Persuasive dialogues in an intelligent tutoring system for medical diagnosis

Abstract

Being able to argue with a student to convince her or him about the rationale of tutoring hints is an important component of pedagogy. In this paper we present an argumentation framework for implementing persuasive tutoring dialogues. The entire interaction between the student and the tutoring system is seen as an argumentation. The tutoring system and the student can settle conflicts arising during their argumentation by accepting, challenging, or questioning each other's arguments or withdrawing their own arguments. Pedagogic strategies guide the tutoring system selecting arguments aimed at convincing the student. We illustrate this framework with a tutoring system for medical diagnosis using a normative expert model. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.