7113ICT Research for IT Professional Course Convenor: Prof. Kewen Wang Assignment 1: Critical Analysis and Problem Definition Report Student Name: Tufail Zaman Student ID: s2938761 School of Information and Communication Technology Griffith University Advance in intelligent Tutoring systems: Problem solving modes and Model of Hints Context: This paper has been taken from the CCC publication 2007, an organization supported by Agora university publishing house along with the Romanian ministry of education and research. CCC publication has been publishing “The international journal of computer, communication and control” since 2006 and its primary purpose is to publish the journals, literatures and books in the field of three C’s, i.e Computational theory, Computer networks and mathematics, and computer science applications. The CCC publications has editorial board of well reputed researchers and scientists who can publish their own research papers in the IJCCC while to evaluate the rest of the research papers received to the organization for publishing. The author of the paper, Alla Anihona is a well reputed researcher in the field of intelligent tutoring system and artificial intelligence along with the best research award on her name. Besides the author’s effort in this paper, there are few other key researchers who worked in the related field and their work has been used as a reference in this paper and can be considered the crucial research work in the field. Few of the key researchers are as follows: J.S. Brown and R.R. Burton, A paradigmatic example of an Artificially Intelligent Instructional System, International Journal of Man-Machina studies J.S Brown and R.R. Burton and J. de kleer, Pedagogical, Natural Language along with J.S Brown’s (Eds) : Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Academic press London, 1982 N. Matsuda and K. VanLehn The author of the paper, Alla Anihona is a well reputed researcher in the field of intelligent tutoring system and artificial intelligence along with the best research award on her name. She is an assistant at the department of System Theory and Design at Riga University, Latvia and got several others awards on her work in this field. Details of the Paper This paper is focusing on providing a conventional intelligent system which can be run on the feedbacks of the users and would be able to work on the responses receiving from the learners. The capability of the system should be enough that it can work according to the skills and knowledge domain of the learners. Intelligent tutoring system suggested in this paper is considered to be a necessity of the modern way of proving knowledge without the human teacher interactions. The suggested system is consisted of three domains named domain knowledge, learner’s knowledge and pedagogical knowledge domains. Domain knowledge has been pointed as a teaching model which uses some artificial intelligence while the pedagogical domain will be holding up the learning materials for the students in the form of slides, texts and tutorials etc. Learner’s domain has been allocated to hold the information about the learners because the system is supposed to work on the skills and domain knowledge of the learner. The learners will provide his/her information to the system and the system will respond accordingly, as suggested in the paper. The next possible issues that has to be addressed is that the problems faced by the learners while using the system for learning purposes. The author suggested a two-layered model which is based on hints and feedbacks given to the learners by the system to avoid any difficulties. The problem solving mode layer of the system would be able to give a feedbacks either in a step by step process or might be the whole feedback of the work at once. The model of hints layer was supposed to give hints from general valued hints to the specific hints according to the learner’s profile. The problem solving mode has been suggested by the author to be important for the learner’s to focus on as it is easy to use and it will help out to reduce frustration and lack of interest. According to the author some of the tasks of the discussed approach has been achieved and still there is a room for improvement. At the end of the paper, the author has got the following questions related to the suggested system in the paper: How to test and implement the idea of category of hints and problem-solving modes which is best suitable for the learners? How the pedagogical and psychological foundation of the proposed system should be specified? The research could be justified but it might take ages to develop the system which can be so ideal to teach the learners in their best suited way. The author is proposing a special idea which can be improved through intelligent artifacts. The research is not that much worth because such a system is unable to develop the ways accordingly and in-efficient to provide the proper way of learning without the human intervention. The author has worked to take enough ideas from the past research works done in the past 30 years on the same intelligent systems which is quite clear that it is not based on a special theory but it just become the need with the passage of time. The research domain was taken from the existing tutoring system which is justified by the author by presenting the new ideas and did not contain any hint about the paradigm followed. It was tested in the minimax algorithm and assumptions were made that it can work after addressing couple of important issues in the systems. The author tried to bring something on the table which can be human-free intelligent system. In my opinion, the system is suggesting to best suited way through which the learner can understand what they want to study without having any issues. The system which is human-free for the teaching purpose is incapable of reacting to the learner’s behavioral immediately and with such accuracy. The learner can get indulge in repeating the same hints for bringing up the solutions and might be unable to do it in future which will affect his/him abilities to search and analyze the solution by himself/herself. Online tutoring system is not up to the level of face-to-face teaching. The system proposed by the author is a bit confusing in the sense of saying ‘tutoring according to the leaner’s ability’. Reference: Anohina, Intelligent Tutoring System for Minimax Algorithm, Scientific proceedings of Riga Technical University, Computer science, 5th series, Vol. 22, pp. 122-130, 2005. Anohina, The Problem-Solving Modes and a Two-Layer Model of Hints in the Intelligent Tutoring System for Minimax Algorithm, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Virtual Learning, Bucharest, Romania, pp. 105-112, 2006. 