Research Interests:
Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Computer Science Education, Cognitive
Modeling
My research involves applications of artificial intelligence to the
problem of teaching novices how to program. I have built a built
the
ProPl
tutoring system that uses natural language dialogue to support the
problem understanding and planning phases of programming. The
system engages students by asking them what programming goals to pursue
and to speculate on how they might be achieved. The knowledge
sources for the dialogue were derived from a prior study on human-human
tutoring of novice program design which I analyzed in an effort to
characterize the overall structure, identify effective tutoring
strategies, and collect expected answers of students.
ProPl is an application of the
Atlas
system, a toolkit for the construction of natural-language tutoring
systems. Atlas provides a dialogue planner (APE) and natural
language understander (CARMEL), both of which are used by
ProPl
extensively. The primary knowledge sources come in the
form of
Knowledge
Construction Dialogues (KCDs), an extension of the base Atlas
system. KCDs are authored hierarchical
structures
intended to guide students through directed lines of reasoning.
They are compiled into planning operators before being used by APE to
guide dialogue,
A controlled evaluation of
ProPl
is currently underway pitting it against a control system that presents
the same content (within reason) but in a read-only, click-through
form. I am investigating the effect
ProPl has on novice programmers from
3 different introductory programming courses at the University of
Pittsburgh.
The
evaluation includes post-test measures targeting students' ability to
write algorithms, identify and manage programming goals, and use
language to describe concepts in structured programming. The
driving hypothesis is that the interaction during tutoring is
responsible for change in programming skill.
For more information, please visit the
ProPl
homepage, and
my
publications.
My advisor is
Kurt VanLehn.