Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Knowledge construction is expensive for Computer Assisted Assessment. When setting exercise questions, teachers use Test Makers to construct Question Banks. The addition of Automatic Generation to assessment applications decreases the time spent on constructing examination papers. In this article, we present ArikIturri, an Automatic Question Generator for Basque language test questions, which is independent from the test assessment application that uses it. The information source for this question generator consists of linguistically analysed real corpora, represented in XML mark-up language. ArikIturri makes use of NLP tools. The influence of the robustness of those tools and the used corpora is highlighted in the article. We have proved the viability of ArikIturri when constructing fill-in-the-blank, word formation, multiple choice, and error correction question types. In the evaluation of this automatic generator, we have obtained positive results as regards the generation process and its usefulness.

Current work in learner evaluation of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs), is moving towards open-ended educational content diagnosis. One of the main difficulties of this approach is to be able to automatically understand natural language. Our work is directed to produce automatic evaluation of learner summaries in Basque. Therefore, in addition to language comprehension, difficulties emerge from Basque morphology itself. In this work, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is used to model comprehension in a language in which lemmatization has shown to be highly significant. This paper tests the influence of corpus lemmatization while performing automatic comprehension and coherence grading. Summaries graded by human judges in coherence and comprehension, have been tested against LSA based measures from source lemmatized and non-lemmatized corpora. After lemmatization, the amount of LSA known single terms was reduced in a 56% of its original number. As a result, LSA grades almost match human measures, producing no significant differences between the lemmatized and non-lemmatized approaches.

Employing scaffolding is not new in education. In CBL systems, scaffolding has been used with different levels of adaptability. This paper describes a novel design for the Learner Model, which handles the effects of uncertainty formally in the Scaffolding process. We have used this design in our CBL system (LOZ) for learning Object-Z specification. Learners can easily modify the scaffolding process if they wish. They can inspect the underlying fuzzy model and its processes. We use the fuzzy logic theory for dynamic prediction. A time threshold is used to avoid unnecessary dynamic prediction. The proposed design is domain independent and may be used for a wide range of CBL systems with little modification. We conducted an evaluation based on pre-experimental design and the results were very encouraging.

Research indicates a high correlation between parental involvement and a child’s learning. The most effective parental involvement is when parents engage in learning activities with their child at home. However, parental involvement around learning activities may not occur spontaneously due to lack of domain knowledge, teaching strategies or structured support. This paper discusses how these issues can be addressed through the Parent and Child Tutor (P.A.C.T.). In particular, P.A.C.T will provide support for Suzuki parents during violin practice at home. This paper presents two studies; the first study identifies a set of best practice exemplars through lesson observations and interviews with the domain expert which informs the design of P.A.C.T. The second study validates the design of the system through analysing parent-child practice with and without the support of P.A.C.T. Results suggests that P.A.C.T. is effective in significantly increasing the use of best practice exemplars, in particular positive reinforcement and motivational games.

This study compares the relative utility of an intelligent tutoring system that uses procedure-based hints to a version that uses worked-out examples for learning college level physics. In order to test which strategy produced better gains in competence, two versions of Andes were used: one offered participants graded hints and the other offered annotated, worked-out examples in response to their help requests. We found that providing examples was at least as effective as the hint sequences and was more efficient in terms of the number of problems it took to obtain the same level of mastery.

Razzaq et al, 2005 reported that the Assistment system was causing students to learn at the computer but we were not sure if that was simply due to students getting practice or more due to the "intelligent tutoring" that we created and force students to do if they get an item wrong. Our survey indicated that some students found being forced to do scaffolding sometimes frustrating. We were not sure if all of the time we invested into these "fancy" scaffolding questions was worth it. We conducted a simple experiment to see if students learned on a set of 4 items, if they were given the scaffolds compared with just being given hints that tried to TELL them the same information that the scaffolding questions tried to ASK from them. Our results show that students that were given the scaffolds performed better although the results were not always statistically significant.

Error-based Simulation (EBS) is a framework for assisting a learner to become aware of his errors. It makes a simulation based on his erroneous hypothesis to show , which has been proved effective in causing cognitive conflict. In making EBS, it is necessary (1) to make a simulation by dealing with a set of inconsistent constraints because erroneous hypotheses often contradict the correct knowledge, and (2) to estimate the ‘unreasonableness’ of phenomena in a simulation because it must be recognized as ‘unreasonable.’ Since the method used in previous EBS-systems was very domain-dependent, this paper describes a method for making EBS based on any inconsistent simultaneous equations by using TMS. It also describes a set of general heuristics to estimate the ‘unreasonableness’ of physical phenomena. By using these, a prototype EBS-system was implemented and examples of how it works are described.

In this paper we evaluate the instructional effectiveness of tutorial dialogue agents in an exploratory learning setting. We hypothesize that the creative nature of an exploratory learning environment creates an opportunity for the benefits of tutorial dialogue to be more clearly evidenced than in previously published studies. In a previous study we showed an advantage for tutorial dialogue support in an exploratory learning environment where that support was administered by human tutors [9]. Here, using a similar experimental setup and materials, we evaluate the effectiveness of tutorial dialogue agents modeled after the human tutors from that study. The results from this study provide evidence of a significant learning benefit of the dialogue agents.

Recent years have seen growing interest in narrative-centered learning environments. Leveraging the inherent structure of narrative, narrative-centered learning environments offer significant potential for inquiry-based learning in which students actively participate in engaging story-based problem-solving. A key challenge posed by narrative-centered learning is orchestrating all of the events in the unfolding story to motivate students and promote effective learning. In this paper we present a narrative-centered tutorial planning architecture that integrates narrative planning and pedagogical control. The architecture continually constructs and updates narrative plans to support the hypothesis-generation-testing cycles that form the basis for inquiry-based learning. It is being used to implement a prototype narrative-centered inquiry-based learning environment for the domain of microbiology. The planner dynamically balances narrative and pedagogical goals while at the same time satisfying the real-time constraints of highly interactive learning environments.

In this study, we propose a tutoring agent that uses MSN Messenger, a popular synchronous internet media, as the communication platform. Students can invite the agent to a discussion session on MSN Messenger. The agent understands the students’ questions in natural language, and provides answers or hints during the group discussion. Unlike a traditional natural language tutoring agent that converses with one student at a time, our agent needs to work with a group of students in MSN chat.