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.