Xref: utzoo comp.ai:1420 comp.edu:969 comp.cog-eng:497
Path: utzoo!mnetor!lsuc!dave
From: dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.edu,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Becoming CAI literate
Message-ID: <1988Mar2.125247.28809@lsuc.uucp>
Date: 2 Mar 88 17:52:43 GMT
References: <2960@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>
Reply-To: dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 32
Summary: you don't need ICAI to develop a good tutor

ruffwork@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU.UUCP (Ritchey Ruff) writes:
>This points out the difference between teaching and tutoring.  Most people
>I've talked to who have been involved in both agree that tutoring is
>much more efficient from the students viewpoint, but teaching is
>much more effecient from the teachers viewpoint.  I think this is the first
>real win we might see in ICAI; use the few really good humans to teach
>to classes, and have the many ICAI tutors go one-on-one with the
>students to find the misunderstanding and holes in the students
>knowledge and try to plug them.

You don't need ICAI to do this. You need: (1) questions that are
open-ended rather than multiple choice; (2) a log mechanism for
recording unexpected answers; (3) an easy-to-use on-line comment
capability that practically forces students to say what they think
of the instruction [ours asks for comments on each signoff]; and
(4) a mechanism for easily modifying your program or CAI script to
deal with multiple incorrect answers.

We've done it with our tax courses and students are amazed at how
"intelligent" and responsive the CAI is, telling them *exactly*
what they're doing wrong every time they make a mistake.  What they're
seeing is the product of endless revision of the course to fine-tune
it to deal with the specific mistakes that students make.  The
fine-tuning is based on both the log files and the on-line comments.

(To people who have requested a copy of my paper on our experiences:
will be mailing it out in a few days.)

David Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
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