An Evaluation of a Hybrid Language Understanding Approach for Robust Selection of Tutoring Goals

In this paper, we explore the problem of selecting appropriate interventions for students based on an analysis of their interactions with a tutoring system. In the context of the WHY2 conceptual physics tutoring system, we describe CarmelTC, a hybrid symbolic/statistical approach for analysing conceptual physics explanations in order to determine which Knowledge Construction Dialogues (KCDs) students need for the purpose of encouraging them to include important points that are missing. We briefly describe our tutoring approach. We then present a model that demonstrates a general problem with selecting interventions based on an analysis of student performance in circumstances where there is uncertainty with the interpretation, such as with speech or text based natural language input, complex and error prone mathematical or other formal language input, graphical input (i.e., diagrams, etc.), or gestures. In particular, when student performance completeness is high, intervention selection...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: AIEDU
• Authors: Carolyn Penstein Rosé, Kurt VanLehn
• Keywords: AIEDU 2005, Conceptual Physics, Language Input, Student Performance