INVESTIGATION OF COMPUTER COACHING FOR INFORMAL LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Computer-based tutoring/coaching systems have the promise of enhancing the educational value of gaming environments by guiding a student's discovery learning. This paper provides an in-depth view of (i) the philosophy behind such systems, (ii) the kinds of diagnostic modeling strategies required to infer a student's shortcomings from observing his behavior and (iii) the range of explicit tutorial strategies needed for directing the Tutor to say the right thing at the right time. Examples of these issues are drawn for a computer-based coaching system for a simple game-How the West was Won. Our intention in writing this paper is to make explicit the vast amounts of tutorial knowledge required to construct a coaching system that is robust, friendly and intelligent enough to survive in home or classroom use. During the past three years, we have witnessed how subtle the computer-based coaching problem really is. We hope this paper conveys some of these subtleties—many of which continue to resist general solution. © 1979, Academic Press Inc. (London) Limited. All rights reserved.