An Intelligent Tutoring System for Multimedia Virtual Power Laboratory

Abstract

Saroj Biswas is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Temple University specializing in electrical machines and power systems, multimedia tutoring, and control and optimization of dynamic systems. He has been the principle investigator of a project for the development of an intelligent tutoring shell that allows instructors create their own web-based tutoring system. His current research focuses on security of cyber-physical systems based on multiagent framework with applications to the power grid, and the integration of an intelligent virtual laboratory environment in curriculum. He is an associate editor of Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete and Impulsive Systems: Series B, and is a member of IEEE, ASEE, and Sigma Xi. INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEM FOR MULTIMEDIA VIRTUAL LABORATORY IN POWER ENGINEERINGAbstract A laboratory practicum is considered a key element in traditional undergraduate education in power engineering, however often ignored for various reasons, such as expenses for establishing a physical laboratory, safety of students working with high voltage sources, and lack of qualified teaching assistants. This research is a continuation of an NSF funded project on the development of a Virtual Power Laboratory 1 (VPL) environment that can simulate an Electric Machines Laboratory. Development of the VPL architecture and its modules has been reported in previous years. This paper describes the final stage of the VPL architecture which is instructional design and implementation of an Intelligent Tutoring System. The virtual laboratory is supervised by a virtual Intelligent Tutor that can track students' progress and monitor their actions in the virtual laboratory platform. The VPL offers a virtual experimental environment with 2D graphics, 3D animations, audio guidance, simulations, knowledge concept bases, and virtual experiments; the Intelligent Tutoring System is designed on top of these functionalities. It processes the user actions and the resources existing in the virtual laboratory, and tracks students' progress, answers questions, monitors their actions, and if necessary, guides the students with prerequisite material on the subject matter.

A Review of Intelligent Tutorial Systems in Computer and Web based Education

“…N. Gon, S. Bisw. and L. Ba But [59], report the development of an ITS for Multimedia Virtual Power Laboratory (VPL) which can simulate an electric machine laboratory. In the VPL architecture, which consists of instructional design and implementation of an ITS, the virtual lab is supervised by a virtual Smart Tutor who can track the students' progress and monitor their actions, on the virtual lab platform.…”

Developing Instructional Design Agents to Support Novice and K-12 Design Education

“…More specifically within the scope of engineering education, ITS have seen reasonable traction, being used to teach several subjects such as circuits [28][29] , thermodynamics 30 , software engineering 31 , computer-numerical control operations 32 and several others [33][34] .…”