16-07-2013, 03:53 PM
A Domain Independent Pedagogical Model
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INTRODUCTION
In the last two decades the use of computer to support the educational process has gained increased acceptance due to the ever more stringent needs of both private and public learning institutions. For this purpose, many systems supporting this kind of activities have been developed to streamline, to various degrees, the learning and assessment process. Initially systems were very simple and they did not take into account any kind of information that could improve the learning process. Many of the applications used today are still simple although they have improved their graphical aspect and they begin to adopt standard for contents reuse and exchange.
Throughout the past years the use of diverse didactic strategies such as audio, visuals means, discussion groups, learning groups has shown some improvements, these strategies are aimed at students which normally would not have any difficulties. It was for this reason, that the development of an intelligent advisor (using Intelligent Systems) was an appealing idea. This advisor would perform the tutoring activities by adapting different teaching way or strategies. This alternative could be useful specially for those students that need a high degree of one on one tutoring. Modeling of intelligent tutor systems (ITS), implies taking into consideration the three basic modules [1][2][3]. At the time of modeling an ITS they should be considered the characteristics of the domain (content), of the behaviour of the student (student model) and of the set of strategies that would be tackled by the tutoring module. In this communication it will be presented a re-modeling of the basic modules of an intelligent advisor in order to satisfy the needs of the students for the subject.
Definition : Intelligent Tutoring System
An intelligent tutoring system is defined as any system which is capable of emulating an instructor’s behavior in all aspects relating to supporting students as they acquire knowledge. The teacher is not present and it is the system itself which guides the student as they learn different concepts.
Expert Module
The expert module contains the knowledge about the subject matter. Basically, the knowledge base is built on a conceptual network of knowledge units that are structural hierarchically. Units can be either sections or concepts. It contains the following phases to implement an expert module:
(1) The knowledge must be defined in expert level. And this phase include the time
which was taken to talk with the experts.
(2) Deciding how to express expert knowledge for best use by computer.
(3) Hard implementation phase.
These three phases shows that designing and implementing an expert module is a hard and complex task.
Teacher Module
Here we considered how to define a teacher module, which will use the best strategy to teach the students. This module must consider the study destination of some subject, students and current knowledge levels of these students. Different methods are suitable for different subjects and different knowledge levels. And most of the intelligence shown in ITSs is in the Teacher Module, as how to interact using the knowledge expressed by Student Module and Expert Module.
User Interface Module
User Interface Module is the interface between computer and student. This kind of module is not only included in ITS but it is the key part for any successful system. This interface can be operated by instructions, menu or mouse. Designing and implementing an effective interface, in any cases, is a complicated task.
Interaction of the Modules
The previous four modules generate and control the interaction between students and computers. The direct interaction between students and computers is by User Interface Module. And the knowledge that the students are to learn is in Expert Module. The knowledge states that the students mastered are stored in Student Module. The tutoring methods and strategies are in Teacher Module. It is also very important in ITSs that the variation of Student Module and expert module, will decide the tutoring strategy in ITSs anytime.
CONCLUSION
The extensive use of computers in a day to day life has motivated to seize the opportunity for endowing computer based learning. The need have arisen to transform the conventional teaching methods and crave for making more out of the technologies and inventions in hand. ITS is a well established gadget of about 30 years old. The creation of a generic tutor has succeeded to rise above those existing ITS for specific knowledge domains. The benefits lies in the ability to integrate knowledge base of ITS’s on independent implementation platforms without change to the underlying system. It also increases the efficiency of the model’s portability, extendibility, reusability and flexible architecture. The Adaptive Tutoring System in recent years has proved effective in improving the learning experience in various domains of knowledge. The technologies for distance learning spread ever faster, but giving little credence to intelligence that allows developing a real interoperability with user. The work that has come out is sure an answer to it.