Intelligent Tutoring System Authoring Tools for Non-Programmers

An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is a software application that tries to replicate the performance of a human tutor by supporting the theory of learning by doing . ITSs have been shown to improve the performance of a student in wide range of domains. Despite their benefits, ITSs have not seen widespread use due to the complexity involved in their development. Developing an ITS from scratch requires expertise in several fields including computer science, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. In order to decrease the skill threshold required to build ITSs, several authoring tools have been developed. In this thesis, I document several contributions to the field of intelligent tutoring in the form of extensions to an existing ITS authoring tool, research studies on authoring tool paradigms and the design of authoring tools for non-programmers in two complex domains - natural language processing and 3D game environments. The Extensible Problem Specific Tutor (xPST) is an authoring tool that helps rapidly develop model-tracing like tutors on existing interfaces such as webpages. xPST\u27s language was made more expressive with the introduction of new checktypes required for answer checking in problems belonging to domains such as geometry and statistics. A web-based authoring (WAT) tool was developed for the purpose of tutor management and deployment and to promote non-programmer authoring of ITSs. The WAT was used in a comparison study between two authoring tool paradigms - GUI based and text based, in two different problem domains - statistics and geometry. User-programming of natural language processing (NLP) in ITSs is not common with authoring toolkits. Existing NLP techniques do not offer sufficient power to non-programmers and the NLP is left to expert developers or machine learning algorithms. We attempted to address this challenge by developing a domain-independent authoring tool, ConceptGrid that is intended to help non-programmers develop ITSs that perform natural language processing. ConceptGrid has been integrated into xPST. When templates created using ConceptGrid were tested, they approached the accuracy of human instructors in scoring student responses. 3D game environments belong to another domain for which authoring tools are uncommon. Authoring game-based tutors is challenging due to the inherent domain complexity and dynamic nature of the environment. We attempt to address this challenge through the design of authoring tool that is intended to help non-programmers develop game-based ITSs

Using ConceptGrid as an easy authoring technique to check natural language responses

ConceptGrid provides a template-style approach to check natural language responses by students using a model-tracing style intelligent tutoring system. The tutor-author creates, using a web-based authoring system, a latticestyle structure that contains the set of required concepts that need to be in a student response. The author can also create just-in-time feedback based on the concepts present or absent in the student\u27s response. ConceptGrid is integrated within the xPST authoring tool and was tested in two experiments, both of which show the efficacy of the technique to check student answers. The first study tested the tutor\u27s effectiveness overall in the domain of statistics. The second study investigated ConceptGrid\u27s use by non-programmers and non-cognitive scientists. ConceptGrid extends existing capabilities for authoring of intelligent tutors by using this template-based approach for checking sentence-length natural language input

Easy Authoring of Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Synthetic Environments

ABSTRACT: We describe how the Extensible Problem Specifi

Intelligent Tutoring System Authoring Tools for Non-Programmers

An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is a software application that tries to replicate the performance of a human tutor by supporting the theory of "learning by doing". ITSs have been shown to improve the performance of a student in wide range of domains. Despite their benefits, ITSs have not seen widespread use due to the complexity involved in their development. Developing an ITS from scratch requires expertise in several fields including computer science, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. In order to decrease the skill threshold required to build ITSs, several authoring tools have been developed. In this thesis, I document several contributions to the field of intelligent tutoring in the form of extensions to an existing ITS authoring tool, research studies on authoring tool paradigms and the design of authoring tools for non-programmers in two complex domains - natural language processing and 3D game environments. The Extensible Problem Specific Tutor (xPST) is an authoring tool that helps rapidly develop model-tracing like tutors on existing interfaces such as webpages. xPST's language was made more expressive with the introduction of new checktypes required for answer checking in problems belonging to domains such as geometry and statistics. A web-based authoring (WAT) tool was developed for the purpose of tutor management and deployment and to promote non-programmer authoring of ITSs. The WAT was used in a comparison study between two authoring tool paradigms - GUI based and text based, in two different problem domains - statistics and geometry. User-programming of natural language processing (NLP) in ITSs is not common with authoring toolkits. Existing NLP techniques do not offer sufficient power to non-programmers and the NLP is left to expert developers or machine learning algorithms. We attempted to address this challenge by developing a domain-independent authoring tool, ConceptGrid that is intended to help non-programmers develop ITSs that perform natural language processing. ConceptGrid has been integrated into xPST. When templates created using ConceptGrid were tested, they approached the accuracy of human instructors in scoring student responses. 3D game environments belong to another domain for which authoring tools are uncommon. Authoring game-based tutors is challenging due to the inherent domain complexity and dynamic nature of the environment. We attempt to address this challenge through the design of authoring tool that is intended to help non-programmers develop game-based ITSs.</p

