Design and implementation of an intelligent tutoring system in the view of learner autonomy

Abstract

Purpose In intelligent tutoring systems (ITS), learners were often granted limited authority and are forced to obey the decision of the system which might not satisfy their needs. Failure to grant learners sufficient autonomy could yield unexpected effects that hinder learning, including undermining learners’ motivation, priming learners’ aversion to the algorithm. On the contrary, granting learners overwhelming autonomy could also be harmful as the absence of learning support would also have a negative impact on learning. As such, this study aims to design and implement an intelligent tutoring system that offers learners proper autonomy. Design/methodology/approach The main learning activity in the system is doing exercises, and by finishing exercises learners could earn virtual coins. Based on item response theory, exercises are administered to learners with proper difficulty. Based on a recommended difficulty parameter predicted by the system, learners could manually modify the difficulty of the exercises, they could earn more credits by finishing more challenging exercises. Meanwhile, a pedagogical agent is embedded. Learners could customize the agent’s personality jointly with the system to create the learning context they prefer. Findings A intelligent tutoring system with proper learner autonomy (LA) is designed and implemented. Originality/value Few previous researches have noticed the potentially important role that LA plays in ITS. Learning might be facilitated using such a design.