Communications of the ACM
The Machines Are Taking Over
Credit: libcom.org
Giving computer programs the ability to educate students like a personal tutor is the goal of Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor Neil Heffernan, whose efforts have yielded ASSISTments, a program that helps students learn while evaluating their progress.
ASSISTments incorporates actions that human tutors follow to promote and accelerate learning, such as reminding students of steps they have already completed, encouraging students to generalize, and providing immediate feedback. Heffernan and others also are working on a computerized tutor that is responsive to students' moods, by specifically measuring boredom, frustration, and confusion without disrupting the tutoring process. Data for identifying such emotions is collected via facial-expression recognition software and a chair outfitted with sensors to measure students' posture.
Heffernan and a collaborator are trying to streamline the technology so that the program can gauge a student's mood according to the pattern of his or her responses to questions. ASSISTments is designed for modification by teachers and students, and analysts say it demonstrates how education could be transformed by computer instruction supplemented by human teaching.
From New York Times Magazine
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