The impact of why/autotutor on learning and retention of conceptual physics

Abstract

Why/AutoTutor is an intelligent tutoring system for conceptual physics that guides learning through tutorial dialog in natural language. It adapts to student contributions within dialog turns in both a conversationally appropriate and pedagogically effective manner. It uses an animated agent with synthesized speech to engage the student and provide a human-like conversational partner. Why/AutoTutor serves as a learning scaffold throughout the tutoring session and facilitates active knowledge construction on the part of the student. Why/AutoTutor has recently been compared with an ideal information delivery system in order to assess differences in learning gains, the factors that contribute to those gains, and the retention of that knowledge. © Springer-Verlag 2004 References.