Intelligent interactive tutoring system for engineering mechanics

Abstract

Engineering education has traditionally been imparted through the lecture-tutorial-laboratory paradigm. Education technology in the last few years has tried to make teaching more effective by supplementing the chalkboard teaching with audiovisual aids like overhead/slide projectors and videos. These are, however, passive teaching tools. Recent advancement in computer multimedia has brought in a new teaching medium. Multimedia education has several advantages; most noticeably, the instructions can be interactive and self-paced to meet the needs of each individual student. The writers have developed an Intelligent Interactive Tutoring System for engineering mechanics for the first-year engineering students at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The main objective of this system was to supplement classroom teaching via intelligent interaction with the computer-based tutoring system. This system is designed to be a self-paced virtual tutor with intelligent, user-friendly interactions. It is intended to be different from the many commercially available computerized textbooks. The prototype system was tried out with about 200 students who had earlier failed the course in the first semester and repeated it in the second semester of academic year 1997-1998. The system received good response from the students. The full version was implemented on the Nanyang Technological University Intranet and the Internet for use by the regular class of more than 1,600 students in both academic years 1998-1999 and 1999-2000.