Cognitive Tutors: Lessons Learned
Item
Title
Cognitive Tutors: Lessons Learned
Abstract/Description
This article reviews the 10-year history of tutor development based on the advanced computer tutoring theory (J. R. Anderson, 1983, 1993). We developed production system models in ACT of how students solved problems in LISP, geometry, and algebra. Computer tutors were developed around these cognitive models. Construction of these tutors was guided by a set of eight principles loosely based on the ACT theory. Early evaluations of these tutors usually, but not always, showed significant achievement gains. Best case evaluations showed that students could achieve at least the same level of proficiency as conventional instruction in one third of the time. Empirical studies showed that students were learning skills in production-rule units and that the best tutorial interaction style was one in which the tutor provides immediate feedback, consisting of short and directed error messages. The tutors appear to work better if they present themselves to students as nonhuman tools to assist learning rather than as emulations of human tutors. Students working with these tutors display transfer to other environments to the degree that they can map the tutor environment into the test environment. These experiences have coalesced into a new system for developing and deploying tutors. This system involves selecting a problem-solving interface, constructing a curriculum under the guidance of a domain expert, designing a cognitive model for solving problems in that environment, building instruction around the productions in that model, and deploying the tutor in the classroom. New tutors are being built in this system to achieve the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards for high-school mathematics in an urban setting.
Author/creator
Date
In publication
Volume
4
Issue
2
Pages
167-207
Resource type
Background/Context
Medium
Print
Background/context type
Conceptual
Open access/free-text available
Yes
Peer reviewed
Yes
ISSN
1050-8406
Citation
Anderson, J. R., Corbett, A. T., Koedinger, K. R., & Pelletier, Ray. (1995). Cognitive Tutors: Lessons Learned. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4(2), 167–207. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327809jls0402_2
Comments
No comment yet! Be the first to add one!