Effect of Non-mandatory Use of an Intelligent Tutoring System on Students’ Learning

Type of content
Conference Contributions - Published
Thesis discipline
Degree name
Publisher
Springer
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
Date
2020
Authors
Mitrovic, Antonija
Holland J
Abstract

Numerous controlled studies prove the effectiveness of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). But what happens when ITSs are available to students for voluntary practice? EER-Tutor is a mature ITS which was previously found effective in controlled experiments. Students can use EER-Tutor for tutored problem solving, and there is also a special mode allowing students to develop solutions for the course assignment without receiving feedback. In this paper, we report the observations from two classes of university students using EER-Tutor. In 2018, the system was available for completely voluntary practice. We hypothesized that the students’ pre-existing knowledge and the time spent in EER-Tutor, mediated by the number of attempted EER-Tutor problems, contribute to the students’ scores on the assignment. All but one student used EER-Tutor to draw their assignment solutions, and 77% also used it for tutored problem solving. All our hypotheses were confirmed. Given the found benefits of tutored problem solving, we modified the assignment for the 2019 class so that the first part required students to solve three problems in EER-Tutor (without feedback), while the second part was similar to the 2018 asignement. Our hypothesized model fits the data well and shows the positive relationship between the three set problems on the overall system use, and the assignment scores. In 2019, 98% of the class engaged in tutored problem solving. The 2019 class also spent significantly more time in the ITS, solved significantly more problems and achieved higher scores on the assignment.

Description
Citation
Mitrović A., Holland J. (2020) Effect of Non-mandatory Use of an Intelligent Tutoring System on Students’ Learning. In: Bittencourt I., Cukurova M., Muldner K., Luckin R., Millán E. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12163. Springer, Cham
Keywords
intelligent tutoring system, conceptual database design, learning analytics, voluntary practice, learning effect
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
Fields of Research::46 - Information and computing sciences::4612 - Software engineering
Fields of Research::39 - Education::3904 - Specialist studies in education::390405 - Educational technology and computing
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