HOW MASS MEDIA AND TECHNOLGY MADE TODAYS LEARNING PROCESS EASIER june,2013 | Page 19

in the UK [ www . cccnet . com ]. Investors in these companies are confident in a bright future for ILS .
To their credit , most of the ILS on the market have been redesigned in recent years to take advantage of multimedia capabilities and advances in instructional design . Unfortunately , the new versions of ILS have not been subjected to rigorous research and evaluation studies . The WWW sites associated with ILS vendors contain both testimonials and anecdotal evidence , but there is a complete lack of large-scale , externally conducted , rigorous research studies reported in the sites or obtainable through public information resources such as ERIC ( Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse ) [ http :// www . askeric . org ]. In addition , there is evidence that vendors underestimate the training required for teachers to make effective use of ILS or other forms of software ( Robinson , 1992 ; Wiburg , 1995 ).
Intelligent Tutoring Systems
The basic components of intelligent tutoring systems ( ITS ) were conceptualized 25 years ago ( Hartley & Sleeman , 1973 ) as 1 ) knowledge of the domain , 2 ) knowledge of the learner , and 3 ) knowledge of teaching strategies . In ITS language , these are often referred to as the expert model , the student model , and the tutor ( Larkin , 1991 ). Others trace the history of ITS all the way back to 1926 when Sidney L . Pressey built an “ instructional machine ” that presented a student with multiple-choice questions ( Shute & Psotka , 1996 ), a device which could even dispense candy for correct answers . Advocates of ITS promote these systems as “ the most promising approach to delivering individualized instruction ” ( Shute & Psotka , 1996 , p . 571 ) because the “ artificial intelligence ” aspects of the program can allegedly diagnose and remedy student misconceptions with the precision of a human tutor .
Although much of the development of ITS has been done in the context of military and industrial training , there have been significant efforts to develop ITS for education , especially in challenging subjects such as algebra , calculus , and programming . For example , John Anderson ( 1993 ) is well known for his work building a geometry ITS . An evaluation of Anderson ’ s geometry tutor in an urban school setting indicated that the system had both positive learning outcomes and encouraged more cooperative problem-solving among students ( Shute & Psotka , 1996 ). Unfortunately , despite a few positive evaluations in loosely controlled studies , few ITS have demonstrated the significant results promised by their developers .
ITS attracted much more attention , funding , and research a few years ago than they do today . One telling sign is that the Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education recently changed its name to the Journal of Interactive Learning Research . Even those who have been most involved in research and development targeted at producing " intelligent tutors " have begun to acknowledge the lack of impact they have had on mainstream education ( Lajoie & Derry , 1993 ). A major factor contributing to the lack of success of ITS is that the technical difficulties
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