Cloud-based context-aware mobile intelligent tutoring system of technical computer skills

Abstract

In spite of the ultimate importance of procedural technical skills for most disciplines, there is shortage in the number of corresponding Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). This paper proposes a cloud-based context-aware mobile ITS of Technical computer Skills (TS-ITS). TS-ITS is designed as a mobile application to be a valuable learning tool that can be ubiquitously used. Due to the nature of technical skills, they typically require special types of ITSs including, for example resource-intensive demonstration videos. Accordingly, TS-ITS is designed based on mobile cloud computing to benefit from the cloud resources. This also facilitates serving and maintaining progress information of an enormous number of students. TS-ITS is context-aware and can provide a student with a set of relevant questions and possibly demonstration videos according to the assessed knowledge level. Scaffolding is also employed, where an error in a question corresponding to a skill can trigger videos of prerequisite ones since skills are sorted topologically. This is integrated with self-paced learning capability, where a student can efficiently select a topic or skill(s) to learn or search via keywords for a limited-scope demonstration video according to the skill the student is trying to acquire or the task the student is trying to accomplish. TS-ITS can be adapted to other domains and extended to include advanced types of training material as they become available powered by the theoretically infinite cloud resources. Empirical evaluation of a prototype implementation of TS-ITS shows its tutoring effectiveness.