What is an Intelligent Tutoring System
Syed Sumera Ali, Susan McRoy · 2000
One reason that ITS is such a large and varied field is that “intelligent tutoring system” is a broadterm, encompassing any computer program that contains some intelligence and can be used inlearning. ITS is an outgrowth of the earlier computer-aided instruction or CAI model, whichusually refers to a frame-based system with hard-coded links, i.e. hypertext with an instructionalpurpose.The traditional ITS model contains four components: the domain model, the student model, theteaching model, and a learning environment or user interface. ITS projects can vary tremendouslyaccording to the relative level of intelligence of the components. For example, a project focusingon intelligence in the domain model may generate solutions to complex and novel problems sothat students can always have new problems to practice on, but it might only have simplemethods for teaching those problems, while a system that concentrates on multiple or novel waysto teach a particular topic might find a less sophisticated representation of that content sufficient.When multiple components contain intelligence, homogeneous or heterogeneous representationscan be used.ITS can also be classified by their underlying algorithm. One well-known category is the model-tracing tutor, which tracks students’ progress and keeps them within a specified tolerance of anacceptable solution path.A theme underlying much of ITS research is domain independence, i.e. the degree to whichknowledge encoded in the teaching model can be reused in different domains. Although to theexternal observer, domain independence seems like an essential characteristic of intelligence,many experts believe that some of the essential pedagogical knowledge in every domain isfundamentally domain-dependent. For example, there are analogies used in teaching physics, andeven in teaching specific topics in physics, that have no equivalents in other domains.Task independence, or the degree to which the knowledge in the system can be used to support avariety of tasks on the part of the student, has not yet been addressed by most systems.