Educational Research Journal

Abstract

The use of computer in education started more than thirty years ago. In traditional computer assisted instruction systems, all responses have to be preplanned and implemented at the designing stage. The system builders must prespecify all available routes through the space of teaching possibilities. Every test, every decision, every branch leading to some remedial material and every exposition must be written in advance (Goodyear, 1991). When considering the number of decision points with their corresponding responses, the possible number of combinations, even for small tutoring systems, will be enormous. This prevents computer assisted systems from being used in larger subject area. Recently, with the aid of knowledge representation techniques originating from artificial intelligence, human knowledge can be incorporated into computer systems. Based on the knowledge incorporated, computer systems can now make judgments on students' responses and decide on suitable responses to be made in real time. There is no need to pre-install all the possible routes and decision points. The computer system is thus smaller in a sense that less memory space is required on the hardware. Besides, the responses generated in real time can be more flexible and more adapted to students' needs. Logex is an example of such systems, called intelligent tutoring systems, which are designed to help students in simplifying logarithmic expressions by working through the simplification process with the students. This article describes its principles, structure and the ways by which it helps students.

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