Interactive event: the rimac tutor-a simulation of the highly interactive nature of human tutorial dialogue

Abstract

Rimac is a natural-language intelligent tutoring system that engages students in dialogues that address physics concepts and principles, after they have solved quantitative physics problems. Much research has been devoted to identifying features of tutorial dialogue that can explain its effectiveness (e.g., [1]), so that these features can be simulated in natural-language tutoring systems. One hypothesis is that the highly interactive nature of tutoring itself promotes learning. Several studies indicate that our understanding of interactivty needs refinement because it cannot be defined simply by the amount of interaction nor the granularity of the interaction but must also take into consideration how well the interaction is carried out (e.g., [2]). © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.