Schulze, K. G., Shelby, R. N., Treacy, D. J., Wintersgill, M. C., VanLehn, K., & Gertner, A. (2000) Andes: An active learning, intelligent tutoring system for Newtonian physics. Themes in Education, 1(2), 115-136.

A trend that has been emerging more strongly in the last decade has been to question the role and content of physics in contemporary higher education.  Although the majority of students should study physics, most of them will not become professional physicists or engineers.  Efforts have been made within the physics education community to make the subject more accessible to the average student.  In addition, it is well known that students appear to learn more when personal training is available as they attempt to solve homework problems.  The artificial intelligence community has developed systems that try to tutor students in mathematics, chemistry, and computer programming.

Andes is an intelligent tutoring system in classical physics that has been in development by researchers at the Learning, Research, and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh and the United States Naval Academy since 1996.  It allows students to solve physics problems in an environment that provides visualization, immediate feedback, procedural help, and conceptual help.  It currently tutors students in static forces, translational and rotational kinematics, translational and rotational dynamics, work and energy, and linear and angular momentum.  The system encourages the students to draw free body diagrams, when appropriate, and enter the equations necessary to solve the problem.  It allows them to ask for hints, both in terms of what they have done incorrectly as well as when they have reached an impasse and do not know how to proceed.

Andes is comprised of an expert model and a student environment.  The expert model, developed by the researchers at the Naval Academy, incorporates the physics domain knowledge and pedagogical strategies that are the foundation of Andes.  The student environment, developed by the researchers at the LRDC, incorporates the interface (called the Workbench), the student assessment, and the help system.

After having used Andes with a limited number of students at the Naval Academy over a three-year period, it was used in a formal study in the fall of 1999.  The statistical and anecdotal results of this study are reported in this paper.

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