7113ICT Research for IT Professional Course Convenor: Prof. Kewen Wang Assignment 1: Critical Analysis and Problem Definition Report Student Name: Tufail Zaman Student ID: s2938761 School of Information and Communication Technology Griffith University Advancing Electronic Assessment Context: This paper has been taken from the CCC publication 2007, an organization supported by Agora university publishing house along with the Romanian ministry of education and research. CCC publication has been publishing “The international journal of computer, communication and control” since 2006 and its primary purpose is to publish the journals, literatures and books in the field of three C’s, i.e Computational theory, Computer networks and mathematics, and computer science applications. The CCC publications has editorial board of well reputed researchers and scientists who can publish their own research papers in the IJCCC while to evaluate the rest of the research papers received to the organization for publishing. The advanced electronic system called “e-Xaminer” has been adopted for the students of Hellenic Air force academy (HAFA) where both undergraduate and postgraduate students are able to perform the assessment online. The key researchers are E, Burns the author of ‘Continuing education drives Distance-Learning enrollment’. Besides this, the author Anotonio Andreatos has contributed a lot to develop this kind of systems and tried to address the issues in the existing such kind of old systems. The authors of this paper have highly reputation in the research area and they have contributed a lot to facilitate the online assessment system. The authors Nikolaos Doukas and Antonio Andreatos are the part of the department of Aeronautical Sciences at the Hellenic Airforce Academy. The Hellenic Airforce Academy is now having the online assessment system and the issues with the system in the past has been addressed much more. Details of the Paper: With the revolution of technology, the idea of electronic assessment is taking place which can be so helpful in reducing the enormous efforts made by the tutors in paper work assessment. This electronic assessment system has been designed for the Hellenic Airforce Academy (HAFA) where the students are assessed online in their exams, even if the students of distance learning. Most of the existing were not supporting the Greek language and that was one of the main reason for developing such a system for the Air Force Academy which can support the Greek language. The system was designed consisting of couple of agents named, examination agent and marking agent. The examination agent is the part of the system which can be made public unlike the marking agent which can only be accessed by the tutors. The system was designed to generate random questions in the assessment to avoid the cheating issues. For this reason, idea of Question parameterisation has been adopted which was able to receive a skeleton of the questions from the tutor and then the system was made capable of producing a different sequence of questions for the different students. The questions were scrambled for each student who is able to do electronic assessment. This can reduce the work to the minimal for the tutors to save timings unlike the paper based assessments. Initially, the system was capable of producing limited types of questions which has been resolved to a high extent later on. As it is obvious that there is a room for the betterment in the system, the authors has stated some of the questions in the paper as well which are as follows: How to develop web interface for the system which can be less-stressful for the students? How to monitor the login and logoff activities of the students to strengthen the security? As we know, the use of IT in the field of learning is taking place with a pace and the system adopted in this system is totally justified. The issues can be resolved with the passage of time with bringing up some new ideas through which system can be enhanced resulting in fight against the cheating issues. HAFA is using such systems for their students, which clearly shows that it can be so helpful to the tutors to minimize the work load which were required in the paper-pencil assessments. Such systems were created in the past with some different required aspects and most of them were successful as mentioned by the authors. As the HAFA was developing the system for its own limited requirements, there were some issues but those were addressed in the future. Many of the institutions around the world are adopting such systems and this paper consisting of the ideas from the previous research work done on the same systems in the past. The paper was not based on a theory and it was just a need of the time where the institutions can revolutionize the idea of electronic assessment to their own students. The authors followed the paradigms of such systems which were capable doing such things in the past. The paper is concerned only to provide the system to the HAFA which can fulfill the requirements of the academy. The simple paradigm has been followed, which were having a simple architecture defining the tutor and students agents clearly. The assumptions were made that the system should be capable enough to create a stress-less environment for the students from any background but in the Greek language which can be user friendly. The authors adopted the way of taking the readings from the books created on such systems by the authors. Moreover, such systems were created in the past as well but with different architectures and languages. In my opinion, the system is lacking to identify the cheating issues for the distance learners. The system is still unable to monitor where the students are completing the assessment from the online resources while performing the assessment at the same time. The assessments should have a timeframe of completing the assessments while having a lock on the access of online resources while the assessment is in progress. The system is worth to deliver, but with few of the changes it can be made more modernized with the new algorithms The following are the few of the efforts and contributions towards developing such systems by the following researchers: The report by the Uni. Of Lowa and HBO systems Inc, named “E-Learning assessment summary report” Claroline Documentation The authors of this paper, Anotonio and Doukas have a lot of contributions on such systems. References: Andreatos and N. Doukas, e-Xaminer: Electronic Examination System, Proceedings of the 3rd WSEAS / IASME International Conference on Engineering Education, Vouliagmeni, Athens, Greece, July 2006. Andreatos, Distance e-learning for the Hellenic Air Force, Proceedings of EDEN’03, Rhodes, Greece, pp. 428-433, 2003.