Intelligent Language Tutors

The techniques of natural language processing (NLP) have been widely applied in machine translation and automated message understanding, but have only recently been utilized in second language teaching. This book offers both an argument for and a critical examination of this new application, with an examination of how systems may be designed to exploit the power of NLP, accomodate its limitations, and minimize its risks. This volume marks the first collection of work in the U.S. and Canada that incorporates advanced human language technologies into language tutoring systems, covering languages as diverse as Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, and English. The book is organized into sections that express the levels of analysis dealt with in learning and teaching a language and with the tasks of the student as writer, reader, conversant, and actor in the world. These sections bring together research by specialists in linguistics, artificial intelligence, psychology, instructional design, and language teaching. In addition to providing detailed descriptions of working systems, amply illustrated with screens from lesson and authoring interfaces, the contributors address a spectrum of common issues: * What can current NLP technology contribute to computer-assisted language instruction and to research on language learning? * How can this technology meet the demands of pedagogical theory for communicative language teaching in authentic contexts? * How can designers constrain tutoring environments to ensure accurate analysis of learners' language? * What can NLP-based systems teach us about language acquisition, about linguistic theory, and about theories of language pedagogy? * What lessons have been learned in using these systems to date? Discipline-specific issues are illuminated as well: the relative merits of the major syntactic frameworks for NLP-based language tutoring; the adaptation of theories like lexical conceptual structure to support semantic interpretation; the integration of input language with visual microworlds and dialogue games; the pragmatics of the tutoring discourse; the selection of instructional principles to guide system design; and the accomodation of design to individual differences and learner styles. A concluding section assesses this work from larger theoretical and practical perspectives -- experimental psychology and psycholinguistics, linguistics, language teaching, and second language acquisition research.

May the Forcing Functions be with You: The Stimulating World of AIED and ITS Research It is my pleasure to write the foreword for Advances in Intelligent Tutoring S- tems. This collection, with contributions from leading researchers in the field of artificial intelligence in education (AIED), constitutes an overview of the many challenging research problems that must be solved in order to build a truly intel- gent tutoring system (ITS). The book not only describes some of the approaches and techniques that have been explored to meet these challenges, but also some of the systems that have actually been built and deployed in this effort. As discussed in the Introduction (Chapter 1), the terms “AIED” and “ITS” are often used int- changeably, and there is a large overlap in the researchers devoted to exploring this common field. In this foreword, I will use the term “AIED” to refer to the - search area, and the term “ITS” to refer to the particular kind of system that AIED researchers build. It has often been said that AIED is “AI-complete” in that to produce a tutoring system as sophisticated and effective as a human tutor requires solving the entire gamut of artificial intelligence research (AI) problems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, ITS 2008, held in Montreal, Canada, in June 2008. The 63 revised full papers and 61 poster papers presented together with abstracts of 5 keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 207 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on emotion and affect, tutor evaluation, student modeling, machine learning, authoring tools , tutor feedback and intervention, data mining, e-learning and Web-based ITS, natural language techniques and dialogue, narrative tutors and games, semantic Web and ontology, cognitive models, and collaboration.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, ITS 2008, held in Montreal, Canada, in June 2008. The 63 revised full papers and 61 poster papers presented together with abstracts of 5 keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 207 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on emotion and affect, tutor evaluation, student modeling, machine learning, authoring tools , tutor feedback and intervention, data mining, e-learning and Web-based ITS, natural language techniques and dialogue, narrative tutors and games, semantic Web and ontology, cognitive models, and collaboration.

Building Intelligent Interactive Tutors discusses educational systems that assess a student's knowledge and are adaptive to a student's learning needs. The impact of computers has not been generally felt in education due to lack of hardware, teacher training, and sophisticated software. and because current instructional software is neither truly responsive to student needs nor flexible enough to emulate teaching. Dr. Woolf taps into 20 years of research on intelligent tutors to bring designers and developers a broad range of issues and methods that produce the best intelligent learning environments possible, whether for classroom or life-long learning. The book describes multidisciplinary approaches to using computers for teaching, reports on research, development, and real-world experiences, and discusses intelligent tutors, web-based learning systems, adaptive learning systems, intelligent agents and intelligent multimedia. It is recommended for professionals, graduate students, and others in computer science and educational technology who are developing online tutoring systems to support e-learning, and who want to build intelligence into the system. Combines both theory and practice to offer most in-depth and up-to-date treatment of intelligent tutoring systems available Presents powerful drivers of virtual teaching systems, including cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and the Internet Features algorithmic material that enables programmers and researchers to design building components and intelligent systems

Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems explores the impact of intelligent tutoring system design on education and training. Specifically, this volume examines “Instructional Management” techniques, strategies and tactics, and identifies best practices, emerging concepts and future needs to promote efficient and effective adaptive tutoring solutions. Design recommendations include current, projected, and emerging capabilities within the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT), an open source, modular, service-oriented architecture developed to promote simplified authoring, reuse, standardization, automated instructional management and analysis of tutoring technologies.

This book explores the intersection of tutoring and intelligent tutoring systems. The process of tutoring has a long history within learning settings, and this effective method has led to attempts to automate the process via intelligent tutoring system research areas. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) are increasingly being used in a wide range of educational settings to enhance student learning. They are also used frequently as platforms for research on educational psychology and artificial intelligence. ITS can assess a wide variety of learner characteristics and adapt instruction according to principles of learning. Their effectiveness allegedly derives from their ability to provide detailed guidance to learners and to adapt promptly to individual learner's needs that are tracked at a fine grained level. Examples of such tutoring technologies include writing environments for guided inquiry learning, environments for collaborative problem solving or discussion, natural language processing and dialogue in tutoring systems, modeling and shaping affective states, interactive simulations of complex systems, ill-defined domains, and adaptive educational games. At their core, these systems rely on our basic knowledge of effective human tutoring. This book starts with a presentation of learning frameworks related to tutoring and ITS. This is followed by examples of best practices of tutoring and learning strategies by implementing within specific ITS. Finally, it presents examples for evaluating the effectiveness of tutoring systems.

Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) explores the impact of intelligent tutoring system design on education and training. Specifically, this volume examines “Authoring Tools and Expert Modeling Techniques”. The “Design Recommendations book series examines tools and methods to reduce the time and skill required to develop Intelligent Tutoring Systems with the goal of improving the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT). GIFT is a modular, service-oriented architecture developed to capture simplified authoring techniques, promote reuse and standardization of ITSs along with automated instructional techniques and effectiveness evaluation capabilities for adaptive tutoring tools and methods.