Publication: STEPS: A Simulated, Tutorable Physics Student.
Ur, S., &
VanLehn, K. (1995). STEPS: A simulated, tutorable physics student.
Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 6(4), 405-437.
This paper describes a prototype of a simulated student that learns by
interacting with a human tutor. The system solves physics problems
while showing its work on a workstation screen, and the tutor can
intervene at certain points during problem solving to advise the
simulated student. In particular, the tutor can cross out incorrect
actions and/or enter correct actions. These interactions cause the
simulated student to delete incorrect rules and learn new rules via
plausible inference and explanation-based learning. Pilot testing
with two human tutors suggests that simulated students, when developed
past the prototype stage, could be valuable for training human tutors.
In addition, they provide a computational cognitive task analysis of
the skill of learning from a tutor that is potentially useful for
designing intelligent tutoring systems.
For a postscript file of a ROUGH DRAFT of the article, click here.