SKOPE-IT (Shareable Knowledge Objects as Portable Intelligent Tutors): overlaying natural language tutoring on an adaptive learning system for mathematics

Abstract

Background: This study investigated learning outcomes and user perceptions from interactions with a hybrid intelligent tutoring system created by combining the AutoTutor conversational tutoring system with the Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS) adaptive learning system for mathematics. This hybrid intelligent tutoring system (ITS) uses a service-oriented architecture to combine these two web-based systems. Self-explanation tutoring dialogs were used to talk students through step-by-step worked examples to algebra problems. These worked examples presented an isomorphic problem to the preceding algebra problem that the student could not solve in the adaptive learning system. Results: Due to crossover issues between conditions, experimental versus control condition assignment did not show significant differences in learning gains. However, strong dose-dependent learning gains were observed that could not be otherwise explained by either initial mastery or time-on-task. User perceptions of the dialog-based tutoring were mixed, and survey results indicate that this may be due to the pacing of dialog-based tutoring using voice, students judging the agents based on their own performance (i.e., the quality of their answers to agent questions), and the students' expectations about mathematics pedagogy (i.e., expecting to solving problems rather than talking about concepts). Across all users, learning was most strongly influenced by time spent studying, which correlated with students' self-reported tendencies toward effort avoidance, effective study habits, and beliefs about their ability to improve in mathematics with effort. Conclusions: Integrating multiple adaptive tutoring systems with complementary strengths shows some potential to improve learning. However, managing learner expectations during transitions between systems remains an open research area. Finally, while personalized adaptation can improve learning efficiency, effort and time-on-task for learning remains a dominant factor that must be considered by interventions. OverviewScaling up intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) to mainstream educational contexts has been a significant challenge for the research community. While ITS have shown significant learning gains over traditional educational technology

Problematizing teaching and learning mathematics as “given” in STEM education

“…Out of the six published in 2017, three are on mathematics education (Hagman et al 2017;Keller et al 2017;Ulrich and Wilkins 2017) and the other three on either teacher professional development (Borko et al 2017;Jacobs et al 2017) or connection with engineering (Jehopio and Wesonga 2017). For the five published in 2018, two are on mathematics education (Beumann and Wegner 2018;Wilkins and Norton 2018) and the other three have close association with other disciplines in STEM (Blotnicky et al 2018;Hayward and Laursen 2018;Nye et al 2018). This trend likely reflects a growing interest, with close connection to mathematics, in both mathematics education community and a broader STEM education community of developing and sharing multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship.…”

A survey of adaptive context-aware learning environments

“…The adaptation taxonomy is linked to the pedagogical taxonomy (Table A4) through target of adaptation as in a majority of the reviewed ACALEs the adaptation target is related to teaching or learning: content se-lection, learning content sequence, learning activity assessment or feedback type [46,89,125]. The pedagogical taxonomy is linked to the context-awareness taxonomy as well by means of pedagogical context entities which play the role of a utilized contextual entity in some of the surveyed ACALEs [1,101,123].…”

“…ALS-KL [99] (D) n/a (U) -APALS [12] (UIn) n/a (U) -Learning Java [122] (S), (D), (UIn) n/a (U), (E), (ST) GPS, Microphone El Guabassi et al [39] (S), (UIn) n/a (U), (E), (T), (ST) Light, Microphone SKOPE-IT [89] (UIn) Graphical (U) -…”

Advances from the Office of Naval Research STEM Grand Challenge: expanding the boundaries of intelligent tutoring systems

“…The first article is SKOPE-IT (Shareable Knowledge Objects as Portable Intelligent Tutors): Overlaying Natural Language Tutoring on an Adaptive Learning System for Mathematics by Nye et al (2018). SKOPE-IT is a natural language tutoring system on mathematics.…”