Design and Development of an Intelligent Tutoring System for C# Language

Learning programming is thought to be troublesome. One doable reason why students don’t do well in programming is expounded to the very fact that traditional way of learning within the lecture hall adds more stress on students in understanding the Material rather than applying the Material to a true application. For a few students, this teaching model might not catch their interest. As a result, they'll not offer their best effort to grasp the Material given. Seeing however the information is applied to real issues will increase student interest in learning. As a consequence, this may increase their effort to be taught. In the current paper, we try to help students learn C# programming language using Intelligent Tutoring System. This ITS was developed using ITSB authoring tool to be able to help the student learn programming efficiently and make the learning procedure very pleasing. A knowledge base using ITSB authoring tool style was used to represent the student's work and to give customized feedback and support to students

Agents, Believability and Embodiment in Advanced Learning Environments

On the World Wide Web we see a growing number of general HCI interfaces, interfaces to educational or entertainment systems, interfaces to professional environments, etc., where an animated face, a cartoon character or a human-like virtual agent has the task to assist the user, to engage the user into a conversation or to educate the user. What can be said say about the effects a human-like agent has on a student's performance? We discuss agents, their intelligence, embodiment and interaction modalities. In particular, we introduce viewpoints and questions about roles embodied agents can play in educational environment

Affect and believability in game characters:a review of the use of affective computing in games

Virtual agents are important in many digital environments. Designing a character that highly engages users in terms of interaction is an intricate task constrained by many requirements. One aspect that has gained more attention recently is the effective dimension of the agent. Several studies have addressed the possibility of developing an affect-aware system for a better user experience. Particularly in games, including emotional and social features in NPCs adds depth to the characters, enriches interaction possibilities, and combined with the basic level of competence, creates a more appealing game. Design requirements for emotionally intelligent NPCs differ from general autonomous agents with the main goal being a stronger player-agent relationship as opposed to problem solving and goal assessment. Nevertheless, deploying an affective module into NPCs adds to the complexity of the architecture and constraints. In addition, using such composite NPC in games seems beyond current technology, despite some brave attempts. However, a MARPO-type modular architecture would seem a useful starting point for adding emotions

Bringing tabletop technologies to kindergarten children

Taking computer technology away from the desktop and into a more physical, manipulative space, is known that provide many benefits and is generally considered to result in a system that is easier to learn and more natural to use. This paper describes a design solution that allows kindergarten children to take the benefits of the new pedagogical possibilities that tangible interaction and tabletop technologies offer for manipulative learning. After analysis of children's cognitive and psychomotor skills, we have designed and tuned a prototype game that is suitable for children aged 3 to 4 years old. Our prototype uniquely combines low cost tangible interaction and tabletop technology with tutored learning. The design has been based on the observation of children using the technology, letting them freely play with the application during three play sessions. These observational sessions informed the design decisions for the game whilst also confirming the children's enjoyment of the prototype

From Interactive Open Learner Modelling to Intelligent Mentoring: STyLE-OLM and Beyond

STyLE-OLM (Dimitrova 2003 International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 13, 35–78) presented a framework for interactive open learner modelling which entails the development of the means by which learners can inspect, discuss and alter the learner model that has been jointly constructed by themselves and the system. This paper outlines the STyLE-OLM framework and reflects on the key challenges it addressed: (a) the design of an appropriate communication medium; this was addressed by proposing a structured language using diagrammatic presentations of conceptual graphs; (b) the management of the interaction with the learner; this was addressed by designing a framework for interactive open learner modelling dialogue utilising dialogue games; (c) the accommodation of different beliefs about the learner’s domain model; this was addressed with a mechanism for maintaining different views about the learner beliefs which adapted belief modal logic operators; and (d) the assessment of any resulting improvements in learner model accuracy and learner reflection; this was addressed in a user study with an instantiation of STyLE-OLM for diagnosing a learner’s knowledge of finance concept, as part of a larger project that developed an intelligent system to assist with learning domain terminology in a foreign language. Reviewing follow on work, we refer to projects by the authors’ students and colleagues leading to further extension and adoption of STyLE-OLM, as well as relevant approaches in open learner modelling which have cited the STyLE-OLM framework. The paper points at outstanding research challenges and outlines future a research direction to extend interactive open learner modelling towards mentor-like intelligent learning systems

No Grice: Computers that Lie, Deceive and Conceal

In the future our daily life interactions with other people, with computers, robots and smart environments will be recorded and interpreted by computers or embedded intelligence in environments, furniture, robots, displays, and wearables. These sensors record our activities, our behavior, and our interactions. Fusion of such information and reasoning about such information makes it possible, using computational models of human behavior and activities, to provide context- and person-aware interpretations of human behavior and activities, including determination of attitudes, moods, and emotions. Sensors include cameras, microphones, eye trackers, position and proximity sensors, tactile or smell sensors, et cetera. Sensors can be embedded in an environment, but they can also move around, for example, if they are part of a mobile social robot or if they are part of devices we carry around or are embedded in our clothes or body. \ud \ud Our daily life behavior and daily life interactions are recorded and interpreted. How can we use such environments and how can such environments use us? Do we always want to cooperate with these environments; do these environments always want to cooperate with us? In this paper we argue that there are many reasons that users or rather human partners of these environments do want to keep information about their intentions and their emotions hidden from these smart environments. On the other hand, their artificial interaction partner may have similar reasons to not give away all information they have or to treat their human partner as an opponent rather than someone that has to be supported by smart technology.\ud \ud This will be elaborated in this paper. We will survey examples of human-computer interactions where there is not necessarily a goal to be explicit about intentions and feelings. In subsequent sections we will look at (1) the computer as a conversational partner, (2) the computer as a butler or diary companion, (3) the computer as a teacher or a trainer, acting in a virtual training environment (a serious game), (4) sports applications (that are not necessarily different from serious game or education environments), and games and entertainment applications

Interactive Narrative for Adaptive Educational Games: Architecture and an Application to Character Education

This thesis presents AEINS, Adaptive Educational Interactive Narrative System, that supports teaching ethics for 8-12 year old children. AEINS is designed based on Keller's and Gagné's learning theories. The idea is centered around involving students in moral dilemmas (called teaching moments) within which the Socratic Method is used as the teaching pedagogy. The important unique aspect of AEINS is that it exhibits the presence of four features shown to individually increase effectiveness of edugames environments, yet not integrated together in past research: a student model, a dynamic generated narrative, scripted branched narrative and evolving non-player characters. The student model aims to provide adaptation. The dynamic generated narrative forms a continuous story that glues the scripted teaching moments together. The evolving agents increase the realism and believability of the environment and perform a recognized pedagogical role by helping in supplying the educational process. AEINS has been evaluated intrinsically and empirically according to the following themes: architecture and implementation, social aspects, and educational achievements. The intrinsic evaluation checked the implicit goals embodied by the design aspects and made a value judgment about these goals. In the empirical evaluation, twenty participants were assigned to use AEINS over a number of games. The evaluation showed positive results as the participants appreciated the social characteristics of the system as they were able to recognize the genuine social aspects and the realism represented in the game. Finally, the evaluation showed indications for developing new lines of thinking for some participants to the extent that some of them were ready to carry the experience forward to the real world. However, the evaluation also suggested possible improvements, such as the use of 3D interface and free text natural language