Intelligent tutoring system authoring tools for non-programmers

An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is a software application that tries to replicate the performance of a human tutor by supporting the theory of "learning by doing". ITSs have been shown to improve the performance of a student in wide range of domains. Despite their benefits, ITSs have not seen widespread use due to the complexity involved in their development. Developing an ITS from scratch requires expertise in several fields including computer science, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. In order to decrease the skill threshold required to build ITSs, several authoring tools have been developed. In this thesis, I document several contributions to the field of intelligent tutoring in the form of extensions to an existing ITS authoring tool, research studies on authoring tool paradigms and the design of authoring tools for non-programmers in two complex domains—natural language processing and 3D game environments. The Extensible Problem Specific Tutor (xPST) is an authoring tool that helps rapidly develop model-tracing like tutors on existing interfaces such as webpages. xPST's language was made more expressive with the introduction of new checktypes required for answer checking in problems belonging to domains such as geometry and statistics. A web-based authoring (WAT) tool was developed for the purpose of tutor management and deployment and to promote non-programmer authoring of ITSs. The WAT was used in a comparison study between two authoring tool paradigms—GUI based and text based, in two different problem domains—statistics and geometry. User-programming of natural language processing (NLP) in ITSs is not common with authoring toolkits. Existing NLP techniques do not offer sufficient power to non-programmers and the NLP is left to expert developers or machine learning algorithms. We attempted to address this challenge by developing a domain-independent authoring tool, ConceptGrid that is intended to help non-programmers develop ITSs that perform natural language processing. ConceptGrid has been integrated into xPST. When templates created using ConceptGrid were tested, they approached the accuracy of human instructors in scoring student responses. 3D game environments belong to another domain for which authoring tools are uncommon. Authoring game-based tutors is challenging due to the inherent domain complexity and dynamic nature of the environment. We attempt to address this challenge through the design of authoring tool that is intended to help non-programmers develop game-based ITSs

Evaluation of WebxPST: A browserbased authoring tool for problem-specific tutors. Paper presented at

Abstract. Authoring tools enable the more rapid creation of intelligent tutoring systems. Such tools are essential for tutors to become more widespread. In this study we evaluate WebxPST, a browser-based authoring system that enables non-programmers to create model-tracing-like intelligent tutors. Five authors, two course instructors and three undergraduates, created 74 problems suitable for use in an undergraduate statistics curriculum. A subset of these problems was deployed in a classroom. These authors quickly mastered the authoring interface showing the feasibility of the tool

Evaluation of WebxPST: A Browser-Based Authoring Tool for Problem-Specific Tutors

Authoring tools enable the more rapid creation of intelligent tutoring systems. Such tools are essential for tutors to become more widespread. In this study we evaluate WebxPST, a browser-based authoring system that enables non-programmers to create model-tracing-like intelligent tutors. Five authors, two course instructors and three undergraduates, created 74 problems suitable for use in an undergraduate statistics curriculum. A subset of these problems was deployed in a classroom. These authors quickly mastered the authoring interface showing the feasibility of the tool.This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of a proceeding published as Blessing, S.B., Devasani, S., Gilbert, S. (2011). Evaluation of WebxPST: A Browser-Based Authoring Tool for Problem-Specific Tutors. In: Biswas, G., Bull, S., Kay, J., Mitrovic, A. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6738. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.. The final authenticated version is available online at DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-21869-9_57. Copyright 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Posted with permission

Using ConceptGrid as an easy authoring technique to check natural language responses

ConceptGrid provides a template-style approach to check natural language responses by students using a model-tracing style intelligent tutoring system. The tutor-author creates, using a web-based authoring system, a latticestyle structure that contains the set of required concepts that need to be in a student response. The author can also create just-in-time feedback based on the concepts present or absent in the student's response. ConceptGrid is integrated within the xPST authoring tool and was tested in two experiments, both of which show the efficacy of the technique to check student answers. The first study tested the tutor's effectiveness overall in the domain of statistics. The second study investigated ConceptGrid's use by non-programmers and non-cognitive scientists. ConceptGrid extends existing capabilities for authoring of intelligent tutors by using this template-based approach for checking sentence-length natural language input.This is a manuscript of an article published as Blessing, Stephen B., Shrenik Devasani, Stephen B. Gilbert, and Jivko Sinapov. "Using ConceptGrid as an easy authoring technique to check natural language responses." International Journal of Learning Technology 10, no. 1 (2015): 50-70. DOI:10.1504/IJLT.2015.069449. Posted with permission.</p

Lattice-Based Approach to Building Templates for Natural Language Understanding in Intelligent Tutoring Systems

We describe a domain-independent authoring tool, ConceptGrid, that helps non-programmers develop intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) that perform natural language processing. The approach involves the use of a lattice-style table-driven interface to build templates that describe a set of required concepts that are meant to be a part of a student’s response to a question, and a set of incorrect concepts that reflect incorrect understanding by the student. The tool also helps provide customized just-in-time feedback based on the concepts present or absent in the student’s response. This tool has been integrated and tested with a browser-based ITS authoring tool called xPST.This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of a proceeding published as Devasani S., Aist G., Blessing S.B., Gilbert S. (2011) Lattice-Based Approach to Building Templates for Natural Language Understanding in Intelligent Tutoring Systems. In: Biswas G., Bull S., Kay J., Mitrovic A. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6738. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. The final authenticated version is available online at DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-21869-9_9. Posted with permission.</p