ALEKS: a Web-based intelligent tutoring system
Ward Canfield · Mathematics and computer education · 2001
An intelligent tutoring system is able to diagnose and adapt to a student's developing knowledge and skills, to provide precise feedback when mistakes are made or the student becomes stymied, and to present new topics when the student is ready to learn. ALEKS (Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces) is an example of one such system currently used for the and of factual knowledge in arithmetic and algebra. The terms assessment and learning will be clarified later in this paper. A web-based system, in contrast to compact-disk-based, can easily be used for the monitoring and management of entire courses and even institutions. It is very inexpensive - no college site-licensing is required - only an access code purchased by the student for a nominal fee. As an intelligent tutor, this system teaches the student, and provides a new and engaging way for students to learn or review the fundamentals of arithmetic and algebra. The program discussed in this article was developed with support from the National Science Foundation by ALEKS Corporation, a Delaware company formed in 1996. 1. ALEKS BACKGROUND Intelligent tutoring systems are part of a new breed of instructional computer programs made possible through recent developments in computer memory and computational speed capabilities, new computer programming languages, and in research in human cognition and learning. Through system technology and artificial intelligence, they are able to carry on intelligent dialogues with students and flexibly adjust to the knowledge and skill level of individuals, as well as provide a variety of methods of representing and accessing information. They are able to make inferences about a student's current state of knowledge and based on that knowledge, provide a choice of topics that the student is ready to learn. Some systems are oriented to discovery learning, others are more didactic, or teaching, oriented. Compared to earlier computer-assisted instructional tools, they are far more adaptive to individual students, and better matched with current goals in mathematics education. Intelligent tutoring systems have four basic components: knowledge, learner modeling, tutorial planning, and communication [1]. These divisions into components are abstract and do not necessarily reflect actual separations in the physical structure of a system. The knowledge component consists of the facts and ideas of the particular subject to be learned, what a specialist or expert in the subject would know. Often this is known in various forms (in math, say, in numerical, symbolic, or graphic form). The more the system component is able to represent these various forms, the better it represents real human capabilities. The learner modeling component consists of the system's ability to diagnose, in an ongoing, adaptive way, the developing knowledge and skill of the student. The tutorial planning component guides the student by presenting appropriate activities, providing feedback in cases of mistakes or a standstill in progress, encouraging successes, determining progress, and individually-tailoring review topics. The tutorial planning component works closely with the results of the learner modeling component. Lastly, the communication component interacts with the student through words or graphical interfaces, providing the overt intelligence and user-friendliness evident when using an intelligent tutoring system [1]. This part may also often include the ability of the student and the instructor themselves to communicate with each other, through built-in e-mail-like capabilities. This last feature makes online intelligent tutoring systems useful for web-based courses and distance-learning. National-Louis University students represent a very diverse community of cultural backgrounds, academic abilities, ages and especially in their limited historical access to higher education. …