some tentative steps toward a theory which describes tutorial interactions. We outline the goal structure of a tutor, describe types of conceptual bugs that students have in their understanding of physical processes and discuss some of the representational viewpoints necessary to diagnose and correct these bugs.

An overview of STEAMER: An advanced computer-assisted instruction system for propulsion engineering

We are building a computer-based instructional system for teaching the operation of complex physical mechanisms. The system is based intimately on the use of simulation. Our goal in this paper is to describe the system we are attempting to construct, discuss its origins, and identify what we perceive to be its implications for psychological research into instruction.

The Use of a Sophisticated Graphics Interface in Computer- Assisted Instruction

The more complex the physical system, the greater the likelihood that hands-on operator training can damage it. A computer model like Steamer offers a somewhat safer alternative.