Principles for Pedagogy-Oriented Knowledge Based Tutor Authoring Systems: Lessons Learned and a Design Meta-Model

Abstract

While intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs), also called knowledge based tutors, are becoming more common and proving to be increasingly effective, each one must still be built from scratch at a significant cost. This paper discusses a number of design issues and design tradeoffs that are involved in building ITS authoring tools, and discuss knowledge acquisition and representation “lesson learned” in our work. A generic framework or “reference model” called KBT-MM (knowledge based tutor meta-model) for knowledge based tutor authoring tools is described. The reference model articulates a minimal but necessary set of features for knowledge based authoring tools that aim for scope, depth, learnability, and productivity.